The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman, is centered on Laramie, Wyoming, and the social significance of Matthew Shepard's murder on October 6, 1998. A gay political science student at the University of Wyoming, Shepard is found bound to a fence after being brutally beaten unconscious. Five days later, he dies. The idea of The Laramie Project is to capture the emotions, reflections, and reactions of the people who were most closely related to this crime. Kaufman's objective is to learn through the
people have not socially recognized gay rights around the world. They are constantly looked down upon based on their sexual orientation. The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman is a play about the reaction to the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The play follows Moises Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project’s journey on their interviews in the town. The reactions in Laramie, Wyoming show that the people struggle with treating gays as equals in their
Introduction: The Laramie Project considerably contributes to the national dialogue” on the issue of hate and hate crimes against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community (LGBTQ). “The Laramie Project is a gripping tour through the actual spoken words of Laramie people drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews to show the outrage, the sense of being unfairly singled out, the quiet hope for change among gay and lesbian residents and the sometimes callous behavior
Introduction The Laramie Project is a three-act play made by the Tectonic Theater Company that tells the story of the people of Laramie, Wyoming, and how the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard has impacted their way of life. The play is split up into different “moments” instead of scenes, with the moments being characters expressing their thoughts on a particular topic at a certain point in time. This Laramie Project has always been a very popular play for high schools to perform ever since its debut
Laramie Project and Shakespeare as presented in the Secured Housing Unit (SHU) at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility (WVCF), a super-maximum security prison in the state of Indiana. These productions offer their creators and viewers alike, the opportunity to learn much about the attitudes and actions concerning how people relate to each other. They also offer an opportunity for people to understand themselves better, as well. The Laramie Project, developed by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater
What’s So Great About That? In one of the first mainstream documentary dramas, The Laramie Project seeks to uncover the truth behind the vicious murder of teenager Matthew Shepard, the victim of a homosexual hate crime in October of 1998. Written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the New York based Tectonic Theater Project, this piece is made up of a series of moments rather than scenes, and told in a series of interviews with the people surrounding the case, be they doctors, policemen, or average
The Laramie Project written by Moisés Kaufman and the Members of Tectonic Theater Project is a play about Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming who was killed and tied up to a fence in Laramie, Wyoming during October 1998. Unlike most plays, this was written very differently, but the result was breathtaking. Besides reading this play, I have also been an actor in this show. This play has really affected me throughout the years, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading
The Laramie Project, written by Moisés Kaufman, is a compilation of interviews by The Tectonic Theater Project, news publications, and journal entries. After the brutal murder of Mathew Sheppard in 1998. Kaufman along with his theater troupe made six visits to Laramie, Wyoming, where the murder took place, to interview people about what happened and how they felt about the crime in their community. They interviewed about two hundred people, of which about sixty were included in the play. The play
separation, and that the spectator should learn from the actor rather than relate to him. Two contemporary plays that have been written in the last thirty years which examine and work with Brechtian ideals are ‘Fanshen’ by David Hare, and ‘The Laramie Project’ by Moises Kaufman. The question to be examined is whether either of these two plays are entirely successful in achieving what was later called, ‘The Alienation Effect”. Over the course of his career, Brecht developed the criteria for and conditions
An Intelligent Design Makes The Laramie Project Shine A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing the William and Mary Theater Department’s production of The Laramie Project, a play that tells the story of the murder of Mathew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, that took place in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming. Over the course of the next year, members of the Tectonic Theatre project travelled to Laramie six times and conducted over 200 interviews with the people living there
Theater can be many things. It can be seen as entertainment (this is how it is first perceived). It can be seen as a piece of real life on stage. It can be seen as a political message. Theater can take on many faces and all those faces constitute what theater is. There is a genre of theater for everyone; there are naturalistic plays, avant-garde plays, plays that are solely movement based, etc. There are thousands upon thousands of plays in the world just waiting to be put on stage. There are also
actually executing a plan to kidnap him and bring him to a desolate fence at which they would brutally beat and leave him alone to die in freezing weather. The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman, contains a series of interviews of various people from Laramie, Wyoming, discussing the tragic death of Matthew Shepard. The Laramie Project highlights how prejudices and misconceptions, specifically against homosexuality, can lead to tragedy. These tragedies, no matter how extreme, affect everyone surrounding
best things you could have done beside protesting, before “President Barack Obama signed the Hate Crime Prevention act” (Worthen Hate Crime and The Shepard-Byrd Act). Bruce Shenitz states in his article, “Tectonic Theater Project, founded by Moises Kaufman, created a play named the Laramie Project to spread the word about the murder of Matthew Shepard. They interviewed over half the town to make the play as real as it could be so that anyone watching could make a connection gay or not” (71). When
The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project is a play unique in its reflection of a historic event and in its reception by the national audience. The play is a response to the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay university student, so it is often censored and feared for its effects. In particular, the play encounters frequent opposition and censorship in American high schools as a result of the schools’ reluctance to challenge the prejudiced, societal beliefs
some begin to wonder about their preferences in lovers and explore other sexual orientation. Unfortunately, those who become comfortable with their different orientation are often faced with violence & discrimination. The Laramie Project & its sequel The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, by Moises Kaufman, elaborate on the untimely murder of Matthew Shepard by the hands of two homophobes. Through the dialogue of the characters in both plays, it is evident that Matthew Shepard’s death gave LGBT hate