It’s not exactly the high plans of Wyoming, but the natural beauty of the Maine countryside will likely make for a haunting backdrop when the Monmouth Community Players return to live performance with “The Laramie Project.” The acclaimed, important play about the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard, the catalyst for vital hate-crime legislation in the so-nicknamed Equality State and elsewhere, will be staged outdoors by the Central Maine-based community theater. It should be a poignant setting for the play, which draws on real interviews with residents of Laramie, Wyoming, a place that has come to symbolize the beautiful but—too often, anyway—dangerous rural spaces that LGBTQ folks still need to navigate.
| WHEN | WHERE | HOW |
| July 16–18 | Anniversary Park, Auburn, Maine | monmouthcommunityplayers.org |
