8
THE PLAY
November 18-20, 2022
Location: To Be Announced!
8 is a recreation of the closing arguments of the actual trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger. This trial was the one that overthrew California’s Proposition 8 amendment that placed a ban on gay marriage and nullified any current homosexual marriages. When this trial occurred, it gained national attention, but the courts would not let the trial be aired on public television. Dustin Lance Black took the transcripts of the trial, as well as actual commercials that were aired on television at the time, to recreate exactly what went on in that courtroom when peoples’ rights to marriage were restored.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, film and television producer, and LGBT rights activist. He is known for writing the film Milk, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. He has also subsequently written the screenplays for the film J. Edgar and the 2022 crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven.
Black is a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights and writer of 8, a staged reenactment of the federal trial that led to a federal court's overturn of California's Proposition 8.