The Laramie Project, drawn from 200 interviews conducted by Artistic Director Moisés Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project in the year following Shepard’s murder, is now routinely studied in schools as a method for teaching prejudice and tolerance. “His life changed forever, and for the better, in that moment. “The audience applauded him,” Fondakowski said. Head Writer and Assistant Director Leigh Fondakowski measures the play’s impact by a single performance she attended in Washington D.C., when a teenager came out as gay during the talkback. By the proliferation of positive queer visibility in pop culture in the two decades since 21-year-old University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was robbed, pistol-whipped, tortured and left to die on a fence on the outskirts of Laramie because he was gay. Supreme Court decision to strike down all state bans on same-sex marriage. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.īy the 100,000 purchased copies of the script. By the 2009 enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. By the 20 million who have watched the HBO film adaptation. Most evidently, by the estimated 10 million who have seen the play performed on stages in at least 20 countries and 13 languages.
There are many tangible ways to measure how The Laramie Project has changed theatre and the world since New York’s Tectonic Theater Project opened the groundbreaking play in Denver 20 years ago today in partnership with the Denver Center Theatre Company. The groundbreaking, Denver-born play’s legacy, 20 years later: Art matters Video footage from the world-premiere staging of ‘The Laramie Project’ at the Denver Center in February 2000.
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