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The People vs. Lenny Bruce
Click here to purchase tickets* to this event. You can use the discount code LB64. With this code the ticket price will be $45.00 instead of the normal $65.00.
Post-Show Talkbacks:
Select performances include post-show talkbacks with special guests. Check back here for additional dates and participants to be announced.
Lisa Lampanelli (Comedy Icon)
May 7
May 15
May 23
May 29
June 5
June 11
June 19
June 27
Martin Garbus (Civil Rights Attorney)
May 20
Scheduled talkback participants subject to change without notice.
Cause Célèbre Productions is proud to present The People vs. Lenny Bruce running from May 7th through June 28th at Theatre Four on Theatre Row at 410 West 42nd Street. Presented as a staged reading throughout the country, including the Garry Marshall Theatre in Burbank, CA., The People vs. Lenny Bruce has played to sold-out audiences. Don't miss out on the world premiere beginning on May 7th.
This deeply compelling play is part of All the Court's a Stage, an acclaimed series written by Susan Charlotte and directed by Antony Marsellis. It is based on landmark cases argued by legendary First Amendment and civil rights lawyer Martin Garbus and features a stellar cast including:
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Johnny Anthony (The Other Americans)
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Timothy Doyle (Fortune’s Fool)
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Dan Grimaldi (The Sopranos)
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Ian Lithgow (3rd Rock from the Sun)
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Stephen Schnetzer (Prayer for the French Republic)
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Jonathan Spivey (The Front Page)
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Roberta Wallach (The Diary of Anne Frank)
One of the questions posed by this series is, do the characters have any control over their lives? In Shakespeare's All The World's A Stage, life is compared to a play and people are mere players, with little choice. Is the same true of Bruce and the other protagonists in this series? Indeed they are! According to Herbert S. Ruhe, a former CIA agent and a witness for the prosecution, "I know he was not obscene... yet in a way I felt he had to be convicted."
Set in 1964, The People vs. Lenny Bruce explores the prosecution of groundbreaking comedian Lenny Bruce at a moment when free speech itself was on trial. By turns devastating and darkly funny, the play follows Bruce and his attorney, Martin Garbus, as they confront a legal system intent on policing language, dissent, and cultural change.
Other characters in this play, such as famed writer and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and acclaimed journalist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen, testified on Bruce's behalf, to no avail. As Ruhe said, "Bruce had to be convicted."
Bruce's case reveals how censorship operates not only through courts and statutes, but through fear. The story of Lenny Bruce is as relevant today as it was sixty years ago, as evidenced by Jimmy Kimmel, who referenced Lenny Bruce in his monologue as well as Stephen Colbert and Don Lemon.
The list goes on and on, making this play a must see!
Click here to purchase tickets to this event. You can use the discount code LB64. With this code the ticket price will be $45.00 instead of the normal $65.00.
Upcoming Events
In the near future, Cause Célèbre Productions will proudly present Unlucky Gal: The Story of Jane Doe and Last Chance Café.
Both plays are part of All the Court's a Stage, an acclaimed series written by Susan Charlotte, directed by Antony Marsellis, and inspired by the landmark cases of renowned civil rights attorney Martin Garbus.
Unlucky Gal: The Story of Jane Doe - Truth on Trial
Three Articles. Three Lies. Three Decades Later.
“I’ve had the misfortune of being raped twice—once in the park, and once by the press.”
These were the words spoken by a young Black woman, a Yale graduate, in April 1994.
After she was assaulted, Mike McAlary of the Daily News wrote three articles claiming she had fabricated the attack. Jane Doe and her lawyer, Marty Garbus, sued McAlary and the Daily News—but lost.
Twenty-three years later, Mike Osgood, former Deputy Chief of the NYPD Special Victims Unit, read an op-ed by Garbus, reopened the case, and ultimately found the rapist.
That op-ed ended with a question: “Who will tell Jane Doe’s story?”
We will.
Don’t miss this extraordinary drama.
Last Chance Café - Justice in the Jim Crow South
1965 — The end of Jim Crow. But not for everyone.
Mississippi, 1965.
Henrietta Wright, a young Black woman, registers to vote—and is arrested within moments. The charge: running a stop sign. Or so they claimed.
After serving time, she filed a complaint with the ACLU. Marty Garbus represented her. Her defiance—and Garbus’s defense—became a moral stand that still resonates today.
Two true stories.
Two unforgettable women.
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