Each fall, Lawrence High School students put on a show. This year’s play was The Laramie Project, a story about a boy who lived in Laramie, Wyoming and was killed because of his sexual orientation.
The play was an adaptation of the original production by Moises Kaufman and the Members of Tectonic Theater Project. Members of the Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie six times to interview the people of the town as a basis for their play.
The Lawrence High play started with an introduction of the story. The play had three acts, with an intermission between acts two and three.
The cast consisted of 26 students, each playing several different parts throughout the course of the play. The members of the technical crew and directorial staff also played important roles in the production of this play.
Emotion was key in the acting. There was not much physical action in the play, the main events consisted of re-enacting interviews with the townspeople of Laramie. The students used their acting skills to keep the audience engaged and interested.

The audience never gets to meet the character Matthew Shepherd, the boy who was killed. This seems to allow the viewers to form their own image and opinion of Shepherd.

The play was performed three nights: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Each performance started at 7:30 in the evening.
Lawrence High junior Tessa Lieber attended the play on Saturday night.
“It was very heart wrenching,” Lieber said.
On the back of the program handed out to each member of the audience as they entered the auditorium was a note from the director, Shannon Draper. Included in her statement was the following sentence.
“It strikes me that all art and all artists seek to accomplish this singular goal: to give an identity to that which already exists, to somehow add our own color or feel to events that need further understanding. That is what we have tried to do with our production.”