For Immediate Release

Princeton Seminary Students to present The Laramie Project

Princeton, NJ, November 9, 2005– In a quest to understand how a town and, more generally, a nation deals with hatred, a group of young actors and writers from New York traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, to examine the events surrounding the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay student at the University of Wyoming. The result was The Laramie Project, a play presented in a series of monologues, moments, and interviews with citizens of Laramie. It will be presented in the Mackay Campus Center Auditorium on the Princeton Theological Seminary campus by the Seminary’s student organization BGLASS in conjunction with Dramatists Play Services, Inc., on Thursday, December 8 and Saturday, December 10 at 8:00 p.m.

The play’s authors, Moisés Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project, interviewed a wide cross-section of society for an understanding of the crime. Shepard, on the night of October 6, 1998, left a local bar with two men. He was found unconscious and tied to a fence post some 18 hours later by a cyclist. His two killers confessed to pistol whipping him with a .357 Magnum and robbing him of his shoes and $30. Interviews with a drama teacher at the University of Wyoming, the police officer who was first on the scene, the leader of a militant anti-gay group that crashed Shepard’s funeral, friends of the two killers, and many others reveal both the depths of prejudice and the shock caused by its violent revelation.

The play has received numerous awards and is one of the most-performed plays in America today, often being presented at or by high schools to teach students the dangers of hatred. It received further attention when ABC’s 20/20 interviewed the two killers, who reversed their prior statements to say that drugs, not hate, was their motivation in the killing. This report caused some controversy, with some decrying the play’s perceived bias and others criticizing the report’s apparent lessening of the significance of Shepard’s death.

Local theatrical director Sean Walsh will direct the play, with Seminary students Tim Hughes, Joe Kramp, Suzette Stone, Carmen Goetschius, Drew Ditzel, Jill Rumpf, Katie Walsh, Hillary Lefensty, Rachel Smith, Julie Hoplamazian, Garrett Bugg, Liam O'Donnell, Matt Webber, Nick Preuninger, David Smith, and Emily Wilmarth, and Seminary professor Jacqueline Lapsley performing. Tickets are $5 for general admission or $3 for students, and are available an hour before each performance on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, contact Sean Walsh, producer and director, or Dana Walsh, comoderator of BGLASS at swalsh320@yahoo.com or dana.walsh@ptsem.edu.