On October 6th of 1998 Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, was beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming.  He died 6 days later.  His torture and murder became a national news event that highlighted the nation’s deep-seated cultural bias against homosexuality.  A month after the murder of the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted interviews with the people of the town.  From these interviews came the play The Laramie Project.  Poignant, moving, and theatrically enticing, it is one of the most celebrated plays of the last decade.