Violence Against the LGBTQ Community - Then and Now: A Screening of The Laramie Project

Wednesday, October 9

• 5:00PM: Reception
  
• 5:30PM: Screening
  
• 7:00PM: Post-screening discussion  

Screening: The Laramie Project (1hr 37min)

The LGBTQ Policy Center at Roosevelt House is pleased to present a screening of the award winning 2002 HBO film, The Laramie Project, followed by a conversation with esteemed writer-director Moisés Kaufman. The post-screening discussion will examine the connection between past and present violence against the LGBTQ community—with a focus on recent attacks against transgender people. In keeping with the LGBTQ Policy Center’s mission, the conversation will also address how reverberating tragedies can inspire movements that directly impact policymaking.

The Laramie Project tells the story of the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shephard, a 21-year-old college student, in Laramie, Wyoming. To create the stage version of The Laramie Project, Moisés Kaufman’s eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie and recorded hours of interviews with the town’s citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe’s visit, using the actual words from the transcripts to create a portrait of a town forced to confront itself in the wake of a horrific hate crime.

The murder of Matthew Shephard would go on to become one of the most notorious anti-LGBTQ hate crimes in US history—inspiring an activist movement that, more than a decade later, would bring about the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Signed into law by President Barack Obama, it expanded hate crime laws to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived sexual identity, gender, or gender identity.

Panelists:

Moisés Kaufman (he/him), artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, is a Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, and an Obie Award and Lucille Lortel Award winner. In 2015, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. In addition to The Laramie Project (two Emmy nominations for writing and directing), Kaufman has also directed episodes of Showtime’s The L Word. Kaufman’s Broadway credits include: Paradise Square (10 Tony Award nominations); the revival of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy; Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo with Robin Williams; the revival of The Heiress, starring Jessica Chastain; 33 Variations, starring Jane Fonda; and Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife.

Erin Mayo-Adam (she/her), moderator, is the Director of the LGBTQ Policy Center at Roosevelt House, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Hunter, and a member of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Faculty and Curriculum Committee. She is the author of Queer Alliances: How Power Shapes Political Movement Formation and has published in numerous academic outlets, including the Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy. She specializes in American politics, law and society, and political theory and bridges scholarship on social movements, interest groups and public policy, intersectionality, gender and sexuality, and migration and labor politics.

This event is co-sponsored by the CUNY LGBTQ Advisory Council and made possible in part by the generous support of the New York City Council and the CUNY LGBTQ Consortium.