About The Laramie Project
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In October 1998 a twenty-one-year-old student at the
University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and
left to die, tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside
Laramie, Wyoming. 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. Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic
Theater Project 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
conducted more than 200 interviews with the people of the
town. Some people interviewed were directly connected to the
case, and others were citizens of Laramie, and the breadth of
their reactions to the crime is fascinating. Kaufman and
Tectonic Theater members have constructed a deeply moving
theatrical experience from these interviews and their own
experiences. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking theatrical
collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink
and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.
"One of the ten best plays of the year. A pioneering
work of theatrical reportage and a powerful stage
event."
Time Magazine
Moisés Kaufman is the founder and Artistic Director of
Tectonic Theater Project, a New York City based theater
company. For Tectonic he wrote and directed Gross
Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, which ran for
over 600 performances in New York. He also directed it in Los
Angeles (Mark Taper Forum), San Francisco (Theater on the
Square), Toronto (Canadian Stage) and London's West End
(Gielgud Theatre). The play has been produced in over 40
cities in the U.S. and in dozens of cities abroad. For Gross
Indecency, Moisés won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play,
the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play, the
Garland Award (Los Angeles) for Best Play, the Carbonell
Award (Florida) for Best Play, the Bay Area Theater Critics
Circle Award for Direction, the GLAAD Media Award for New
York Theater and the prestigious Joe A. Callaway Award for
Direction given by his peers in the Society of Stage Directors
and Choreographers. Tectonic Theater Project also won an
Outer Critics Circle Award as original producers of the play,
and the published version of Gross Indecency won the
Lambda Book Award. His most recent work, The Laramie
Project opened at The Denver Theater Center in March 2000
and moved to New York on May 18th 2000. Time magazine
called The Laramie Project "one of the 10 best plays of 2000"
and it was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Unique
Theatrical Experience. On November 2000, Mr. Kaufman took
his company to Laramie Wyoming to perform the play there.
He is currently in postproduction for his film adaptation of The
Laramie Project for HBO, which he also directed. Other
directing credits: Women in Beckett, the collection of Samuel
Beckett's short plays for women, performed by actresses
aged 65-80; In The Winter of Cities, his adaptation of
Tennessee Williams' later one-acts;The Nest by Franz Xaver
Kroetz, named by the Village Voice as one of the top 10
theatrical works of 1994-95; Marlowe's Eye by Naomi Iizuka,
among others. Moisés is a member of Thespis, the foremost
experimental theater company in his native Venezuela. In
June 1999 he was named Artist of the Year by Venezuela’s
Casa del Artista, a national award voted on by artists from a
wide variety of fields.