The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project was written by Moises Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theatre Project as an investigation of a brutal hate crime in the town of Laramie, Wyoming. This play is taken entirely from interviews of Laramie residents, and the journal entries of the Tectonic Theatre Project, and in this way, it gives a completely genuine and fascinating look at Laramie from the inside and from the outside. The way Tectonic views Laramie changes a lot throughout the course of the play. Beginning with the view of Laramie as your typical town, it morphs to become something just a little out of the ordinary. One of the first things Greg Pierotti notices about Laramie is the welcome sign. It reads: "WYOMING -- LIKE NO PLACE ON EARTH. Instead of WYOMING -- LIKE NO PLACE ELSE ON EARTH," (27). Similarly, Barbara Pitts notices that "in the dark, [they] could be on on any main drag in America -- fast food chains, gas stations. But as [they] drove into the downtown area by the railroad tracks, the buildings still looked like a turn-of-the-century Western town," (28). Greg even swears he "saw a heard of Buffalo," (27). To the Tectonic Theatre Project, Laramie is a tiny rural town that's just a bit off. This view is also shared by Stephen Mead Johnson, a representative of the Unitarian Church who first finds Laramie to consist only of a "tumbleweed" and a "cement factory," (36).

The next scene is an interview with Marge Murray and Allison Marge who really begin to show the depth that Laramie seems to hide. Marge, in particular goes from asking "Well, yeah, honey, why wear clothes," to describing the intricacies of Laramie's view on homophobia (28). Allison and Marge are such a fantastic example of how this play operates -- one second Allison is embarrassed to explain to Greg that "S. O. L." stands for "shit outta luck," and the next Marge quite eloquently sums up Laramie's class problems with the few sentences: "It's about the well educated and the ones that are not. And the educated don't understand why the ones that are not don't get educated," (29). Though both Marge and Allison seem like your typical comical country bumpkins, they both have a lot more to say about Laramie, Wyoming than anyone would expect. Marge ends this scene by frankly telling Greg that she's know more than she's telling him.

At the end of the play, Tectonic leaves the "sparkling lights of Laramie, Wyoming," with a completely different perspective on this tiny town (88).

Kaufman, Moises, and Leigh Fondakowski. The Laramie Project. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2001. Print.