LATW tours China with Top Secret: The Battle The Pentagon Papers

L.A. Theatre Works has been invited to bring Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons' riveting historical drama, Top Secret: The Battle for The Pentagon Papers, to China for two weeks of performances, November 22 through December 4.

Multiple award-winning director Stephen Sachs directs a cast of stage, screen and television veterans including Henry Clarke, JD Cullum, James Gleason, Nicholas Hormann, Amy Pietz, Russell Soder, Josh Stamberg, Peter Van Norden, Steve Vinovich and Tom Virtue.

In conjunction with scheduled performances in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing, L.A. Theatre Works, accompanied by author and former Voice of America Director Geoffrey Cowan, will offer workshops, and lead panel discussions with participation from China's leading law and journalism schools, as well as with the general public.

Top Secret: The Battle for The Pentagon Papers is an inside look at The Washington Post's decision to publish a study labeled "top secret" that documented the history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The subsequent trial tested the parameters of American democracy, pitting the public's right to know against the government's need for secrecy. The epic legal battle between the government and the press went to the nation's highest court - arguably the most important Supreme Court case ever on freedom of the press.

In 1966, United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara commissioned a study on the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The document, which came to be known as The Pentagon Papers, contained more than two million words, including some that would prove politically embarrassing about Administration efforts to manipulate military information and the media. Only seven copies of the Papers existed: five resided in the Pentagon; Secretary McNamara had one; and one was at The RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, who worked at RAND, copied the Papers and gave four thousand of the seven thousand pages to Neil Sheehan at the New York Times, which printed the first three installments of the story before the government won a restraining order. Eager to get a piece of this remarkable story, The Washington Post, not covered by the initial injunction against The Times, obtained a copy of The Papers and had one day to read the documents and make a decision about publishing more of the sensitive material.

Top Secret: The Battle for The Pentagon Papers is based on a wide range of sources including interviews with participants and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It follows the debate played out at Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's home as his staff sorts through the documents and tries to decide if publishing The Papers will violate national security - and as the lawyers and publisher decide if publishing will risk criminal action and possibly huge financial consequences. The play includes their momentous decision and the legal wrangling that followed. The government's relationship to the media and the citizenry's right to information are critically explored against the canvas of the Vietnam War and the secretive Nixon White House. Unknown to the press and other government officials at the time, President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, were terrified that publication of secret documents would disrupt their plans for a visit to China. The plans for this visit were kept so confidential that even the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense had been kept in the dark. Interested readers and viewers can find a vast array of background material at the play's website, www.topsecretplay.org.

For three decades, L.A. Theatre Works has been the leading radio theater company in the United States, committed to using innovative technologies to preserve and promote significant works of dramatic literature and bringing live theater into the homes of millions. The company's public radio series, featuring stage plays performed by America's top actors augmented by interviews with the artists and others, can be heard in over 100 markets nationwide and can also be streamed on demand at www.latw.org. Over 9,000 libraries carry LATW's plays on audio, and recordings and teaching materials are used by over 3,000 middle and high schools across the country.

L.A. Theatre Works' China Tour is produced and managed by Ping Pong Productions, whose mission is to promote cultural diplomacy through the performing arts. For more information, visit www.pingpongarts.org.

L.A. Theatre Works will perform at the Shanghai International Contemporary Theater Festival from November 22-27; at Guangzhou Sun Yatsen University, co-produced with Caixin Media, on November 29; at Peking University Centennial Hall on December 2; and at Beijing Tianqiao Acrobatics Theater on December 3 and 4.