“The Laramie Project,” a play about the reaction of residents of Laramie, Wyoming, to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, will be presented at UB next month as part of the Department of Theatre and Dance’s Student-Directed Series.

Performance times for the play by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project are 7:30 p.m. Feb. 2 and Feb. 3, and 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Feb. 4 in 190 Alumni Arena, North Campus. The production is directed and produced by UB theater students Joe Wood and Sawyer Matheny.

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased online, at the Center for the Arts box office or at the door 30 minutes before each performance.

In October 1998, Shepard was kidnapped, beaten and left to die, tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie. Five weeks later, Kaufman and members of the theater company went to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews with residents of the town. From these interviews they wrote “The Laramie Project,” which has been performed in hundreds of high schools, colleges, and professional and community playhouses, and is often used as a tool to teach about prejudice and intolerance.

Tectonic Theater Project collaborated with HBO to make a film based on the play; it opened the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for four Emmys.