This anthology contains the scripts and additional educational materials for five original audio docudramas written for and recorded by L.A. Theatre Works about pivotal historical events in U.S. history that address fundamental moral, ethical and legal issues in a democratic state.
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.
Murray Horwitz is an American playwright, lyricist, NPR broadcaster, and arts administrator.
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).
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).
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.
