University of North Texas

A Series of Events on the UNT Campus

@ CHEM 109

In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old gay student, Matthew Shepard, was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a cattle fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. Eighteen hours later, he was accidentally discovered by a biker, who had trouble believing that the figure he saw attached to the fence was human. Police and ambulances were dispatched, and Shepard was taken to a local hospital; all to no avail. Shepard was beyond recovery. He never regained consciousness and died several days later due to his head injuries. Two local young men were charged with the crime.

Five weeks later, Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, and over the course of the next year, conducted more than 200 interviews with people of the town. From these interviews they wrote the play The Laramie Project, a chronicle of the life of the town of Laramie in the year after the murder. THE LARAMIE PROJECT is one of the most performed plays in America today.

Tectonic Theater Project collaborated with HBO to make the film based on the play. It starred Peter Fonda, Laura Linney, Christina Ricci and Steve Buscemi among others. It opened the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for 4 Emmys.