At the height of his success, author and playwright Oscar Wilde found himself in a bit of a sticky wicket.
“Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde,” which opens tonight on the Chattanooga Theatre Centre’s CircleStage, deals with those issues in what director George Quick says is “first and foremost a courtroom drama.”
The Irish author and playwright, who wrote the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and the play “The Importance of Being Earnest,” was accused of violating an 1885 British law — repealed in 1967 — of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons.”
The docudrama was written by Moisés Kaufman, who also wrote “The Laramie Project” with other members of the Tectonic Theater Project about the town of Laramie, Wyo., a year after the kidnapping and beating death of Matthew Shepard in the town and a century after the events involving Wilde.
“Gross Indecency,” according to Quick, is similar to “The Laramie Project” in that it tells a linear story with interjections.