As previously reported, Academy Award winner George Clooney will star in the Los Angeles premiere of 8, under the direction of Rob Reiner, March 3 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Additional casting will be announced shortly.

Academy Award-winning "Milk" screenwriter Black wrote the play that chronicles the reversal of California's anti-gay marriage legislation, Prop. 8. The case to overturn Prop 8, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, was not televised, and all video documentation has remained under a federal protective order. A judge ruled in September that all trial tapes must be made public. 8 incorporates transcripts from the trial and observations and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families.  

Among the schools, universities and theatres producing 8 are El Camino Real High School (Sept. 14), the Intiman Theatre (June 4), The Williamstown Theatre Festival (TBA), Webster University (Jan. 30), Stanford University (March 5), Carnegie Mellon University (Sept. 10), the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (Feb. 17), and Central Coast PFLAG (Oct. 19), in addition to a host of community and regional theatres. Click here for a list.

The creators of 8 provide the materials to local theatres, royalty free, to produce staged readings of the play. The American Foundation for Equal Rights and Broadway Impact align to present the readings.

"People need to witness what happened in the Prop. 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," Black said in a previous statement. "I've built my career around exposing and uncovering 'the real story.' 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 at AFER are doing all we can to help speed that process along."