number 8

"number 8" by Leo Reynolds on flickr

Dustin Lance Black, “Milk” screenwriter and Americans For Equal Rights activist, spent the last six months developing a ninety-minute staged reading based on the Prop 8 trial transcripts. His play opens on Broadway in September, with plans to tour the US.

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.

DLB hopes the play gets seen by many more Americans than got to see it firsthand, since the Supreme Court ruled televising it was undecorous, or injudicial, or something.

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

The Sept. 19 Broadway performance, staged by Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello, will be followed by later performances at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, among other venues.