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The World Beyond BetterMost => The Culture Tent => Topic started by: Aloysius J. Gleek on July 18, 2011, 10:19:25 pm

Title: Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”) and his new play: “8”
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on July 18, 2011, 10:19:25 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/theater/play-about-proposition-8-by-dustin-lance-black.html?_r=2

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Illuminating California’s
Proposition 8 Trial,
Onstage
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: July 17, 2011

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Dustin Lance Black


A new play based on the Proposition 8 trial over same-sex marriage in California, written by the Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”), will be performed in a staged reading on Broadway in September and then produced at Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere.


Mr. Black and other supporters of gay marriage said they would try to recruit several other colleges and theaters to stage the play, which is titled “8,” and bring attention to the arguments in the trial last year. It culminated in August with a federal judge striking down California’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8; the judge’s ruling is now being appealed.

The play consists mostly of verbatim dialogue and statements from the trial transcript, Mr. Black said, as well as his own observations from sitting in the courtroom most days and interviewing people on both sides of the case.

Roughly a dozen people from the trial are portrayed as characters, including Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, the lawyers for the two gay couples who sued California over the ban; Charles J. Cooper, the lead defense counsel; Kristin M. Perry and Sandra B. Stier, a lesbian couple who were among the plaintiffs; and the judge, Vaughn R. Walker of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California.

Mr. Black, who won an Oscar in 2009 for his original screenplay about the life and assassination of Harvey Milk, a gay man on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said he became determined to write the play after the United States Supreme Court blocked the trial judge’s plan to broadcast the hearings over the Internet.

“One of my hopes about the trial was to get the opposition in court, hands raised swearing to tell the truth, and have the world see the opposition called to account for going on TV saying gay people harm children, harm families,” Mr. Black said. “Since the trial itself wasn’t heard or seen, I wanted to get that story out another way.”

Mr. Black declined to share a copy of the script, saying he was still refining it. The trial transcript was several thousand pages long, and Mr. Black said he spent six months distilling it into a 90-minute, intermission-free work.

“I mined the best arguments on both sides, trying to capture everything on their side that was a winning point and anything on our side that was a winning point,” he said.

The reading, on Sept. 19 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, will have “a cast of top Hollywood names and Broadway’s finest,” a spokesman for the production said, and will be staged by the Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello (“Assassins,” “Take Me Out”). Mr. Mantello recently completed his run starring in “The Normal Heart” on Broadway, which won the Tony for best play revival this year. The reading will double as a benefit for American Foundation for Equal Rights, which financed the federal court challenge to Proposition 8.

Alan Wasser Associates is producing the reading, and Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns the O’Neill, is providing use of the theater at no cost.

Broadway Impact, a group that champions same-sex marriage rights, is also helping organize the reading and subsequent productions on campuses. Two leaders of Broadway Impact, the actors Gavin Creel and Rory O’Malley, will return to their alma maters — the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon — to hold readings there. Cast members of the Broadway revival of “Hair,” which resumes a national tour in the fall, also plan to do readings in cities where “Hair” will run, and Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts also plans to produce “8” next summer.

Title: Re: Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”) and his new play: “8”
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on July 18, 2011, 11:07:35 pm

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/07/dustin_lance_black_wrote_a_pla.html


Dustin Lance Black
Wrote a Play
About Proposition 8
By: Kyle Buchanan
7/18/11 at 8:45 PM    

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Dustin Lance Black.

The California trial that struck down Proposition 8 wasn't televised last year, but if Dustin Lance Black has his way, he'll soon be bringing those proceedings out into the open. Black told the NYT  that he's written a new play, entitled 8,  which is almost entirely drawn from trial transcripts and Black's own interviews about the case, in which lawyers Theodore B. Olson and David Boies successfully argued that the state's ban against gay marriage was unconstitutional. (That ruling is now being appealed.) Before it's produced at colleges across the country, 8  will get a star-filled September 19 reading on Broadway staged by Joe Mantello; perhaps that's the project Black was recently courting Taylor Lautner for when the two were snapped having dinner with Gus Van Sant last week?

:o :o :o :o :o :o :o

(Thud!)

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2011/07/14/taylor-lautner-gus-van-sant-dustin-lance-black-downtown-dinner/

Taylor Lautner,
Gus Van Sant &
Dustin Lance Black:
Downtown Dinner!
Thu, 14 July 2011 at 1:50 pm

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Taylor Lautner grabs a bite to eat with an Oscar-nominated duo at Italian eatery Bottega Louie in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday (July 13).

The 19-year-old Abduction action star dined with 2008’s Milk  director Gus Van Sant and Milk  screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. Looks like these three have an exciting film project in the works!

Abduction,  which co-stars rising actress Lily Collins, is due out in theaters on September 23.

Taylor recently starred in a new Funny or Die sketch, “Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout”!

:o :o :o :o :o :o :o

(THUD!!)

Taylor Lautner grabs a bite to eat with an Oscar-nominated duo
at Italian eatery Bottega Louie in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday (July 13).

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Title: Re: Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”) and his new play: “8”
Post by: oilgun on July 19, 2011, 10:51:40 pm

What do people see in Taylor Lautner?  Holy frack!

Anyway, I guess 8 will be the 'other' Mormon Broadway show.    :laugh: