November 1: "8" Staged Reading at HSU

Equal justice under law: A staged reading of "8," the play about California Proposition 8 and marriage equality, is performed by actors from the North Coast community as a benefit for the American Foundation for Equal Rights for one night only on Thursday November 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Van Duzer Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata. Donation is $5.  Advance tickets are recommended from HSU Ticket Office (826-3928.) Directed by Clint Rebik, produced by the HSU Department of Theatre, Film & Dance.

Media: KHSU Artwaves, Humboldt State Now, Tri-City Weekly,  Lumberjack, North Coast Journal, Arcata Eye

Michael Fields as Judge Vaughn Walker, James Floss as proponent attorney Charles Cooper

In 2010 it became a landmark trial for marriage equality. But there was no video released of what went on in that northern California courtroom, where a ban on marriages of same-sex couples was determined to be unconstitutional.  Marriage equality was declared a Constitutional right.

Now a play based largely on court transcripts as well as interviews and events surrounding this trial is coming to Humboldt State University—for one night only, on November 1 in the Van Duzer Theatre. “This is the trial we did not get to see,” said its director, Clint Rebik. “But with this staged reading we get that opportunity.”

    “People need to witness what happened in the Proposition 8 trial, if for no other reason than to see inequality and discrimination unequivocally rejected in a court of law where truth and facts matter,” said the playwright of 8, Academy Award winning screenwriter Justin Lance Black.

James Floss, Sam Machado, Juan Carlos Contreras, Michael Fields

After readings of 8 in New York and Hollywood that featured such celebrated actors as George Clooney, Morgan Freeman, Christine Lahti and Jamie Lee Curtis, the American Federation for Equal Rights selected theatres throughout North America to produce their own staged readings, for one performance.

  The HSU Department of Theatre, Film & Dance won the right to perform it here. “As far as we know, this is the only place it’s going to be done in California again north of the Bay Area,” said department chair Margaret Thomas Kelso. “We’re very excited.”

  The “8” cast includes Michael Fields, James Floss, James Hitchcock, Christina Jioras, Susan Abbey, Michael Thomas, JM Wilkerson, Elisa Abelleira, James McHugh, Catherine L. Brown, Juan Carlos Contreras, Sam Machado and Shea King.

James Hitchcock as plaintiff's attorney David Boies, James Floss as attorney Charles Cooper

California Proposition 8, which added language to the state constitution to end the rights of same sex couples to valid marriage, narrowly passed in 2008. In 2010, the U.S. District Court of Northern California heard arguments and took testimony on marriage equality—the first time a federal court considered the issue.

  As a result of that trial, the judge declared that Proposition 8 violated rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But that decision has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The American Federation for Equal Rights wants to raise awareness of marriage equality issues,” Kelso said. “In addition to the courts, there are similar ballot initiatives in several states this year. So they want these readings to be community-wide events.”

This is reflected in the casting at HSU. “About half our cast members are actors well known in the local community,” said Rebik, “and half are HSU faculty and students.”

  “Many more people wanted to participate than could,” Rebik said, adding that scheduling was the biggest problem.

Shea King as plaintiff witness Ryan Kendall

 

According to the American Federation for Equal Rights stipulations, the performance is a staged reading. “Actors will have scripts in hand,” Rebik said, “but there is movement and interaction—it’s not just people reading from scripts propped up on music stands. The emphasis is on the words—the testimony, the closing arguments—everything we didn’t get to see.”

“We’ve set the ticket price at only $5 to encourage people to come to the show, and to promote that community involvement,” Rebik said. All proceeds will be donated to AFER.

  There will be a discussion with a panel and the audience after the approximately 90 minute performance. The panel is headed by Richard Bruce, Administrative Support Coordinator for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and campus advisor to the Queer Student Union.

“This reading is held the week of our Campus Dialogue on Race, when we try to bring issues of exclusion and disenfranchisement to the forefront ” Rebik added. “This is one of those issues.”

8: Our Production

      Sam Machado, Juan Carlos Contreras   

Cast

Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker: Michael Fields
Theodore B. Olson (Plaintiffs’ attorney): JM Wilkerson
David Boies (Plaintiffs’ attorney): James Hitchcock
Charles J. Cooper (Proponents’ attorney): James Floss
Sandy Stier (Plaintiff): Catherine L. Brown
Kris Perry (Plaintiff): Christina Jioras
Elliott (Kris & Sandy’s son): Juan Carlos Contreras
Spencer (Kris & Sandy’s son): Sam Machado
Dr. Nancy Cott (Plaintiffs’ witness): Elisa Abelleira
Maggie Gallagher (Marriage equality opponent): Susan Abbey
Ryan Kendall (Plaintiffs’ witness): Shea King
David Blankenhorn (Proponents’ witness): Michael Thomas
Evan Wolfson (Marriage equality advocate): James P. McHugh
Clerk: Katie Dawson
Broadcast Journalist: Jessi Shieman
Paul Katami: David Hamilton
Jeff Zarillo: Calder Johnson
Dr. Ilan Meyer: Peggy Metzger
Dr. Gregory Herek: Cliff Berkowitz
Dr. Gary Sugura: Jim Buschmann
Dr. William Tam: Charlie Heinberg  

cast members: Susan Abbey, Christina Jioras, Catherine L. Brown, Elisa Abelleira


Production:

