Twenty years ago, on October 6, 1998, two homophobic kids lured, savagely beat, and tied gay student Matthew Shepard to a fence post in Laramie, Wyoming. Days later, on October 12, Matthew died at the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. The details surrounding the heinous crime came to light in the following years as the Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie six times to conduct interviews. What resulted is The Laramie Project, a powerhouse documentary-style play that attempts to shed light on this hate crime and evaluate a town's response to the publicity it garnered.

In my senior year of high school, our drama director announced that this was to be our winter play. Once the words escaped her mouth, I could tell she had made an important choice: her gaze was met with a flood of confused faces since no students knew what this was. Guilty. I initially brushed off the announcement as I hoped to focus on my leadership positions that year, but when the auditions began to creep up, I decided to do my research. After reading countless articles about Matthew's trials and watching the film adaptation of The Laramie Project, a singular, blaring thought became obvious to me: I must tell his story. I arrived to the auditions with my monologue prepared, one of the gay townspeople Jonas Slonaker, and read through it as if I were being interviewed in real life. His words became mine, his emotions and desires, his fears became mine. I felt every essence of this real person through a short paragraph from his interview. I was cast, and the following months became the most invaluable times of my life.

Along with my cast members, we cried, laughed, were serious, angry, hopeful. The performances felt like more than just that for us: we were telling the story of Matthew and Laramie. That story has been told to more than thirty million people, and that number continues to grow. Even more important is the fact that Matthew's parents have finally found a safe resting place for him.

On October 26, Matthew is to be interred at the Washington National Cathedral in our capital.His story remains to be one that must be shared, to shed light on the reality of hate crimes and how a town handles such a tragedy. It is always important to remember such an event, not for the brutality with which it was carried out, but for the lessons to be learned from it. So I challenge everyone these next couple of weeks: ask people if they know about Matthew. Ask if they know his story and the whirlwind of protests and hate messages that plagued those involved.