On October 6, 1998, gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard went to the Fireside Bar for a beer. So did Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. At the bar Henderson and McKinney approached Shepard, and pretending that they were gay, offred him a ride home. Instead, they took him to a remote area outside of Laramie, tied him to a cattle fence, beat him, pistol-whipped him and left him for dead. They took his shoes and twenty dollars from his wallet. On October 12, 1998, Matthew Shepard died of his injuries at Poudre Valle Hospital, in Fort Collins, Colorado. His beating and death shocked the world, and brought about a heigtened awareness to homophobia and hate crimes. The nation was still reeling from the brutal death of African-American James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, just three months earlier, who was chained to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged to his death by three white men. Despite the outcry that these two high-profile murders produced, hate-crimes legislation has been slow to gain support in most areas of the country.

   On November 12, 1998, Moises Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Larami to interview members of the community. They returned more than six times in the next two years, conducting over two-hundred interviews. This play is the product of these interviews. It premiered in the fall of 2000 and since then it has become one of the most heavily produced plays in the country. The film version kicked off the Sundance Film Festival this year and premiered on HBO earlier this month. This play examines the society of Laramie, how it was before and after the muder of Matthew Shepard and how they reacted as a community. It is the story of an American town, but if could be the story of any American town. It "holds the mirror up to nature" andforces us to examine our own communities, both the good and the bad.