Jill Adams
The Wellesley High School Drama Society and Technical Team have selected “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later” as its winter production this year. This is the second play based on Matthew Shepard’s murder in Laramie, Wyoming. It was deemed to be a hate crime because Matthew Shepard was gay.
The directors made the show a film rather than a Zoom play in an effort to give students a more enriched experience but remain in accordance with the current DESE guidelines for the pandemic.
“The Laramie Project,” the original play, came out in 1998 and was the result of dozens of interviews by the Tectonic Theater Project, an acting troupe from New York City. In 2008, the team returned to Laramie to explore the long-term effects of Matthew Shepard’s death in 1998 on the town, expecting to write a short epilogue to The Laramie Project. The depth of what they encountered warranted a full-length play in itself.