8

Dustin Lance Black

Dusty Cakes has been busy with his theatrical script 8, a play based on the Proposition 8 trail.

DLB took the transcripts from the trial and distilled them into a 90-minute play.

A staged reading will take place on Broadway in September. Then a production will be showcased at Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern and in Massachusetts.

Joe Mantello plans to direct the staged reading at the Eugene O'Neill Theater on September 19.

The New York Times reports:

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.

Quips Black: “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 ....... Since the trial itself wasn’t heard or seen, I wanted to get that story out another way.....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....."