Director: Clint Rebik
Sceneography: Katie Dawson
Projections: Telfer Reynolds
Stage Manager: Caitlin Volz
Technical Director: Jayson Mohatt
Costume/Makeup Design: Dion Howard
Producer: Margaret Thomas Kelso
Administrative Support: Lorraine Dillon, Debra Ryerson
Photography: Kellie Brown
Publicity/blog copy and design: Bill Kowinski

8: The Play

The Proposition 8 trial was scheduled to be the first federal trial to be shown on video in other courthouses and through YouTube. But days before it was to begin, defendants petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent the trial from being televised at all. By a 5-4 decision, live streaming was banned, and dissemination of the video recorded during the trial has been in litigation ever since.

This was part of the reason that several attempts were made to reenact the trial with actors. This version however is an actual play of some 90 minutes, based on transcripts of the trial as well as interviews with participants and observations made by playwright Dustin Lance Black during the trial.

  The first staged reading was held at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on Broadway, on September 19, 2011. The Broadway production featured Bob Balaban as Judge Walker, John Lithgow as Ted Olson, Morgan Freeman as David Boise, Bradley Whitford as Charles Cooper; Christine Lahti and Ellen Barkin as plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Steir; Kate Shindle, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Ben Rosenfeld, Matt Bomer, Cheyenne Jackson, Yeardley Smith, K. Todd Freeman, Anthony Edwards, Stephen Spinella, Rory O’Malley, Rob Reiner, Ken Leung, Larry Kramer, Jayne Houdysell and TV journalist Campbell Brown as the TV journalist.

The West Coast Premiere reading was in Los Angeles on March 12, 2012, and was broadcast and streamed worldwide. It was directed by Rob Reiner, and featured Brad Pitt as Judge Walker, Martin Sheen as Ted Olson, George Clooney as David Boies, Kevin Bacon as Charles Cooper, Christine Lahti and Jamie Lee Curtis as plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier; Vanessa Garcia, Jansen Panettiere, Matt Bomer, Matthew Morrison, Yeardley Smith, Rory O’Malley, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, James Pickens Jr, Chris Kolfer,John C. Reilly, George Takei, Cleve Jones, Jane Lynch and Campbell Brown.  The entire Hollywood reading may be viewed here.

  Since then staged readings have been scheduled so that each venue gets its own unique performance date. There have been readings in Denver, Atlanta, Charlotte, Grand Rapids, San Diego, Fargo, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, Washington, Bozeman, Memphis, San Antonio, Tacoma and many other cities and towns.

  At the reading in San Francisco in early October, playwright Dustin Lance Black was in the cast, along with Holland Taylor of the classic TV courtroom drama “The Practice,” Patricia Wettig of the TV shows “Brothers and Sisters” and “Thirtysomething,” as well as American Conservatory Theatre actors and California Assembly Speaker John Perez. In the audience for this reading at ACT were the actual four plaintiffs and the judge in the case, Vaughn Walker. There was also a recent reading in Sacramento, where its director, Kate Sullivan Gibbens, talked afterwards about working on the play with Black.

In the days just before the Arcata event, readings will have been staged in Des Moines, Baltimore, Anchorage, Austin and Minneapolis. Originally the readings built towards election day. Several states have ballot measures affecting marriage equality, and of course, one presidential candidate (President Barack Obama) favors marriage equality and the other (Mitt Romney) does not.  But the demand for readings continue, and now more are scheduled across the U.S. and Canada (plus Scotland, England and Australia) to the end of June.

8: The Playwright

Dustin Lance Black won the 2009 original screenwriting Oscar for Milk, a film about San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. It starred Sean Penn, who won as Best Actor.

Black wrote the screenplay for the 2011 film, J. Edgar, about J. Edgar Hoover, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He won two Writers Guild awards for his work on Big Love, a television series about a man with three wives.

Black grew up as a Mormon in Texas. His father was a Mormon missionary. In 2010 he narrated a documentary about the involvement of the Mormons in supporting California’s Proposition 8. 8: The Mormon Proposition won the Best Documentary Award of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Black is a founding member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and through them licenses these staged readings without royalties. “I’ve built my career around exposing and uncovering ‘the real story,’” Black said. “The goal of ‘8’ is to show the world that marriage equality is a basic constitutional right and that those who would deny this basic freedom from loving, committed couples have only vitriol and baseless hyperbole to fall back on. The facts are on our side and truth always finds the light. We are doing all we can to help speed that process along.”

