In Mrs. California, ACT’s next production, playwright Doris Baizley has taken a ”socio-comic” look at pre-feminism in the 1950s. A long-running Los Angeles hit, Mrs. California is a brightly satiric comedy that takes place at a 1955 homemakers’ contest in a Los Angeles hotel. The winner will embody the epitome of the 1950s ideal woman: "a happy, good and beautiful homemaker." The play will be directed by Lee Shallat — a former Seattle actress who made her professional debut in ACT’s presentation of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds in 1972. She is now a successful and prolific director of stage and screen in California. Among her television credits are the popular "Family Ties" and "Newhart."

Mrs. California deftly satirizes the plight of the 1950s housewife by placing her in the Mrs. California homemakers’ contest. And as funny as the contest scenes are, the play also seriously considers the role of women at that time.

ACT lights its mainstage in July with the American premiere of Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval, a play which the London Observer describes as a “brilliantly imaginative and funny comedy of life, sex and sadness.”

Widely regarded as Britain’s best comedic playwright, Ayckbourn provides us with an hilarious tale of intrigue within an amateur operatic society. A shy widower not only finds himself in the leading role of Gay's The Beggar's Opera, but also the center of sexual entanglements and real estate speculation.

ACT's fourth production of its 1988 Mainstage Season will be the world premiere of God's Country, a play by Steven Dietz which focuses upon a white supremacist terrorist group.

Commissioned by ACT, Dietz examines the philosophy and activities of the Aryan Nations Church, and explores how ordinary, intelligent people are seduced by extremist movements. Material has been drawn from the dramatic events beginning with the murder of Jewish talk show host Alan Berg, through the death of church member Robert Jay Mathews in the spectacular shoot-out on Whidbey Island, and culminating in the 1985 trial of church members at the U.S. Courthouse in Seattle.

The play will be directed by David Ira Goldstein, who staged ACT’s acclaimed production of Glengarry Glen Ross last season and, most recently, directed The Mystery of Irma Vep at The Empty Space Theatre.

ACT's fifth production of its 1988 Mainstage Season will be Principia Scriptoriae by Richard Nelson. Translated from Latin as "the principles of writing," it is a story of two young men — Bill Howell, an American, and Ernesto Pico, a Cambridge-educated Latin American — both writers, who are jailed in an unidentified country in Latin America in 1970. In Act One, as the two prisoners discuss politics, writing, sex and family, we watch their relationship strengthen in the face of torture and the growing fear of being killed. Act Two begins 15 years later at The Writers Committee for Human Rights meeting in the same country. Both men have survived the torture, but their friendship is strained as they find each other on opposite sides of the negotiating table. Underlying the play’s treatment of the two writers’ friendship is an investigation into their responsibilities as writers.

ACT concludes its 1988 Mainstage Season with John Olive’s tale of the early days of radio— The Voice of the Prairie. The “voice” belongs to Davey Quinn, who, in the early days of this century, tells stories on the radio, recounting his youthful adventures. Playwright Olive has written a story which beckons the theatre audience to remember a more innocent, yet ambitious time when radio opened up the world of imagination to the listening audience and made overnight sensations of its stars.

The play will be directed by David Ira Goldstein, who staged ACT’s world premiere production of God's Country earlier this season, as well as last season’s highly acclaimed production of Glengarry Glen Ross.