The final script that I wrote wasn’t verbatim, otherwise it would have been a three-week-long play, but I still wanted it to be authentic and full of specific detail that would pique the audience’s interest. Every time I got on an airplane I took a binder of court transcripts and just started redacting, cutting things down. I needed to be able to say: “This is what happened in court, and if you don’t believe me, go and check the transcripts.” The challenge was to do this without the opposition being able to dismiss my version of events. I wanted to use theater to transport people into that courtroom, so that they could feel that way too. What happened in that courtroom was incredibly emotional and dramatic it was hard to sit there and not feel like banning same-sex marriage was inherently wrong. For the first time in the debate, both sides had to raise their right hands and promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. During the trial, the argument took place in a different arena, with different rules. This content simply echoed the subjective views of the people who made it. It was written purely to make the case for marriage equality in the United States, making it one of the most impact-focused works of my career.Īt the time, most material on the subject of same-sex marriage was presented in pamphlets or on TV.

As I was one of the four founding members of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the organization that brought the case to court in the first place, there was a more urgent need for 8 than anything I’d ever done before.

We needed to get it out there almost as soon as I’d hit “save” on the final draft, and only theater would let us move at that speed and scale.Ĩ tells the story of the plaintiffs as they fought to win marriage equality. I decided to use theater to try to make a significant impact on the issue as quickly as possible, because we couldn’t wait around for something to get greenlit, shot, and distributed. We knew that the eventual decision at the Supreme Court would determine the legal status of gay marriage across the country. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, making gay marriage legal in the state once more, but soon after, an appeal was launched. Schwarzenegger case -the California trial that led to the overturning of Proposition 8 - I knew I had to find a way to make what happened in the courtroom visible to a wider audience as soon as possible. When the judge decided not to allow cameras to film the crucial Perry v. But in 2011 when I wrote 8, a play about the courtroom battle for same-sex marriage equality in the United States, time was exactly the luxury that we didn’t have. Making a movie or TV show takes time - sometimes a really long time.

8 by Dustin Lance Black