The Laramie Project

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In the late twentieth century, the story of the heinous hate crime of Matthew Shepard spiraled throughout many news outlets and eventually became world wide news. Hate crimes have become one of the most known violent acts towards the LGBTQ community. Ranging in actions such as vandalism, beatings, and even in some cases, death Although many cases as such have occurred, the realistic theatrical portrayal of Matthew Shepard in The Laramie Project, Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine, and From Hate Crimes to Human Rights: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard, display evidence and an oath to Matthew and his life. In the late twentieth century play, The Laramie Project, Moises Kaufman went to the town of Laramie to discover why the death of Matthew Shepard occurred. On October 6th, 1998, Matthew Shepard went into a bar and met a few men by the names of Aaron Mckinney and Russell Henderson. The trio ended up leaving the bar and while Matthew did not seem to be aware of any malicious actions, Mckinney and Henderson were. The troublesome duo initially beat Shepard and lured him into the outskirts of Laramie, where they proceeded to beat Shepard and eventually left him to die, helpless and alone. Being merely almost less than one hundred pounds, the chance of survival for Shepard became slim and he died six days later on October 12th, …show more content…

Eventually, Kaufman wrote The Laramie Project in hopes to figure out how such a tragedy could occur in such a beautiful part of Wyoming. Kaufman and Tectonics interviewed roughly over 2,000 people and found out about conservative views and how that could have lead to the death of Shepard. Uneasily, it was hard for anyone to grasp the thought of someone dying, due to sexual

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