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 people's 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 us -three generations later - about 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 for 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?

Shortly after the murder, I posed the question to my company, Tectonic Theater Project: What can we as theatre artists do as a response to this incident? And, more concretely: Is theatre a medium that can contribute to the national dialogue on current events?

These concerns fall squarely within Tectonic Theater Project's mission. Every project that we undertake as a company has two objectives: 1) to examine the subject matter at hand; and 2) to explore theatrical language and form. In an age when film and television are constantly redefining and refining their tools and devices, the theater has too often remained entrenched in the 19th-century traditions of realism and naturalism.

In this sense, our interest was to continue to have a dialogue on both how the theatre speaks and how it is created. Thus, I was very interested in this model: a theatre company travels somewhere, talks to people and returns with what they saw and heard to create a play.

At the time I also happened to run across a Brecht essay I had not read in a long time, "The Street Scene." In it Brecht uses as a model the following situation: "an eyewitness demonstrating to a collection of people how a traffic accident took place." He goes on to build a theory about his "epic theatre" based on this model. The essay gave me an idea about how to deal with this project, both in terms of its creation and its aesthetic vocabulary.

So in November 1998, four weeks after the murder of Matthew Shepard, nine members of Tectonic Theater Project and I traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, to collect interviews that might become material for a play. Little did we know that we would devote two years of our lives to this project. We returned to Laramie six times over the course of the next year and a half and conducted over two hundred interviews.

This play opened in Denver at the Denver Center Theater in February 2000. Then it moved to The Union Square Theatre in New York City in May 2000. And in November 2000 we took the play to Laramie.

The experience of working on The Laramie Project has been one of great sadness, great beauty and, perhaps most importantly great revelations- about our nation, about our ideas, about ourselves.

Click here to read Dennis Shepard's Statement (ActII)