The Terra Linda High School drama department opened its fall play, The Laramie Project, on October 22. The play, performed in a documentary style, is based on the true story of the reaction of a city in Wyoming to the 1998 murder of a gay university student. Although the killing occurred more than 28 years ago, its legacy continues to haunt the country.
On October 7, 1998 Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay university student, was abducted and brutally beaten by two men just outside of Laramie, Wyoming. He died several days later due to severe injuries.
Soon after the murder, Moises Kaufman, founder of the Tectonic Theater Project, along with some of its members, conducted more than 200 interviews in Laramie. Kaufman subsequently wrote The Laramie Project, which, as noted by NPR, “blends performances of many of those interviews with a re-enactment of parts of the trials of Shepard’s killers.” The play was later adapted by HBO into a feature film.
Repercussions from Shepard’s murder reached well beyond Laramie, sparking protests and commemoration across the country. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, named after Shepard and another hate crime victim. The act expanded protections of prior hate crime legislation and funded state and local hate crime investigations.
But despite the strong public reaction to the murder and the legislation passed as a result of it, hate crimes have remained a prominent issue in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Justice reported a total of 10,881 hate crime incidents across 2025, a massive increase from the 7,755 hate crimes that were reported in 1998, the year of Shepard’s murder. This statistic makes the lessons from the Shepard incident more relevant than ever before.
“I think [the play] has messages that resonate with current issues,” Lana Duca, TL senior and head of props for The Laramie Project, said.
“It’s just a big reminder that this hate still exists and is acted upon,” junior and member of the play’s props department, Asher Sheray, added. “People don’t just say a slur and move on…people are violent, especially people who do carry that hate around.”
Last year’s fall play, Inherit the Wind, was similarly based on a part of U.S. history that holds significance in today’s world. The play was a historical drama based on the 1925 Scopes trial, where a high school teacher was arrested for teaching his students about evolution. The TL drama department used this historical backdrop to comment on modern-day censorship.
The Laramie Project brings questions around hate and violence into the spotlight at Terra Linda, reminding us that not only are these issues still prevalent, but that hope is, too.
