Trials began as a staged reading at New Dramatists, a New York City institution that supports the work of living playwrights. Todd London, Artistic Director of New Dramatists, was interested in exploring whether verbatim transcripts—with their characters and drama—constitute a play, and whether theater had something meaningful to offer our experience of these events. Because of my experience working with recorded interviews and primary sources, I was asked to direct and help shape such a piece. The result was a surprisingly poignant and moving, if often hilarious, piece of drama. In the version presented at New Dramatists, I cast three women as Monica, and they rotated into performance at emotionally motivated places in the text. In the version we brought to HBO's US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, a single actress played Lewinsky, her Grand Jury scenes intercut with delightful and haunting telephone scenes with Linda Tripp. Additional texts included personal notes between the President and Lewinsky; the list of gifts they exchanged; and the Independent Counsel's clinical chronology of the emotional day Lewinsky was apprehended in the mall.