A local cast will perform the new play by Milk movie scribe Dustin Lance Black, highlighting the legal battle over Proposition 8, California’s referendum which re-outlawed gay marriage back in 2008.

The critically-acclaimed production attracted Hollywood’s heavyweights to special read-throughs when it premiered in the States last year – George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon and out gay stars George Takei, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Lynch all brought the fraught legal battle to the stage.

“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,” says Black.

“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.”

For one night only in Melbourne and then Sydney, comedian Shane Jacobsen, TV’s Lisa McCune, former Neighbours cast member Daniel MacPherson, theatre actor Spencer McLaren and It’s Time marriage equality campaign ad star Julian Shaw.

8 is confirmed for Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre on Friday June 8 and Sydney’s Town Hall on Saturday June 9. Find more details and book for the shows here on 8’s official website.

Funds raised by the production will be donated to the Australian Marriage Equality campaign.

Watch the trailer for the original American production and a brief scene from a one-off live star-studded reading of the play below.