Two playwrights who both authored dramas about Harvard’s anti-gay “secret court” are headed to a real court to hash out their differences.
Tony Speciale — whose “Unnatural Acts” was a Drama Desk nominee last year — filed suit today against former pal Stan Richardson over his play, “Veritas,” which was staged at the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival.
Both works address a long-secret, 1920 tribunal conducted at Harvard to purge the campus of gays, which was exposed in 2002 by the university’s “Crimson” newspaper.
Speciale’s Manhattan federal court filing seeks a court order declaring his play doesn’t infringe on Richardson’s copyright for Veritas, and also declaring Speciale a co-author of its script.
According to the suit, Speciale and Richardson collaborated on the development of Veritas until they had a “personal and professional falling out” in April 2008.
Speciale says he and 14 “Plastic Theatre” colleauges then began working on a new play that approached the same subject “through a different lens, emphasizing different aspects of the historical plot than Veritas.”
After Unnatural Acts was picked as a “main stage production” of the Classic Stage Company in 2010, Richardson accused Speciale of ripping him off, which Speciale says has since kept his play from appearing “in a variety of venues (including a Broadway option).”
Richardson’s spokesman didn’t return requests for comment.