0riginally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984, Stephen Poliakoff’s Breaking the Silence follows the adventures of the Pesiakoffs — an aristocratic Jewish family caught up in the tumult of post-Revolution Russia during the early 1920s. This is an especially personal look at the most massive upheaval in modern history; the family in question is based on Poliakoff's own, the events inspired by what happened to them after the Bolshevik Revolution. Nikolai believes he is on the verge of a great scientific breakthrough — the invention of the world's first talking motion picture. Spared an almost certain execution by a gruff but sympathetic commissar, Nikolai is given the dubious title of Telephone Surveyor of the Northern Railway, and forced to live with his wife, Eugenia, teenage son, Sasha and their chambermaid, Polya, in a deteriorating Imperial railway carriage.

As their train trudges across Russia, they are somewhat sheltered from the world around them, their only exposure to the havoc outside coming through the windows of their railway carriage. While Nikolai clings desperately to any remnant of his former lifestyle and refuses to let the Revolution get in the way of his work, the other characters begin to adapt to their new life, going through changes that — like those occurring in the world around them — will have great repercussions. The suspense increases with the sounding of Lenin's funeral March in January of 1924, foreshadowing the arrival of Stalin's iron fist and the even greater chaos to come. What will happen to the family if Nikolai's secret work is discovered? If they lose the protection of his job, will they have to flee the country of their birth? And if they remain in Russia, what use will the proletariat have for an aristocratic family that wishes there never was a revolution?

It was the summer of 1982 in Geneva, and the negotiations on the INF (Intermediate-Flange Nuclear Forces) Treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States had come to a virtual standstill. Frustrated by the impasse in the talks, Paul Nitze, the chief American negotiator, made the unprecedented suggestion to his Russian counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky, that they conduct their own informal negotiations, away from the table and out of the scrutinizing eyes of both their own delegations and the media. The two men took a "walk in the woods”, and hammered out an agreement, only to have it rejected by their respective countries.

It was this obscure, but telling event in recent political history that caught the imagination of Lee Blessing, and became the inspiration for his award-winning play A Walk ln The Woods. Rather than simply documenting the event, however, Blessing’s comedy of ideas explores what might have happened during that fateful "walk."

Although A Walk In The Woods revolves around the negotiation of a treaty, it is not about arms control or the arms race. Ultimately about the friendship that develops between two men coming to terms with the futility of their situation, the play bristles with Blessing’s sparkling dialogue and original wit. Blessing’s diplomats are Andrey Botvinnik, a good-humored elder statesman, and John Honeyman, a formal, sincere and serious-minded young American, the latest in a long line of negotiators that Botvinnik has seen come and go on the other side of the negotiating table. When Andrey invites him for a private walk in the woods, John assumes it is to discuss some new, secret proposal, but Botvinnik only wants to relax, confuse the reporters and become friends with his new adversary. Honeyman, however, is interested in one thing and one thing only: negotiating a treaty.

The play follows these fascinating characters through four "walks" over the course of a year, with a deeper understanding and friendship developing between the two men, even as the stakes of their negotiations become higher.

One third of Christendom now lies under sod,” laments Father Flote at the start of Red Noses, Peter Barnes’ powerful, passionate — and hilarious — comedy about the Black Death. And indeed, things do look grim as the plague rages through France in 1348, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Yet it is from just this despair— rather unlikely material for a comedy—that Barnes has created his remarkable play of love, laughter and hope.

That love, laughter and hope comes in the form of Father Flote and his merry band of Red Noses. While ruthless Black Ravens loot corpses and spread the disease to kill off the rich, and zealous bands of Flagellants try to end the plague through the self-inflicted suffering, Flote— inspired by a divine vision —decides to form “a brotherhood of joy, Christ's Clowns, God's Zanies," and fight despair with joy and laughter.

“Heaven’s to be had with my humiliation,” insists Flote. “I've been chosen to go out to cheer the hearts of men with gibs, jibes and jabberjinks.” To that end, he assembles a jolly troupe of comic misfits, entertainers so wonderfully awful that they probably wouldn't have made it through auditions for the Gong Show. With the blessing of the Pope —who hopes a little laughter will diven attention away from the ever-weakening Church—the Noses set off through the ravaged countryside to bring high, and low, humor to the suffering multitudes.

