JON PEACOCK: More and more details came in about the sheer brutality, um, motivations, how this happened. And then quite frankly the media descended and there was no time to reflect on it anymore.

MOMENT: THE GEM CITY OF THE PLAINS

(Many reporters enter the stage, followed by media crews carrying cameras, microphones, and lights. They start speaking into the cameras. Simultaneously, television monitors enter the space—in our production they flew in from above the light grid. In the monitors, one can see in live feed the reporters speaking as well as other media images. The texts overlap to create a kind of media cacophony. This moment should feel like an invasion and should be so perceived by the other actors onstage.)

NEWSPERSON 1: Laramie, Wyoming—often called the Gem City of the Plains—is now at the eye of the storm.

(Enter NEWSPERSON 2. NEWSPERSON 1 goes sotto voce.)

The cowboy state has its rednecks and yahoos for sure, but there are no more bigots per capita in Wyoming than there are in New York, Florida, or California. The difference is that in Wyoming there are fewer places to blend in if you’re anything other than prairie stock.

NEWSPERSON 2: Aaron McKinney and his friend Russell Henderson came from the poor side of town.

(Enter NEWSPERSON 3. NEWSPERSON 2 goes sotto voce.)

Both were from broken homes and as teenagers had had run-ins with the law. They lived in trailer parks and scratched out a living working at fast-food restaurants and fixing roofs.

NEWSPERSON 3: As a gay college student lay hospitalized in critical condition after a severe beating … this small city, which bills itself as Wyoming’s Hometown, wrestled with its attitudes toward gay men.

(Enter NEWSPERSON 4. NEWSPERSON 3 goes sotto voce.)

NEWSPERSON 4: People would like to think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule, but it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a daily basis.

(The voices and sounds have escalated to a high pitch. And the last text we hear is:)

NEWSPERSON 1: It’s a tough business, as Matt Shepard knew, and as his friends all know, to be gay in cowboy country.

(These reporters continue speaking into the cameras sotto voce over the next texts.)

JON PEACOCK: It was huge. Yeah. It was herds and—and we’re talking hundreds of reporters, which makes a huge dent in this town’s population. There’s reporters everywhere, news trucks everywhere on campus, everywhere in the town. And we’re not used to that type of attention to begin with, we’re not used to that type of exposure.

NARRATOR: Tiffany Edwards, local reporter: