When the curtain rises on a play, it typically reveals actors portraying fictional characters or historical personalities.

But when the lights go down at the Arena Theatre this Thursday, the actors in the spotlight will be speaking the words of 66 living people as they perform "The Laramie Project."

Moises Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theatre Project created the play to show the impact of the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo. The show combines interviews with the residents of Laramie and journal entries written by the theater company"s members during a visit to the city to form a picture of the emotions behind this hate crime.

"There aren"t that many plays written in this form," said theater sophomore Chad Pisetsky, one of the production"s directors. "Actual people said this as opposed to a playwright writing about fictional or real people."

As a result, Pisetsky said he and his co-director, theater sophomore Veronica Guitar, emphasized the importance of the play"s words. The words supply the voice of the witnesses to this tragedy as the script follows the course of the crime. The characters" monologues and interactions with one another take the audience from the moment a passerby found Shepard beaten and tied to a fence, to his death and the trial of his accused murderers.

"The actors are coming to tell a story to the audience," Pisetsky said. "It"s very intimate and involved."

Portraying a real person on stage presents challenges, though, said theater sophomore Jo Anna Spanos, who plays six roles in "The Laramie Project." The script provides an outline of each personality with names, gender, age and profession, but the actors are left to fill in the rest of the individual"s character from their words. Spanos said it is a priority to portray the voices in the play accurately.

"You"re not portraying a character where you"re creating and inferring a past," she said. "They"re real people who you could contact if you wanted to."

In addition to maintaining truth, Spanos said the actors must create separate depictions of several different individuals. Each of the show"s 10 actors are portraying multiple characters and making them distinct can be difficult. For example, two actors are portraying different 19-year-old college students commenting on Shepard"s tragic death. Actors use small props and clothing changes to help the audience distinguish between the personalities they are depicting.

Spanos said her parts "need to be six different characters with different histories, physicalities, vocal tones, reactions to the incident and backgrounds."

By depicting the residents of Laramie as accurately as possible, Guitar believes the play will have a significant impact on the audience.

"I hope that this gives a better insight into how this type of hate affects a whole community," she said.