The Red Noses go on to achieve unprecedented success and popularity, culminating with a wackily triumphant performance of their own very unique version of the play Everyman. But as the plague ends and normal order is restored, the Church and State — returned to their previous positions of power— band together to isolate and crush those groups that now threaten their authority. Suddenly, the laughter provoked by Flote’s troupe is no longer simply innocent, but a symbol of defiance against the establishment, making the Noses a dangerous group to have around.

Red Noses is a glorious spectacle — ambitious, imaginative and wonderfully theatrical —that brilliantly bounces from ribald humor to political satire to heartbreaking tragedy. Filled with music and dozens of jokes that range from good to bad to very bad to truly awful, Red Noses promises to be a tour-de-force for director Jeff Steitzer and a remarkable cast featuring Seattle’s finest talent: Eric Ray Anderson, Laurence Ballard, Kurt Beattie, David Mong, Gretchen Orslund, David Pichette, Michael Santo, Peter Silbert, Tom Spiller, G. Valmont Thomas, Steve Tomkins, David P. Whitehead, Michael Winters and R. Hamilton Wright as Father Flote. With so much talent assembled on ACT’s stage, Red Noses promises to be the theatre event of Seattle's 1989 season.

For playwright Steven Dietz, Happenstance represents a departure from the "theatre of testimony” style of some of his recent work. ”The thing about plays like God's Country, is that I took factual events, factual circumstances, and then inserted elements of invention. You can almost invert that exactly when you think about Happenstance — the actual world of the play is a world of invention, and inserted into it are factual things; people from history, elements of contemporary culture and pop culture, those are the things that pierce the fictional environment." Happenstance follows the story of Henry, a perfectly average guy who raises and lowers flags at the White House. Henry seems completely content with the simplicity of his day-to-day existence, but his friends suspect that something is wrong. As they begin to act on their fears, Henry starts to wonder if there is something wrong with them. Gradually, his perception of the world around him begins to change as he walks the fine line between madness and bliss in a culture of consumerism, evangelism and terrorism. With a heady mix of farce, political satire, surrealism and pop music, Dietz has fashioned a contemporary American fable about living in a culture which has legs running so tar in front of its head — a culture so overwhelmed by information — that one can slowly go insane without anyone noticing. "This is a play about people missing each other, l mean literally missing each other,” said Dietz. "lt's a play about a society that focuses on a problem at hand and obsessively tries to correct it, but doesn't always put it into any sort of larger context. It’s also an attempt on my part to look at what becomes of very simple, but profound, characteristics— like love and hope and faith — in the midst of the information age, in the midst of a culture that doesn't look each other in the eye.” Composer/lyricist Eric Peltoniemi, whose eclectic songs run the gamut from pop to rock to rhythm and blues, has been composing for the theater since 1982, but he has been writing songs and working in the music business— he is currently Production Head for Red House Records in Minneapolis—since the early 1970s. He has written music for a dozen plays, and has received awards from the Twin Cities Drama Critics Circle and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), for his work in the theater. He last collaborated with Dietz on Ten November, which has had several major regional productions since its premiere in 1987. Of his work with Peltoniemi, Dietz said “When you insert music into a piece of theater it pushes out the envelope; it makes the audience realize that a whole world of things can be communicated to them through another voice.”

Set in the garden of Susan Gannet's suburban English home, Woman in Mindis an unusual comedy told entirely from Susan's point of view. In the beginning of the play, Susan wakes from a nasty bump on the head to find her loving, rich and debonair family lavishing her with attention and pouring endless glasses of champagne. Shortly thereafter, we meet her other family: 'a stuffy and pompous husband, a strange priggish son and a self-martyred sister-in-law. Unfortunately for Susan, her first family is a hallucination. The play becomes both hilarious and poignant as Susan begins to lose touch with reality. Her imaginary family make more and more frequent visits to her garden as she continues to question her role as wife to a solemn minister and mother to an uncommunicative son. Finally, her two worlds start to intertwine and lead Susan to the edge of insanity.

With Woman in Mind, Alan Ayckbourn has raised some important questions about the loneliness and discontent of the suburban middle-class without trivializing them. He is dealing with a very specific crisis in a woman's life and how that crisis affects the whole family. The contrast between Susan's two families is hilarious, yet it manages to bring Susan's dissatisfaction with her life to the surface.