Ten actors playing more than 60 characters will tell the real-life story of how the community of Laramie, Wyoming, reacted to the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, in 1998.
The Laramie Project, a play by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project, opens Nov. 7 at University of Illinois Springfield.
“It is an important piece of history, and it’s an important reminder of our shared humanity that unfortunately is, I think, getting lost in a lot of discourse these days,” said Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson, the play’s director and a theater professor at UIS.
She mentioned the play in class this spring, and when she got blank looks from her young students, Thibodeaux-Thompson said she decided she needed to pitch the play to the theater department.
In October 1998, Shepard, 21, was kidnapped, robbed, severely beaten and left tied to a fence in the Wyoming prairie. He died a few days after he was found, never waking up from his coma. The University of Wyoming student’s attackers were ultimately found guilty of murder.
News of the attack spread globally, sparking outrage. In that environment, the New York-based Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie six times and conducted hundreds of interviews with town residents. The play collects pieces of those interviews, published news reports and Tectonic members’ journal entries to recount how a town grappled with bigotry and murder.
The heavy subject matter can be intense, but Thibodeaux-Thompson said she’s encouraged her actors to decompress and – for now – to use placeholder words for some of the slurs in the script if they need to. She said she’s been impressed by how they’ve handled it.
Sylus Zawicki, a freshman theater major at UIS, said finding the balance among tones and characters has been a challenge, but a fun one. It’s especially true because this is the first dramatic show he’s done.
“With everything that’s been happening, like in the play that we’ve had to say out loud and stuff, we all kind of take that second right after to release a little bit of the pressure,” he said.
Like everyone else, Zawicki plays multiple roles, and each one has a different level of seriousness. One is Aaron Kreifels, the student who found Shepard.
Sometimes, he said, releasing pressure means talking about something completely different or singing silly songs.
There are also some lighter moments and characters who are meant to break the pressure in the show. Zawicki also plays some of them.
Part of what makes The Laramie Project so powerful is its nontraditional format that’s less a story and more like a documentary or, as Thibodeaux-Thompson describes it, a museum exhibit.
“It is a challenging piece to work on because of the challenging subject matter, and it’s a challenging piece to listen to – to witness,” she said. “And I think that’s also part of the power of verbatim theater – is as actors, as theater creators and as audience members, to bear witness.”
Verbatim theater is a style of theater created from real people’s words and documents.
“It’s one of those (shows) that brings you in, but it also is informative of how things went down – what happened,” Zawicki said. “Everyone is human. And this play does take it and bring it right to your face.”
The venue will also add intimacy. Because the normal performing space is in a construction zone, The Laramie Project will be performed in the acting studio in the Visual & Performing Arts Building (Room 170) on the campus.
The room will have enough space for around 50 people, much smaller than the typical 120-200 who fit in the Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theatre venue. Every performance will be followed by a talk-back session afterward so the audience has an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the show.
Thibodeaux-Thompson said the play is more than its subject matter. The format allows the audience and the performers to connect and share the experience.
“I think more than it being heavy … it’s honest. It is eye-opening, and it being 27 years later, it’s like, ‘Wow, how far have we come and how far have we not come?’” she said.
The Laramie Project
runs Nov. 7-9 and 13-15 in the acting studio in the Visual & Performing Arts Building (Room 170) on the campus. All shows are at 7:30 p.m. except for the Nov. 9 matinee, which will start at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 and are available in person or by phone at the Art, Music, and Theatre Department office Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will also be tickets available at the door starting one hour before showtime.
Nikoel Hytrek is a student in the Public Affairs Reporting master’s degree program at University of Illinois Springfield.
This article appears in November 6-12, 2025.
