Venezuelan director and playwright Moisés Kaufman was BOTD in 1963. Born and raised in Caracas, he studied theatre before emigrating to the United States, where he graduated from New York University. He rose to public attention with his 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, compiled from quotes from contemporary court documents and newspaper accounts of Wilde’s trial. He is best known for writing and directing The Laramie Project, a verbatim account of the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard, based on newspaper reports and interviews with inhabitants of Laramie. Originally performed in Denver and New York, The Laramie Project has been performed worldwide, and adapted by Kaufman for television in 2002. He made his Broadway debut in 2004, directing Doug Wright’s play I Am My Own Wife, an autobiographical portrait of trans activist Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. His other Broadway projects include writing and directing 33 Variations starring Jane Fonda and a well-received 2017 Off-Broadway revival of Harvey Fierstein‘s Torch Song Trilogy. In 2016, Kaufman was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the first Venezuelan to receive this honour. He married his long-term partner Jeffrey LaHoste in 2014.