A unique play anthology featuring five gripping docudramas originally commissioned by L.A. Theatre Works that each explore pivotal moments in 20th century U.S history.
With ensemble casts and innovative staging potential these plays are perfect for theatre companies, schools and educational groups looking to stage familiar historical stories in new and original ways. Each play is accompanied by dramaturgical notes that help contextualize and analyze both the events themselves and the dramatic form in which they are presented.
The scripts included are:
The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial by Peter Goodchild
The Real Dr. Strangelove by Peter Goodchild
RFK: The Journey to Justice by Murray Horwitz and Jonathan Estrin
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial by Peter Goodchild
Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons (Winner of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Best Live Entertainment Award, 1992)
As well as five scripts this anthology includes a foreword by Professor Michael Hackett, professor of directing and theatre history at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Aarons, Leroy: - Leroy Aarons was an Award-winning journalist, editor, author, librettist, and playwright, whose multi-faceted career included stints as a national news correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, university professor, and pioneer for diversity in the news and information industry. He was a founding member of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, as well as founder and Hall of Fame inductee of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Co-written with Geoffrey Cowan, Aaron's docudrama, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, was broadcast nationally and received the Committee for Public Broadcasting's coveted Gold Award (National Public Radio). His book, Prayers for Bobby, became a best seller and was adapted as a choral cantata and feature film. A lifelong journalist, Aarons covered events as chief of the Washington Post on both coasts, before joining the Oakland Tribune, as Executive Editor, winning a Pulitzer Prize for photographic coverage of the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake.
Cowan, Geoffrey: -
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and non-profit executive. He is known for his best-selling novel, The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer, about Darrow's 1912 bribery trial, with a vivid study of the Los Angeles legal system at the turn of the century. Alan Dershowitz's front-page review in The Washington Post called it "eye-popping and icon-shattering," and The Wall Street Journal labeled it the best book ever written about a trial lawyer. Cowan also wrote See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television, an exploration of the history, impact, and politics of television censorship, examining network programming and controversial practices.
With the late Leroy Aarons, Cowan co-wrote the Award-winning play, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, produced on NPR and Off-Broadway, touring twenty-five cities nationally plus two tours in China (L.A. Theatre Works/N.Y. Theatre Workshop).
Estrin, Jonathan: -
Jonathan Estrin is a television producer, writer, and director, best known for his work on CBS' Cagney & Lacey. Other television credits include CBS' Family Law and ABC's Port Charles.
Film credits include Candles on Bay Street, The Water is Wide, Remember, Sisters, Between Friends, Something So Right, Baby Comes Home, and Jasper, Texas. Theatre credits include directing Skin (Odyssey Theatre) and starring as Hennessey in Count Dracula, Priest in Twigs, and Paul Granger III in The Hot l Baltimore (ACT).
Goodchild, Peter: - Peter Goodchild (born 1939) is a British writer and television producer. He is known for several plays (including his 1958 three-act Secretary Trouble) and for his editing work on the pioneering BBC show Horizon, with which he worked from 1965 to 1975. He later produced a TV series and biography on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who worked on the first atom bomb.
Horowitz, Murray: - Murray Horwitz is an American playwright, lyricist, NPR broadcaster, and arts administrator.
