The Laramie Project

by Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project

Eureka High School - 2012

Among our greatest threats throughout history is fear — oft spoken about, this basic ignorance brings about more destruction of human life than perhaps any other human-made force. I call it ignorance because it finds its sole foundation on the absence of information, of understanding, of compassion, of community. It is a refusal to embrace genetic diversity, a denial of concrete difference, and an erasure of both our fundamental humanity and the innumerable ways in which we are unique. Equal to the destruction is the tremendous strength, inspiration, community, and love which cannot help but infuse the soul when we find ourselves smiling at each other, seeing in the eyes the doorways to the soul, as Jim Morrison put it, and discovering not someone else, but ourselves. We each occupy the other, from the microbial to the metaphysical, and bearing this in mind hatred finds no purchase, murder no fuel, war no audience. A bullied teenager myself, I now am surrounded by the bullied, the bullies, in what by all accounts is the safest and most dangerous place and time in our lives: school. Willingly or no, we are vulnerable every day, and this is when we need the greatest compassion, the longest reach, the gentlest eyes and the warmest greeting. It is here where ignorance is banished, where knowledge feeds love, and where community can eradicate isolation and cultivate family. That there are ugly aspects to human nature is neither tragic nor regrettable — what is both of these things is how poorly we as a species react to these elements. There is only belonging. There is only love. There is only us.