http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/theater/play-about-proposition-8-by-dustin-lance-black.html?_r=2
Illuminating California’s
Proposition 8 Trial,
Onstage
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: July 17, 2011 
Dustin Lance BlackA 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.
