The Changing Views on Homosexuality in the Laramie Project

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The Laramie Project is a docudrama written by Moisés Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project. This play enacts and investigates the 1998 real- life murder of Matthew Shepherd, a gay student in Laramie, Wyoming in the United States of America. The play is edited and compiled from interviews and real life journals of people from Laramie. Along with this, The Laramie Project captures the true essence of the town of Laramie, its citizens, and their reaction to the brutal murder of Matthew Shepherd. “After all, not to create only, or found only, But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded, To give to our own identity, average, limitless, free.” WALT WHITMAN There are moments in history when a specific event causes the countless principles and theories prevalent in a culture to come into sudden focus. At this moment, the event acts like a burning candle and illuminates the age-old beliefs and questions the true essence of the prevailing ideologies and opinions. In The Laramie Project, the death of Matthew Shepherd helps trace the wrestling attitudes of Laramie towards homosexuality - mistrust and trust, denial and acceptance , hate and love and ruthlessness and forgiveness- that affect not only individuals but the Laramie culture at large, to ultimately change Laramie’s perception on homosexuality. “If there’s eight men and one woman in a Wyoming bar, which is often the case, now you stop and think- who’s getting what?”(Kaufman 21). This is the attitude of most people of Laramie. They do not trust gay men or gay women. This is rather strange as it strongly opposes the great ideal of Laramie life – “Live and let live” (Kaufman 17). Such level of discrimination in Laramie has only creates great problems of insecurity within the society itself. This level of insecurity has only given birth to great amounts of mistrust within the Laramie

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