With Moisés Kaufman

Moisés Kaufman

Moisés Kaufman is a playwright, director and founder of Tectonic Theater Project. He is the author of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, 33 Variations and is perhaps best known for writing The Laramie Project with other members of Tectonic Theater Project...

 at the helm, the Tectonic Theater Project explores the ways in which experimentation with form and structure can inform theme in contemporary drama.

Perhaps most widely known for The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie,...

, a piece which examines the aftermath of the Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998...

 homophobic

Homophobia

Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...

 murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

 in Laramie, Wyoming

Laramie, Wyoming

Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 30,816 at the . Located on the Laramie River in southeastern Wyoming, the city is west of Cheyenne, at the junction of Interstate 80 and U.S. Route 287....

 by using actual interviews with townspeople to create the text of the play. In 2008, ten years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, the members of Tectonic Theater Project returned to Laramie to write an Epilogue to The Laramie Project, investigating what had or hadn't changed in the intervening ten years since the murder. "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later" premiered in 150 theaters on the same night, October 12, 2009, and is scheduled for a National Tour in October-November 2010.

Other projects include "33 Variations" and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is a 1997 play written by Moisés Kaufman. It deals with Oscar Wilde's three trials on the matter of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, which led to charges of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons"...

, both written by Moisés Kaufman

Moisés Kaufman

Moisés Kaufman is a playwright, director and founder of Tectonic Theater Project. He is the author of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, 33 Variations and is perhaps best known for writing The Laramie Project with other members of Tectonic Theater Project...

 and I Am My Own Wife

I Am My Own Wife

I Am My Own Wife is a play by Doug Wright based on his conversations with German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. The one-man play premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at Playwrights Horizons. It opened on Broadway later that year. The play was developed with Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic...

by Doug Wright

Doug Wright

Doug Wright is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 for his play, I Am My Own Wife.-Early years:Wright was born in Dallas, Texas...

, all of which were created from historical and living records of actual events.

"33 Variations" dramatizes the latter period of Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

's life, and his composition of the "Diabelli Variations

Diabelli Variations

The 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120, commonly known as the Diabelli Variations, is a set of variations for the piano written between 1819 and 1823 by Ludwig van Beethoven on a waltz composed by Anton Diabelli...

. The play also follows a modern-day musicologist afflicted with Lou Gehrig's Disease -- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a form of motor neuron disease caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons, located in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their efferent input...

 (ALS) -- as she tries to unravel the mystery of Beethoven's obsession. "33 Variations" was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Gross Indecency deals with the period of playwright Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's life when he was put on trial for 'gross indecency' -- homosexual sodomy

Sodomy

Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...

 -- due to his relationship with the Lord Alfred Douglas

Lord Alfred Douglas

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas , nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde...

.

I Am My Own Wife won the Tony Award

Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 for best play in 2004. It explores the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf was the founder of the Gründerzeit Museum in Berlin-Mahlsdorf.- Early years :...

, a transvestite who survived both the Nazi and Communist governments in twentieth-century Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and founded the Gründerzeit

Gründerzeit

' refers to the economic phase in 19th century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. At this time in Central Europe the age of industrialisation was taking place, whose beginnings were found in the 1840s...

museum.