Two brothers, one a drifter and the other a Hollywood screenwriter, meet in their mother’s home. Their clash of ambitions and driving needs results in a play of extraordinary emotional power, the kind of powerful, offbeat comedy that only Sam Shepard can create. Newsweek called Shepard “America’s leading playwright. ACT audiences saw his explosive Fool for Love here last year and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child in our 1980

ACT Resident Director Jeff Steitzer brings this sweeping drama to life. Maydays, created for the Royal Shakespeare Company by David (Nicholas Nickleby) Edgar, is nothing less then epic in both construction and scope. It takes us from 1945 to 1981, from Hungary and the Soviet Union to England and the United States.

Maydays wrestles with the enormous personal and political issues facing the world following World War II. “It is a period which Edgar, social historian cum dramatist, has sought to illuminate: the squabbles, the disillusionments, the recriminations, the wrongheadedness as much as the personal growth and political integrity of his favoured characters,” according to Plays & Players, “. . . a play by which all others on the theme of modern political history may Well come to be judged.”

Maydays will boast one of the largest casts of professional actors ever assembled on the AUF Mainstage. With sets and lighting by Bill Forrester, costumes by Liz Covey, and sound by James Verdery, Maydays is certain to be an exciting, challenging production.

Victoria Station — an extraordinary conversation between a bewildering minicab driver and his exasperated dispatcher. The London Standard described it as "sharp, funny and ominous . . . vintage Pinter and highly enjoyable."

One for the Road — a terrifying and unambiguous condemnation of totalitarian cruelty. Named Best Play of 1984 by British Theatre Association. "Its emotional impact is akin to that of a great rendition of King Lear," according to the London Spectator. "Mr. Pinter's use of language . . . is as scrupulous as ever but what, perhaps, is new is a devastating moral force:'

A Kind of Alaska — a woman's life after 29 years in a trance-like sleep, inspired by Dr. Oliver Sacks' book, Awakenings. "MASTERPIECE is not a word I regularly use," wrote Clive Herschhorn of the Sunday Ex-press, "but it unequivocally applies to Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska. It is an astonishing piece of theatre?'

Resident Director Jeff Steitzer brings us an extraordinary comedy by Arthur Kopit about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and our continuing efforts to achieve national security. As Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote: “ wrings laughter from us at the very moment when, shaking our heads, we Whisper darkly among ourselves that the end of the World is no laughing matter.” Benedict Nightingale of The New York Times described it as “an exhilarating rush of oxygen to the brain, restoring cells half-suffocated by the intellectual emptiness of Broadway.”

Kopit himself described the play as an autobiographical detective story, “a kind of theatrical Maltese Falcon. ”And he added that the ideal quote from someone seeing his play would be: “I’ve just seen the End of the World, and it’s fun!”

Playwright Simon Gray brings us the staff room antics of British academe in a lovely finale to ACT’s 21st Mainstage Season. The sometimes sad inner lives of seven remarkably funny characters, troubled souls who might be any one of us, come to life at ACT in Quartermaine’s Terms.

Clayton Corzatte plays St. John Quartermaine, a gentle instructor in a downtrodden but proud school in Cambridge that teaches English to foreigners. He’ll be joined by a cast composed of Rick Tutor, David Mong, Jack Sydow, Joyce Harris, Diane Hall, and Richard Farrell. Resident Director Jeff Steitzer will be staging the show, with a top-notch design team of Shelley Henze Schermer (set), Anne Thaxter Watson (costumes), Al Nelson (lighting), and David Hunter Koch (sound).