On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard’s death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of Laramie the event was deeply personal, and it’s they we hear in this stunningly effective theater piece, a deeply complex portrait of a community. Adult/High School-This remarkable play takes the form of a series of juxtaposed monologues, culled from hundreds of interviews that the authors conducted with residents of Laramie, WY, after the fatal beating of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Additional speeches are taken from journals the authors kept while they were involved in this project. From these fragments, a powerful whole is created, giving readers and audiences a full and shimmering picture of a quiet town suddenly thrust into the media spotlight and hastily branded as "backward." Shepard's friends are heard from, as are the friends of his convicted killers. Masterfully woven together to breathtaking effect are statements from Laramie's religious leaders-some of whom condemn the murder, others of whom condemn the victim. A thoughtful and moving theatrical tour de force. Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. The savage murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in October 1998 left deep wounds in the psyche of Laramie, WY, and in that of our entire nation. Soon after Matthew's death, Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project (also responsible for the highly acclaimed Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde) made a series of visits to Laramie over an 18-month period, conducting hundreds of face-to-face interviews with the town's citizens in order to create this piece. The words and voices of these people, including the college student who first discovered Matthew's broken body, Matthew's friends, teachers, the two young men responsible for his death, and Matthew's father, make this a deeply moving and brutally realistic dramatic experience. This true story of hate, fear, hope, and courage touched and changed many lives and will do so for everyone who reads or watches a performance of this theatrical masterpiece. Highly recommended for all collections. Howard Miller, St. Louis Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. In the clever docudrama Gross Indecency (1998), Kaufman wove the transcripts of the Oscar Wilde trials into a fascinating, enlightening evening of theater. In The Laramie Project , Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project attempt something similar and contemporary with the case of the torture and murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Kaufman and company conducted hours of interviews with everyone remotely involved in the case, from one of Shepard's college professors to the girlfriend of one of the convicted killers. They cobbled together the highlights of those sessions into a work that aspires to the brilliance of Emily Mann's Execution of Justice , about the murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. The play falls short of that, however, largely because it lacks the cohesiveness and narrative thrust of Mann's play or even of Gross Indecency . Still, it has moments of astonishing power, such as the chilling sequence in which an evangelical minister reveals his sympathy with Shepard's killers. Jack Helbig Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “One of the ten best plays of the year.” — Time “Deeply moving.... This play is Our Town with a question mark, as in ‘Could this be our town?’” — The New York Times "An amazing piece of theater... Out of the Shepard tragedy is wrenched art." — The New York Post "Brilliant... bone-hard drama [that] dares to touch the hidden wound of the American West... Within these pages, a healing occurs." —Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge For a year and a half following the murder of Matthew Shepard, Moises Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project-whose previous play, Gross Indecency , was hailed as a work of unsurpassed originality-conducted hundreds of interviews with the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming, to create this portrait of a town struggling with a horrific event. The savage killing of Shepard, a young gay man, has become a national symbol of the struggle against intolerance. But for the people of Laramie-both the friends of Matthew and those who hated him without knowing him-the tragedy was personal. In a chorus of voices that brings to mind Thornton Wilder's Our Town, The Laramie Project allows those most deeply affected to speak, and the result is a brilliantly moving theatrical creation. "An amazing piece of theater... Out of the Shepard tragedy is wrenched art." -- The New York Post "Brilliant... bone-hard drama [that] dares to touch the hidden wound of the American West... Within these pages, a healing occurs