2 \pi-grafting and complex projective structures, I

Let $S$ be a closed oriented surface of genus at least two. Gallo, Kapovich, and Marden asked if 2\pi-graftings produce all projective structures on $S$ with arbitrarily fixed holonomy (Grafting Conjecture). In this paper, we show that the conjecture holds true "locally" in the space $GL$ of geodesic laminations on $S$ via a natural projection of projective structures on $S$ into $GL$ in the Thurston coordinates. In the sequel paper, using this local solution, we prove the conjecture for generic holonomy.Comment: 57 pages, 10 figures. To appear in Geometry & Topolog