Moises Kaufman - The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

The Laramie Project is a terrific piece of theater, history, and life. 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. A theatrical and human event.

New York

A riveting theatrical experience.

Variety

Deeply moving. [Kaufman] has a remarkable gift for giving a compelling theatrical flow to journalistic and historical material. This play is Our Town with a question mark, as in Could this be our town?

The New York Times

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

Remarkable. [A] probing and distinctive theater piece assembled with care, compassion and dollops of comic relief. The high-octane performances and unique staging make this a must see for any theatergoer.

Daily News

Few playwrights have cut to the heart of tragedy so unerringly.

The Village Voice

One of the ten best plays of the year.

Time

Brilliant. If I could, I would stand on every street corner in America and pass this play out as a handbill for a more civil society.

Terry Tempest Williams, author of Leap and Refuge

A bracing, wholly original and deeply affecting piece of theater. It radiates integrity, an aching collective need to understand incomprehensible events. [It proves that] theater can serve as witness to our deeds.

San Francisco Chronicle

An amazing piece of theater. Out of the Shepard tragedy is wrenched art.

The New York Post

A complex and ultimately optimistic portrait of a town that was challenged by the most catastrophic of events.

USA Today

Sad, sober and gripping. Something nourishing has been excavated by Kaufman and his committed collaborators from the tragedy.

Daily Variety

A towering theatrical accomplishment. [The Laramie Project is] Our Town for the new millennium, capturing from real life the same sense of humanity in the raw that Thornton Wilder did years ago with the fictional Grovers Corner. The play moves the theater in a new and different direction.

San Francisco Times

An invigorating theatrical adventure.

David Rothenberg

Rekindles all the anger and heartbreak. Illuminates with disturbing clarity how sharply attitudes toward the killing have changed in Laramie, how a revised history has gradually replaced the facts of the case, once undisputed.

The New York Times

Moving. One feels ones sympathies shifting and deepening as the voices of those we met in the original pieceand some new onesruminate upon the meaning of Shepards death.

Chicago Tribune

A powerful script.

The Austin Chronicle

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

33 Variations

VINTAGE BOOKS EDITIONS, 2001, 2014

Copyright 2001, 2014 by Moiss Kaufman

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company. Originally published in slightly different form by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 2004.

Vintage and colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

Caution: These plays are fully protected, in whole, in part, or in any form under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Empire including the dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the copyright union, and are subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, radio, television, recitation, and public reading, are strictly reserved. All inquiries for performance rights should be addressed to the authors agent, Olivier Sultan, Creative Artists Agency, 162 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, New York 10010.

The U.S. West World Premiere was produced by The Denver Center Theatre Company, Donovan Marley, Artistic Director, in association with Tectonic Theater Project, Moiss Kaufman, Artistic Director.

Originally produced in New York City at the Union Square Theatre by Roy Gabay and Tectonic Theater Project in association with Gayle Francis and the Araca Group. Associate Producers: Mara Isaacs and Hart Sharp Entertainment.

The Laramie Project was developed in part with the support of the Sundance Theatre Laboratory.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

Vintage Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8041-7039-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-7040-6

www.vintagebooks.com

Cover design by Mike Jones
Cover photograph Tim Chesnut

v3.1

Dedicated to the people of Laramie, Wyoming,
and to Matthew Shepard

After all, not to create only, or found only, But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded, To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free.

WALT WHITMAN

There are moments in history when a particular event brings the various ideologies and beliefs prevailing in a culture into sharp focus. At these junctures the event becomes a lightning rod of sorts, attracting and distilling the essence of these philosophies and convictions. By paying careful attention in moments like this to peoples words, one is able to hear the way these prevailing ideas affect not only individual lives but also the culture at large.

The trials of Oscar Wilde were such an event. When I read the transcripts of the trials (while preparing to write Gross Indecency), I was struck by the clarity with which they illuminated an entire culture. In these pages one can see not only a community dealing with the problem that Wilde presented but, in their own words, Victorian men and women telling usthree generations laterabout the ideologies, idiosyncrasies, and philosophies that formed the pillars of that culture and ruled their lives.

The brutal murder of Matthew Shepard was another event of this kind. In its immediate aftermath, the nation launched into a dialogue that brought to the surface how we think and talk about homosexuality, sexual politics, education, class, violence, privileges and rights, and the difference between tolerance and acceptance.

The idea of The Laramie Project originated in my desire to learn more about why Matthew Shepard was murdered, about what happened that night, about the town of Laramie. The idea of listening to the citizens talk really interested me. How is Laramie different from the rest of the country, and how is it similar?