Tectonic Theater Project
On 6 October 1998 Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. He died 6 days later. His torture and murder became a watershed historical moment in America that highlighted many of the fault lines in our culture.
A month after the murder the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted interviews with the people of the town. From these interviews they wrote the play "The Laramie Project". The piece has been seen by more than 30 million people around the country.
Stephen Jimenez
In 2013 Jimenez published "The Book of Matt," an analysis of the murder of Matthew Shepherd. Jimenez first visited Laramie shortly after the murder, planning to write a screenplay and believing that the murder was a straightforward homophobic killing. Jimenez spent 13 years researching the murder, and came to the conclusion that Matthew and one of the men convicted of his murder were involved in the illegal trade in crystal meth.
Jimenez has said his motivation for writing the book as a desire to show that "the popular narrative (of homophobic murder) served a purpose, but it’s only one thread of a bigger, richer, more challenging story whose lessons we have barely learned. To avoid topics of addiction, including how crystal meth ravaged the queer community (and Matt’s life), is not helpful to anyone."