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The National Endowment for the Arts presents a Senate Performance of the Play Beyond GloryMajority Leader Senator Bill Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid hosted a performance portraying the riveting stories of Medal of Honor recipients
May 19, 2005 Washington, DC —A bipartisan gathering of senators came together Monday night in the Mansfield Room of the U.S. Capitol to witness an extraordinary theatrical event. Senators from both sides of the aisle set aside their differences to witness the theatrical portrayal of soldiers’ war stories. As part of the national initiative Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, the National Endowment of the Arts presented acclaimed stage and film actor Stephen Lang in the one-man play Beyond Glory, which portrays the personal accounts of American servicemen who have been honored for their heroic deeds with the Medal of Honor.
Adapted from Larry Smith’s book, Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words, Stephen Lang’s stunning performance shared with Senators the riveting stories of four American servicemen. Lang depicted veterans from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, including Admiral James Stockdale and Sen. Daniel Inouye. Sen. Inouye watched the performance with his colleagues, and in a moving, spontaneous tribute, they gave him a standing ovation for his service and sacrifice for his country. Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, a unique program that documents and preserves the wartime experiences of men and women in uniform and their families. Operation Homecoming has brought writing workshops with distinguished authors to military installations nationwide and abroad.
With Operation Homecoming: Beyond Glory, the National Endowment for the Arts extends its Operation Homecoming initiative to present Beyond Glory free of charge to troops and their families at more than twenty overseas and domestic military installations beginning in April 2005. Performances recently took place in Hawaii at Naval Station Pearl Harbor and Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay. Upcoming Beyond Glory performances will reach installations in Spain, Guam, Japan, Germany, and Italy, among others. An award-winning actor, Stephen Lang has earned critical and popular acclaim for his work in film, TV and on the stage for more than 30 years. Lang played General George Pickett in the feature film Gettysburg and Stonewall Jackson in Gods and Generals. His television credits include the classic Crime Story and the NBC teleplay Babe Ruth. An award-winning stage actor, Lang’s Broadway credits include Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men and Happy in Death of a Salesman opposite Dustin Hoffman. In February 2004, Lang starred in the world premiere of Beyond Glory, which he directed and wrote for the stage. Operation Homecoming is presented in coordination with the Department of Defense and the Southern Arts Federation. Operation Homecoming is made possible by The Boeing Company. Educational resourcesMilitary personnel who want to learn more about wartime literature can visit www.operationhomecoming.org for educational essays on the writing craft, streaming video of past Operation Homecoming workshops, and audio clips from the Operation Homecoming audio CD. The CD features recordings of war letters, poems, fiction and memoirs from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. The Operation Homecoming CD can also be ordered free of charge through the NEA Publications section. Call for submissionsIn addition to workshops and educational resources, the NEA has issued an open call for submissions from military personnel, reservists, National Guard members, and Coalition Authority members who served after September 11, 2001, as well as their immediate families. Items may include essays, letters, and other writings related to recent military service. All submissions will be preserved in an appropriate federal archive, and an Operation Homecoming anthology will feature the best writings submitted to the program. The anthology will be distributed free of charge to military installations, schools, and libraries. The anthology submission deadline is May 31, 2005; submissions after this date still will be included in the archive. To learn more about Operation Homecoming, visit www.operationhomecoming.org.
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The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts – both new and established – bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation's largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.
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