The play that anti-gay activists had hoped to protest turned out to break house records in tickets sales at Richard Montgomery High School.

Richard Montgomery Principal Nelson McLeod wrote in an e-mail to The Gazette on Tuesday that 1,500 people saw "The Laramie Project" over the course of the production's four-day run Nov. 5 and 6 and again Friday and Saturday.

Denise Saladyga, the co-artistic director of the Richard Montgomery Black Maskers Drama Club, said Tuesday that the Saturday performance broke records in ticket sales for a fall season production.

More than 500 people attended the play Saturday evening, with some coming from as far away as Howard County and New York, she said.

She cited the church's own publicity for the would-be protest as beneficial to the school.

"Any attention we can draw, especially in a show like this, is great," Saladyga said.

Nearly 100 people who showed up to counter a protest planned by Westboro Baptist Church waited outside of Richard Montgomery High School for over an hour Saturday afternoon, but nobody from Westboro came.

The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro had announced on its website last week that it would protest against the Rockville school's production of "The Laramie Project," a play about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Laramie, Wyo.

The play chronicles interviews by members of the Tectonic Theater Project with people in the Laramie community one month following Shepard's murder.

Westboro church head Fred Phelps is portrayed in the production.

The church is known for picketing at the funerals of gay service men and for holding other anti-homosexual protests.

The Westboro website, www.godhatesfags.com, reported that church members would protest at Richard Montgomery between 1:15 and 2 p.m. Saturday.

At least six phone calls to the church for comment were answered by an electronic mailbox and were not immediately returned. Several e-mails to church representatives were unanswered by Tuesday afternoon.

School officials and City of Rockville police were on site in preparation for any protest or counter-protest, but the colorfully dressed crowd, many holding signs such as "Gay is OK," remained docile and trickled away when their opposition never came.

Richard Montgomery is not the first public high school in Montgomery County to be the target of a protest by the church. In April 2009, members of Westboro Baptist Church picketed Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda in protest of the school's namesake, the famed poet who some believe was homosexual.

Allison Harris, 52, of Gaithersburg said she came out to support the students who are putting on the play and to spread awareness that gay bullying cannot be tolerated.

"We're here for the children more than for Westboro," she said.

Her daughter, Hillary Harris, 23, of Gaithersburg said she was dressed in colorful clothing and jewelry to mock Westboro's message.

"We're here to counteract their stupidity with love and silliness," Hillary Harris said.

Some people who showed up wore colorful beads and clothes and fairy wings. One man wore purple-colored balloons in the shape of a grape costume.

A group of motorcyclists also waited in preparation to "drown out the noise" of the Westboro protest with their engines, said motorcyclist Buzz Vogel, 50, of Rockville.

Staff Writer Cody Calamaio contributed to this report.

ccalamaio@gazette.net and nnourmohammadi@gazette.net