On Friday, Dec. 12, I went to see the Urbana Theatre Production of The Laramie Project. To get the full effects of the story, I decided to see it without any prior knowledge, save for a few details. I wanted to have the full experience of seeing the story unravel. Once again, the Urbana Theatre did a fantastic job.

For those who didn’t know, the story of Matthew Shepard is certainly a sad one. He was a young gay man who was robbed, beaten, and tied to a buck fence during the freezing night of Wyoming. This resulted in his tragic death. McKinney and Henderson, the men who commited the crime, had pretended to be gay to gain Shepard’s trust. They did this so they could rob him and the crime escalated from there.

The play depicts the events and different interviews done by reporters who went to Laramie, Wyoming. Each character knew, knew of, or saw Matthew Shepard the night of the crime. The trials of the two convicted men were a part of the play. Their sentences, the process of the… (To read the rest of this story, pick up a copy of The Hawkeye from the newsstand near the front office or the media center)