About the American Foundation for Equal Rights

The American Foundation for Equal Rights is the sole sponsor of the Perry case. After bringing together Theodore B. Olson and David Boies to lead its legal team, AFER successfully advanced the Perry case through Federal District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals before the case is brought to the United States Supreme Court. The Foundation is committed to achieving full federal marriage equality. www.AFER.org

About Broadway Impact

BROADWAY IMPACT is a non-profit organization of theatre artists and fans mobilized in support of marriage equality. Founded in 2008 by Tony Award-nominated performers Rory O’Malley (Book of Mormon), Gavin Creel (HAIR) and Production Coordinator Jenny Kanelos, BROADWAY IMPACT works to educate and inspire the theatre community into action. Recent initiatives include helping to staff the phone banking efforts in New York State, creating a 3,000 piece letter writing campaign, gaining the funding for 1,400 supporters to attend the National Equality March and producing a rally for over 5,000 attendees in Midtown Manhattan where speakers included, Cynthia Nixon, Audra McDonald, David Hyde Pierce, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Governor David Paterson. BROADWAY IMPACT was awarded the 2009 Human Rights Campaign Community Award. www.BROADWAYIMPACT.com

8: The Trial

In California in November 2000, Proposition 22 stating that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" was passed by the voters. A case challenging it made its way to the California Supreme Court. In May 2008, the court ruled in a 4-3 decision that this amounted to discrimination against gays and lesbians, and that marriage is a fundamental right under the California Constitution. So the ban against same sex marriage was deemed unconstitutional according to the California Constitution. Same sex marriage was immediately recognized in the state, although the city of San Francisco had been marrying same-sex couples since 2004.

But in November 2008, voters passed another proposition by a narrow margin: Proposition 8 changed the California Constitution itself to recognize only marriage between a man and a woman as valid in the state. And same sex marriage was immediately banned again in California. This time the challenge went to federal court, based on the U.S. Constitution.

  It was filed by the American Federation for Equal Rights on behalf of Kristin Perry and Sandra Steir because the state refused to grant them a marriage licence (later joined by two other plaintiffs similarly denied, Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo.)   It was a controversial decision, initially opposed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union for tactical reasons. They later supported the plaintiffs case.

  The case was first called Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and named California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown, among others, as defendants. When Jerry Brown was elected Governor, the case was changed to Perry v. Brown, even though Gov. Brown agreed with the plaintiffs that marriage discrimination was unconstitutional. When neither Gov. Schwarzenegger nor Gov. Brown would defend Prop 8, it was defended in court by the group that sponsored Prop 8 on the ballot, ProtectMarriage.com.

   The trial that is the subject of “8” began in January 2010 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. Chief Judge Vaughn Walker presided. He was appointed to federal court by President H.W. Bush. He had initially been nominated by President Ronald Reagan but Democrats opposed him, partly because they claimed as a private attorney he was anti-gay.

  But the figures who attracted the most media attention were the two main lawyers for the plaintiffs. They were Theodore Olson, who represented George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore that decided the 2000 presidential election, and David Boies, who had represented Al Gore in the same case. When the Court ruled in favor of Bush, it essentially made him President, and Olson was appointed Solicitor General.

Though Boies was a high-powered addition to the plaintiff’s legal team, his participation wasn’t surprising. Ted Olson on the other hand made headlines simply by signing on as an advocate. That a major Republican attorney was asserting a constitutional right for same-sex marriage was a news story in itself. That he was joining the attorney who had been on the Democratic side in Bush v. Gore dramatized both the stakes and the non-partisan principles involved. It cast the trial in a completely different light.

But the defendants also had a high-powered attorney: Charles Cooper had also argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the National Law Journal called him one of the top ten civil litigators in Washington.

  The trial ran from January to July. In August 2010 Judge Walker issued his ruling: Proposition 8 violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Marriage equality was a right protected by the Constitution.

  In February 2012 the three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this finding, 2-1, although on narrower grounds than did Judge Walker. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not yet decided whether it will take the appeal this term. But such a decision, one way or the other, could come at any moment.

  Several months after the trial, Judge Walker announced his retirement. He left the federal bench in February 2011. Even during the trial there were rumors that he was gay, and in April 2011 he admitted to a reporter than he had been in a gay relationship for ten years. He is the first federal judge ever to come out as gay. Shortly after his admission, the Family Research Council went to court to overturn his Prop 8 decision because he was not impartial. District Court Judge James Ware heard one day of arguments before denying the motion, writing that "the presumption that Judge Walker, by virtue of being in a same-sex relationship, had a desire to be married that rendered him incapable of making an impartial decision, is as warrantless as the presumption that a female judge is incapable of being impartial in a case in which women seek legal relief.”