Proposition 8: A Play about the Fight for Marriage Equality.

Featuring an incredible all-star cast with brilliant performances from Martin Sheen, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Kevin Bacon and others, “8” is a 90-minute play written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) and directed by acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner. 8 (or 8 the Play) is an American play that portrays the legal argument and witness testimony of the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, which led to the overturn of California’s Proposition 8. It was created in light of the federal court system’s refusal to allow release of video recordings from the trial and to give the public a true account of what transpired in the courtroom. The play is written in the style of verbatim theatre reenactment, using transcripts from the trial and journalist records, along with interviews from the plaintiffs, defendants and proponents involved. “8”, first opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York City in a one-night-only ‘fundraising’ reading with another incredible cast like Morgan Freeman, Anthony Edwards, John Lithgow, Cheyenne Jackson, Campbell Brown, Christine Lahti, Rob Reiner and Larry Kramer on September 19, 2011, and later broadcast worldwide from the Ebell of Los Angeles on March 3, 2012. The presentation, which raised over $2 million for marriage equality, was also live streamed on Youtube. It really is an impressive reenacted powerful account of the case filed by the American Federation for Equal Rights (AFER) in the U.S. District Court in 2010 to overturn Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that ridiculously eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. Framed around the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, 8 provides an intimate look what unfolded when the issue of same-sex marriage was on trial. See above or click here for a brilliant Martin Sheen as Theodore Olson, Lawyer for the Plaintiffs. For the full 90-minute play, click here. Keep in mind that in the US alone more then 1 million marriages fail a year, that’s 3000 per day. And that for us in The Netherlands it’s weird for a federal and state government to intrude or even intervene on the way how you want to live your life.