Famous faces are everywhere at ‘8’

Barbra Streisand, Eli Broad and other big names show up for an all-star reading.

With George Clooney and Brad Pitt leading the charge, the L.A. debut of the gay-marriage play “8” on Saturday was part activist theater, part Hollywood in party.

The sky-high celebrity factor no doubt helped to fill the Wilshire Ebell Theatre to near capacity for the onenight benefit performance, even if it made “8” feel something like “Ocean’s Eight.”

Clooney and Pitt played a lawyer and a judge, respectively, in this dramatization of the 2010 court case Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, which challenged the legality of Proposition 8, the ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in California.

Saturday’s staged reading — in which actors read from scripts on a courtroom set — featured a 20-member cast that included Kevin Bacon, Martin Sheen, John C. Reilly, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Matt Bomer.

The play by Dustin Lance Black, which had a reading in September in New York, condenses 12 days of court hearings into a running time of less than 90 minutes, alternating between witness testimony and biographical scenes of the plaintiffs.

The performance served as a benefit for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the nonprofit group that spearheaded the court case against Proposition 8. Black and Rob Reiner, the latter of whom directed the reading, serve as board members of the group.

In a brief interview before Saturday’s performance, Black said he had made changes to the script since the New York performance, excising some of the legal scenes that he felt were repetitive and creating domestic scenes with the plaintiffs — Kris Perry (Christine Lahti) and Sandy Stier (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Paul Katami (Morrison) and Jeff Zarrillo (Bomer).

The cast had an extremely brief rehearsal schedule: The actors met for the first time earlier the same day for two runthroughs before the evening performance.

Reilly played David Blankenhorn, head of the Institute of American Values and a proponent of Proposition 8. The actor was originally cast as Judge Vaughn Walker. But when Pitt became available, Reilly took the role of Blankenhorn, which was to have been played by Reiner.

Rory O’malley, currently on Broadway in “The Book of Mormon,” played Gregory Herek, a psychologist testifying for the plaintiffs. The actor said he flew in from New York on Friday and will return to the Broadway musical early next week. (O’malley is a founder of Broadway Impact, an activist group that co-presented

Saturday’s reading.)

Lahti, who also appeared in the New York reading, said the revised version of the play “took away some of the legalese and made it more fun” for the actors playing the plaintiffs.

A spokeswoman for the American Foundation for Equal Rights said the play reading was expected to raise more than $2 million for the organization. She said the performance drew an audience of about 1,200 people.

In February, a U.S. appeals court upheld Walker’s decision declaring California’s ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. But the case is expected to be appealed and could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Saturday’s audience included a handful of Hollywood power players and actors, including Barbra Streisand, Disney Chairman Rich Ross and Creative Artists Agency’s Kevin Huvane, who represents Clooney and Pitt.

Billionaire Eli Broad attended the performance with his wife, Edythe. “I’m here, so that means I support what they’re doing,” he said after the show. He also said that he thought Reiner “did a fantastic job directing.”

The performance was broadcast live online via Youtube and can be viewed in archival form on the foundation’s website.

Gavin Newsom, California’s lieutenant governor, said before the show that he believes same-sex marriage should be a federal issue.

“I think it belongs in the Supreme Court,” said Newsom, an active proponent of gay rights. “We can’t have a patchwork of states deciding this issue.”