Hailed by Time Magazine as one of the Top Ten Plays of the Year 2000, The Laramie Project was created following the highly publicized murder of Matthew Shepard, the gay university student who was beaten and left to die on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. It is a thought provoking and emotionally riveting theater experience of a small town at the epicenter of an incomprehensible crime. Based on more than 200 interviews of Laramie residents, the play captures the town’s reaction to the tragedy. It has been called "an Our Town for the new millennium."