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.
Gordon Matthews (politician)
Later in the 1970s, Matthews retired to Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire. He was Chairman of the Oxfordshire Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) in the late 1970s and served one last term as President of the West Midlands Conservatives from 1983 to 1985. He died after a fall in 2000.