By Its Cover: The Laramie Project

I hadn't scrutinized this cover very carefully before I read the play. If you had asked me, while I was reading it, what the cover looked like (and didn't let me peek), I would have said it was blue and had white condensed text. While technically correct, that doesn't cover the meaning of the image presented on this cover.

Had I looked carefully at this image before reading it, I would have said they chose it because Matthew Shepard was found on the side of the road.

Without giving away one of the best parts of the play, I can tell you that Matthew Shepard's father made a statement at the trial of one of his son's killers. In that statement, he talks about how Matthew was not alone on the side of the road like everyone said he was. (He had his old friends of nature like the sky and wind, and God.) This image encompasses that idea quite well, and is probably the real reason it was chosen.

 

 

I think it's beautiful and pertinent, and - like the story - it is both simple and deeply complex simultaneously.

 

I did not have the same cover as Alex.  This is what mine looked like.

 

 

It's dull, it's boring and it has absolutely nothing to do with the text.  I'm pretty sure it's from this one company that mass produces plays (cheaply), so none of them have fancy covers.  They all look like this, but maybe with a different colored cover (I had a couple that followed this pattern in college.) 

 

You can tell that these books are meant to be used by actors and actresses and such to learn their lines and not meant to be the forefront to the general public (which... is fine because, honestly, I don't really think the cast NEEDS fancy covers.  They probably just want to learn their lines.)