News > January 17, 2008

By Molly Nevola | Staff writer

Top Secret: the Battle for the Pentagon Papers, a uniquely performed live docudrama featuring one of the university’s own former students, will present the living history of the Washington Post’s controversial decision to publish top secret documents in 1971 relating to the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.

Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, presented by the LA Theatre Works as part of the Secret Artists Series Jan 17 and 18 in Wait Chapel, Top Secret will star former university student and current actress Shannon Cochran.

Cochran, who studied at the university from 1976-’78 before moving to Cincinnati to study at a conservatory, will return to campus to play the role of Katharine Graham, The Washington Post publisher at the time of the leak who ultimately decided to publish the documents even though the government threatened legal action against the press.

The production will be in the form of a radio play with microphone stands and scripts and narrated by Graham’s character who guides the audience through the events of the day while jumping back and forth to contemporary times.

Cochran was born in Savannah, Ga., but grew up in Greensboro where she received all of her schooling through high school.

She decided to attend the university and immediately fell in love with the school- its attractive size, notable sports and the social outlets on campus.

As a member of a female society, a stage performer and an involved member of the campus, Cochran devoted time to rush activities, rehearsing for plays and club meetings.

“It left little time for studying, so for me it was the first time in my life that I found myself struggling academically,” Cochran said.

Cochran declared an English and French double major and had a vague idea that she wanted to be a translator at the United Nations someday.

“Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had done a bit of community theater, a very little bit, and I knew I liked it, but didn’t know if it would turn into a passion of mine,” Cochran said. The year Cochran first attendend for her freshman year was the first year of the new theater building on

campus—prior to that year, the theater department had been meeting on the sixth floor of the library.

Cochran said that she literally stumbled into theater auditions when a few students from the Theta Chi fraternity encouraged her to audition for a play on campus.

But due to the size of the department and the newness of a growing theater department at the time, the particular field of study was not popular.

“No one thought it was a good idea to pursue a theater degree,” she said.

Fortunately, Cochran noted, the head of the theater department Harold Tedford approached her, and realizing her growing interest in theater as a serious profession, told her to consider transferring.

“It was the strangest advice from the department,” she said, “but it turned my life around.”

Tedford was a type of mentor figure to Cochran, who interpreted what he said and eventually took his advice to leave the school and go away to conservatory for complete immersion in the arts.

After studying at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Cochran decided to start out in theater by auditioning for repertory theaters throughout the southeast.

She ended up in Indianapolis and then moved to Chicago where she has since spent much of her adult life.

She auditioned in Chicago for A Chorus Line, got cast, and stayed in Chicago, which she describes as “truly a theater town.”

In 1991, Cochran and a few of her friends decided to venture to Los Angeles for pilot’s season, hoping to land gigs on television episodes.

“I didn’t want to leave Chicago, but was very successful in LA—it’s been very lucrative, but having Chicago as a case was great for a fallback,” she said.

Today, Cochran lives in LA with her husband, an actor and director whom she met in her travels.

“I eventually moved my base to LA, but I still go back to Chicago to do at least something. It is sort of my spiritual theater home,” Cochran said.

Cochran landed roles in various shows, television commercials, but noted that without a doubt, her true passion is the theater.

Her first Hollywood gig was Seinfeld in its second year before the show really caught on with audiences.

She also worked on Frasier and more recently appeared in The Office where she got a taste of the low-key, improvisational atmosphere of television filming.

She has also had roles in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as well as Grey’s Anatomy, where she was able to appreciate how hard hour-long television drama actors work—typically eighteen hour days with few breaks.

In any event, she noted that today there are very few television roles for the more mature actors to hold on to. Roles become less lucrative and less interesting, she said.

“As I go through the years, I find myself wanting to get back to theater, which is a bigger range for an actor. You can play with ease on stage when with film and TV you really cannot do that,” she said.

As for the future, Cochran said that she and her husband constant debate about when the appropriate time will be to leave Los Angeles.

The business is unpredictable: “You never know what will be one phone call away, right around the corner. But then you could get something [in LA] that you could have never gotten in Chicago,” she said.

She was recently casted in a recurring role for a series on FOX as well as in an Oliver Stone film opposite Bruce Willis, but due to the writers’ strike, these gigs are on the shelf until further notice.

Yet, Cochran said that she is excited to fly into her childhood hometown of Greensboro and never imagined she would be back on stage to perform at the university.

“What’s great about the piece that we are bringing to Wake Forest is that it should be interesting to political science, journalism and theater students alike, and it’s a kind of theater that is rarely done anymore,” Cochran said.

Cochran hopes that students, faculty and community members of all interests will turn up for the production, which explores an epic legal battle in history and allows for debate and discussion on an issue of such national concern.

Cochran’s homecoming to the university will allow her to come full circle, returning to the base where her passion for the theater began.