Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School

Last Friday, Feb. 23, officials with the Keller Independent School District abruptly notified parents that Timber Creek High School’s planned production of the play The Laramie Project, which chronicles events in Laramie, Wyo., following the anti-LGBTQ hate crime murder there of college student Matthew Shepard in 1998, was being canceled.

School district officials canceled the production without warning and without explanation. The cancellation happened as the death of non-binary 16-year-old Nex Benedict — who died Feb. 8 after being beaten up by classmates in an Owasso High School bathroom on Feb. 7 — was making headlines around the country.

Since then, students and community members have created a Change.org petition calling on school officials to reinstate the production. That petition reads, in part: “This play is a poignant depiction of queer history and highlights the lack of hate crime laws. By banning this play, we are not only suppressing an important piece of history but also denying our students a chance to understand and empathize with the struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community. The absence of such narratives can lead to ignorance, prejudice, and discrimination. According to a 2019 report by the FBI, Texas ranks third in the nation for hate crimes (source: FBI Hate Crime Statistics). It’s essential that our education system works towards creating awareness about these issues rather than shying away from them.”

Today, Moisés Kaufman — the man who wrote The Laramie Project script and founding artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, which created the play — issued a statement in response to Keller ISD’s decision to cancel the production.

“When the administration of the Timber Creek High School cancels a production of The Laramie Project, it’s telling the LGBTQ students that their stories are unwelcome, that they should refrain from speaking their truth and that that community is not willing to listen. This is a terrible thing to do to any minority,” Kaufman said.

“The Laramie Project has been performed in thousands of universities and high schools around the world,” he continued. “The only logical reason to censor it is homophobia — and that’s not what that school should be teaching its children.”

The original Tectonic Theater Project Company members in the original production of “The Laramie Project” and, inset, playwright Moisés Kaufman

— Tammye Nash