Directing or Studying The Laramie Project Is Not What You Think It'll Be

Most people come into this play assuming they know what it's about. They read the syllabus or glance at the summary and think they've got it. They don't. The structure alone will trip you up if you aren't prepared for it, and I'm going to walk through exactly how to handle it without making the common mistakes I've watched directors and students make for years.

What The Play Actually Is

The

The Laramie Project By Moises Kaufman

is a documentary play. It premiered in 1998, written by Moises Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project after the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The company went to Laramie and conducted hundreds of interviews with residents, family members, students, and people who barely knew him. The script is built from those real conversations — verbatim theater, sometimes called playback theater. The structure is deliberately fragmented. There isn't a traditional three-act arc. Instead it moves through a series of scenes, each focusing on a different person's perspective or experience. The narrative circles back on itself. It refuses to give you a clean resolution because the real community didn't have one either. That's not a stylistic flourish. It's the point.

How to Approach It As a Director or Actor

The biggest mistake I see people make is trying to perform this play like a naturalistic drama. It doesn't work that way. The actors are not "becoming" characters in the Stanislavski sense. They are presenting testimony. The distance between performer and source material is part of the dramaturgy, and collapsing that distance flattens the whole piece. Here's what I tell my cast: you are not pretending to be the people interviewed. You are reporting what those people said, filtered through your own body and voice. That subtle shift in intent changes everything about your physicality, your pacing, your use of silence. The text has a rhythmic quality that comes from real speech patterns, not scripted dialogue. Lean into the pauses. Let the awkward moments breathe. I direct this play roughly once every few years for my university's theater program, and I've learned that the hardest scene to stage effectively is the "Love" section where multiple voices speak about what love means in the aftermath. When I first tried it, I had the cast arranged in a conventional circle and the emotional impact was almost nothing. It felt like a reading group. I moved them to staggered positions across the performance space, each person isolated but audible to the whole room, and it completely transformed. The audience hears overlapping intimacy instead of coordinated group speech. It's a small blocking choice but it makes the difference between a homework assignment and something that lands.

Licensing and Practical Considerations

The scripts are licensed through Concord Theatricals. You'll need to secure a performance license before you start any serious rehearsals. The licensing fee scales with venue capacity and performance run length. For a university production or community theater, expect somewhere in the range of a few hundred dollars for a standard license. The play calls for a small ensemble cast, typically six to eight performers who play multiple roles. You can find the full character list in the licensed script. One thing the script doesn't always emphasize enough in production notes is that the vocal ranges and physical profiles matter more than you'd think. This isn't a play where you can cast generously and adjust through directing. A performer who can't credibly shift from a grieving mother to a homophobic truck driver to a young student will make the piece fall apart. Ensemble versatility is non-negotiable.

Common Pitfalls That Undermine the Production

The first pitfall is sentimentality. The material is emotionally loaded — a young man beaten to death because he was gay — and it's very easy to tip into mourning poster territory. The play actively resists that. It includes jokes, absurdities, contradictions, and moments of genuine warmth alongside the grief. If your production is entirely solemn from start to finish, you're misreading it. I've seen student productions that played it so straight it became sterile. The audience knows the ending before the curtain rises. The tension has to come from the complexity of the community's response, not from wondering what happens. The second pitfall is the tendency to treat the media critique as a separate layer. Sections that address how the press covered Shepard's death aren't intermissions or breaks from the "real" content. They're central to the play's argument about how narratives are constructed. When I've cut or shortened these sections because they feel like commentary rather than drama, the production always feels thinner afterward. Keep them in. Let them sit uncomfortably. A third issue comes up with the ending. The final section of the play includes readings from the actual letter Matthew Shepard wrote to his father. Some directors soften this moment with music or slow lighting cues that make it feel like a finale. It shouldn't feel like a finale. It's an abrupt transmission of raw text. I usually leave the lighting completely flat and let the actor simply deliver the lines without any additional theatrical gesture. It's far more devastating that way.

How to Research Effectively

If you're studying this for a paper or preparing for a production, reading just the script is insufficient. The play exists in conversation with a massive amount of documented material. Start with the actual interviews conducted by the Tectonic Theater Project. They've been published alongside the script in some editions. Then read about Matthew Shepard's life before the murder — biographies and news archives from 1997 and early 1998. Understanding who he was as a person, not just as a symbol, will change how you approach the material. The legal proceedings are also relevant. Sheridann and James Glover were convicted of first-degree murder and robbery. Russell Henderson received a sentence of 98 years. Loy Dawson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served nine years. These facts inform specific scenes in the play. Knowing them prevents you from misrepresenting the timeline or the outcomes. I once worked with a student who wrote a strong analysis of the play's treatment of rural America but kept framing it as "the town divided." That framing is too neat. Laramie wasn't simply divided. Some residents were hostile, some were protective, some were indifferent, and many held contradictory views simultaneously. I pointed her toward newspaper archives from the Laramie Sentinel during October and November 1998. Reading the actual local coverage broke her binary framework and made her paper significantly better.

What the Play Gets Wrong or Leaves Out

This is important for anyone engaging critically with the material. The Laramie Project centers white, middle-class, generally well-meaning voices from Laramie. It does not adequately represent the experiences of Black residents, Latino residents, Indigenous communities, or the broader gay and lesbian community outside of Laramie. Matthew Shepard's own identity as a biracial man is barely addressed in the script. No documentary play can capture everything. But being aware of these omissions is essential for critical engagement. I recommend pairing any study or production of The Laramie Project with readings from scholars and activists who critiqued the play's limitations, particularly around its racial and geographic blind spots. Craig Womack and other LGBTQ scholars have written about this. The play is a document of its moment, not a definitive account.

Where to Get the Script

The licensed script is available through Concord Theatricals' website. You'll create an account, select your production type, and complete the licensing agreement. Performance materials including the score, which is minimal but important, are included. Some university libraries also carry study editions that include the interview transcripts and production notes, which are useful for research purposes. There are also published editions from Dramatists Play Service and other theatrical publishers that include critical essays and production histories. These are worth acquiring if you're doing academic work rather than just mounting a production. The material is protected by copyright. Any performance without a proper license violates the terms set by the playwright and the licensing agency. The penalties are straightforward and the agencies enforce them. Don't skip the licensing step.

Why This Play Still Matters

It's been over twenty-five years since the play premiered and the basic facts haven't changed. Matthew Shepard was murdered. The community responded in complicated ways. The legal outcomes stand. What has changed is the cultural vocabulary around hate crimes, LGBTQ rights, and media coverage of violence against queer people. Returning to this play with that context in mind reveals new layers. Scenes that played as shocking in 1998 may feel familiar now. Other aspects may feel inadequate or naive by current standards. Both reactions are valid. The play's greatest strength is also its limitation: it captures a specific community at a specific moment in time. It is not a universal statement about hatred or love. It is a document of Laramie, Wyoming, after a particular violence. Treat it with that specificity and it remains a powerful piece of theater. Smooth it into a general statement about tolerance and it loses everything.