“There are Parts I Won’t Tell You”: Biography, Trauma and Violence in Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project

Abstract

The murder of Matthew Shepard, in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, was the traumatic event that inspired Moisés Kaufman to write The Laramie Project. The author travelled to Laramie and built the play based on interviews with the townspeople. This essay examines the connection between verbatim theatre and biographical writing and the ways in which these connections and touching boundaries can be a valuable strategy in the depictions of personal and collective trauma, as well as forms of institutionalized and structural violence. The essay will explore the community’s relation to the hate crime committed and make clear the relation of the community with questions regarding homosexuality and homophobia. Through the analysis it will aim at rendering visible the community’s dealing with the shadow of intolerance cast over them and not just those directly involved in Matthew Shepard’s murder, while trying to distance themselves from a collective identity of brutality. The theoretical considerations carried throughout result from the attention to challenges that nonnormativity poses on both individual and collective levels.