About the Play:

The Laramie Project has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

The Laramie Project is a full-length drama by Moisés Kaufman. A widely praised and frequently staged play that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable. Drawn from 200 interviews with the people of Laramie, Wyoming during the months following the infamous murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard, the play uses their words as dialogue. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

The Laramie Project is the story of Matthew Shepard and the people who knew him. It is told in the exact words of the people to whom it happened. The play was written by Moisés Kaufman and nine other members the Tectonic Theater Project after the brutal beating and death of a twenty-one-year-old college student in Laramie, Wyoming, on October 7, 1998. He was kidnapped from a bar, robbed, beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die. His bloody, bruised and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. Kaufman and company made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year and a half in the aftermath of the beating and during the trial of the two young men accused of killing Shepard. They drew from the hundreds of interviews they conducted with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries, and published news reports of Shepard's assault and subsequent death to write the play about the town of Laramie, its citizens, and their reaction to Matthew Shepard's murder. It chronicles the journey of a community deeply shaken by an act of unthinkable violence perpetrated not by strangers, but by two members of the community against one of its own -- and the attempt to shift the community from hatred, fear and ignorance to forgiveness, redemption and enlightenment. The Laramie Project is an invitation to explore the power of empathy.

The Laramie Project premiered in 2000 at the Denver Center Theatre Company, with a number of the interview subjects in attendance. Since then the play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been mounted more than 2,000 times by high schools, colleges, and community theatres across the US, as well as professional theatres in Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

Cast: 4 female, 4 male (portray more than 60 characters in a series of short scenes)

What people say:

"One of the ten best plays of the year. A pioneering work of theatrical reportage and a powerful stage event." — Time Magazine

"Astonishing. Not since Angels in America has a play attempted so much: nothing less than an examination of the American psyche at the end of the millennium." — Associated Press

"There emerges a mosaic as moving and important as any you will see on the walls of the churches of the world … nothing short of stunning … you will be held in rapt attention." — New York Magazine

"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

About the Playwright:

Moisés Kaufman is a Tony and Emmy-nominated American director and award-winning playwright. Born to Jewish parents in Venezuela, he performed as an actor with the Thespis Theater Ensemble, one of the country's foremost experimental theatre companies. He moved to New York City to study theatre directing at New York University. He is also the co-founder and artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, a theater company based in New York City. In 2016, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Both he and Tectonic Theater Project continue to be active in the New York City and global theatre scene to this day.