<\/p>\n
In the upstairs theater at the Naval and Historical Museum in Vallejo on Sunday night, the walls were covered in words. Letters hung on string and plastered on posters, each word shroud in grief and sympathy.<\/p>\n
I was there for On The Fringe\u2019s one night only production of \u201cThe Laramie Project,\u201d which tells the true story of the life and death of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man in Laramie, Wyo., who was brutally murdered in 1998. Those letters were written from all over the country to Shepard\u2019s family following his death.<\/p>\n
Director Maria Stats says putting on the show felt more like a \u201cneed\u201d than a \u201cwant.\u201d In January, President Trump and his staff removed a website dedicated to Matthew Shepard\u2019s legacy and Stats decided her community needed this.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Laramie Project\u201d isn\u2019t like most plays. Not only is it based on a true story, all of the dialogue is pulled from real interviews and tape recordings, with nothing embellished or stretched.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t look away from it. You can\u2019t dismiss it as a biased opinion by a writer or a woke theater group that came out there to prove a point,\u201d says Stats. \u201cKeeping it verbatim, keeping it transcribed, that was so pivotal to keeping it real. You can\u2019t shy away from the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Shepard\u2019s violent assault began to make the national news in 1998, Mois\u00e9s Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project stayed in Laramie, interviewing friends of Shepard and community members on both sides of the political spectrum.<\/p>\n
After three separate trips to Laramie following his death and the trials of Shepard\u2019s killers, Tectonic Theater Project wrote \u201cThe Laramie Project.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play discusses in depth who Matthew Shepard was, but also the attitudes and prejudices that go unnoticed in towns across America, the culture that allows for violence of the kind Shepard experienced.<\/p>\n
On The Fringe\u2019s production featured a 13-person cast whose members play a variety of roles, changing their accent or physicality to deliver their lines as different locals in Laramie.<\/p>\n
On the Fringe\u2019s production of the play was invite-only and not made aware to the public, a choice that felt important \u2014 if not the best call financially, joked Stats. She wanted the cast and the audience alike to be able to relax throughout the show without fear of backlash, she says.<\/p>\n
Her decision to do so came from personal experience. Ten years ago, On the Fringe put on \u201cThe Laramie Project\u201d for the first time. It was during the fight to legalize gay marriage in the United States, and although there was hope in the air, Stats says, she faced criticism from various organizations and individuals \u2014 including the extremist Westboro Baptist Church.<\/p>\n
When they first started rehearsals for \u201cThe Laramie Project,\u201d this time around, it was only meant to be a reading of the play. But during the rehearsal process, Stats decided to go bigger. \u201cI\u2019m a sicko,\u201d Stats jokes, in regards to pushing her actors harder than initially thought.<\/p>\n While their production 10 years ago had over 100 hours of rehearsals, this year\u2019s show had just 40. Although some actors had some trouble remembering their lines, the power of their statements and the sentiment of the show didn\u2019t waver.<\/p>\n The cast included actors that have been with On The Fringe for years, many of them being family: Charlotte \u201cCoco\u201d Stats, Brighton Fuller, Candi Fuller, Sharlynn Willingham, Danielle Culberson, Zack Bender, Molly James Stats, Paige Whitney-White, Magdalena Stats, Xathanael Todd, Maria Stats, Luke Winders and Jack Willingham.<\/p>\n Just as the stage was full of family and lifelong friends, the audience reflected the same familiarity. \u201cI was just so grateful,\u201d says Stats.<\/p>\n The show was also a fundraiser for the Solano Aids Coalition, which supported \u201cThe Laramie Project\u201d 10 years ago when local venues wouldn\u2019t host the production, says Stats. Fifty percent of the proceeds went to the local organization while the other half went to keeping On The Fringe\u2019s kids programing free.<\/p>\n The money for kids programming is in the form of a scholarship program honoring Bobby Finney, who was in the first production of \u201cThe Laramie Project\u201d but has since died. \u201cSo much of who we are and what we do goes back to the first time we did this,\u201d says Stats.<\/p>\n Even though On The Fringe is more established now, Stats says it\u2019s harder to do the show today than it was 10 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cTen years ago we were on the precipice of marriage equality, we were looking at the barrel of all sorts of hope,\u201d says Stats. Today however, \u201cI\u2019m living in a time when my kids have less rights than when I was born.\u201d<\/p>\n Although it may be more challenging to do so today, Stats holds on to the idea of hope \u2014 a central theme in the play. It\u2019s also an idea that was on ample display on the walls of the theater on Sunday, in the words of people who felt called to action by violence.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.timesheraldonline.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the upstairs theater at the Naval and Historical Museum in Vallejo on Sunday night, the walls were covered in words. Letters hung on string and plastered on posters, each word shroud in grief and sympathy. I was there for On The Fringe\u2019s one night only production of \u201cThe Laramie Project,\u201d which tells the true […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2091573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22220,22691,21741,22034,21818,343508,343509,332338,24047,22482,332339,332340],"class_list":["post-2091572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-arts","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-lifestyle","tag-north-bay","tag-northern-california","tag-solano-county","tag-theater","tag-things-to-do","tag-vacaville","tag-vallejo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\u2018The-Laramie-Project-honors-Vallejos-fight-for-gay-equality-\u2013.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2091572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2091574,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091572\/revisions\/2091574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2091573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2091572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2091572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2091572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}