A.C.T. Historical Highlights

American Conservatory Theater has a long and distinguished history. Here you will find highlights dating back to 1965 when A.C.T was founded. For a complete production history, please click here.

1965	1974	1986	1994	2002
1966	1975	1987	1995	2003
1967	1978	1988	1996	2004
1968	1979	1989	1997	2005
1969	1980	1990	1998	2006
1970	1982	1991	1999	2007
1971	1983	1992	2000
1972	1984	1993	2001

1965

The first performance of Tartuffe at the Pittsburgh Playhouse inaugurates A.C.T. as a new resident theater company in Pittsburgh under the direction of William Ball.

1966

The company, touring the country, seeks a new home. Chicago and San Francisco become the two heavyweight contenders.

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) televises Shaw's Misalliance, directed by Michael Howard. PBS tapes and broadcasts William Ball's production of Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood.

An informal but influential group of Bay Area patrons and supporters, later named the California Theater Foundation (CTF), guarantees financial backing to present a six-month A.C.T. season in San Francisco. Among the CTF members who become longtime friends of A.C.T. are Melvin Swig, Mortimer Fleishhacker, Cyril Magnin, Alan Becker, and Joan Sadler. With their help, the company announces its new home and premiere season.

1967

On January 21, Tartuffe, starring Rene Auberjonois, opens at the Geary Theater, A.C.T.'s San Francisco home.

The ambitious first season features a resident company of actors performing 16 productions, onstage at both the Geary and Marines Memorial theaters. The company also plays 28 performances in 13 other California cities, establishing itself as a statewide theatrical force. A.C.T. becomes one of San Francisco's first year-round resident theater companies.

1968

A.C.T. begins its Student Matinee (SMAT) program. Since 1968, more than half a million students have seen A.C.T. productions; for many, it is their first theater experience.

The Devil's Disciple, by George Bernard Shaw; The Staircase, by Charles Dyer; and Little Murders, by Jules Feiffer, open on December 29, 30, and 31. Consecutive openings and rave reviews make for a busy and festive holiday season.

1969

With A.C.T. Conservatory classes expanded to include community actors, the first Summer Training Congress is held under the direction of Robert Goldsby. Allen Fletcher is named conservatory director.

Glory! Hallelujah! by Anne Maria Barlow, an A.C.T. world premiere, is taped and broadcast by PBS. PBS presents A.C.T. Now!, a documentary about A.C.T.'s innovative actor training program.

1970

The Advanced Training Program completes its first full season as a one-year program for talented young actors.

1971

The A.C.T. Young Conservatory is founded under the direction of Ross and Lou Ann Graham.

Allen Fletcher translates and directs An Enemy of the People, inaugurating an A.C.T. Ibsen cycle that eventually encompasses seven major works over the next 14 years.

1972

The first Christmas Treat is presented for San Francisco senior citizens. The popular annual variety show, organized by the Friends of A.C.T., attracts hundreds of low-income seniors, who enjoy refreshments with the cast and merry holiday entertainment performed by A.C.T. company members, staff, crew, and students.

Plays in Progress, A.C.T.'s new-play program, is founded by Edward Hastings and opens with The Tunes of Chicken Little, by Robert Gordon. The program provides up-and-coming playwrights with an intimate forum for their work.

The Royal Shakespeare Company performs Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Geary as part of the A.C.T. subscription season. A Doll's House travels to Hawaii to begin eight years of Hawaiian tours.

1974

Cyrano de Bergerac, with Peter Donat, Marsha Mason, Marc Singer, and Paul Shenar, is taped and presented nationwide by PBS. An extraordinary grant from the Ford Foundation enables A.C.T. to purchase the Geary Theater.

1975

A.C.T. presents the world premiere of General Gorgeous, by Michael McClure and directed by Edward Hastings.

The U.S. State Department's Cultural Exchange Program sends 44 members of the company to the Soviet Union for four exciting weeks. Laird Williamson's production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker and Eugene O'Neill's Desire under the Elms, directed by Allen Fletcher, are presented at the Moscow Art Theatre, as well as in Leningrad and in Riga, Latvia. Simultaneous translation through headphones is provided for the audience.

The Taming of the Shrew, directed by William Ball, with Elizabethan romantic fireworks provided by Marc Singer and Fredi Olster, is taped and presented by PBS.

A.C.T. presents the world premieres of Tennessee Williams's This Is (An Entertainment) and of Dennis Powers's and Laird Williamson's adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, featuring William Paterson as Ebenezer Scrooge. A Christmas Carol becomes a holiday tradition in San Francisco and is presented by theaters nationwide.

1978

A.C.T. mounts a month-long tour of Hawaii and Japan of All the Way Home, by Tad Mosel, and Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! In Tokyo, company members, many with families in tow, are hosted by actors from the revered Kabuki and Kyogen theaters.

1979

A.C.T. wins a Tony Award for theatrical achievement and excellence in repertory performance and actor training.

1980

Edward Hastings takes his acclaimed production of Sam Shepard's Buried Child to Belgrade's Yugoslav Drama Theatre, where Yugoslav actors present the play in Serbo-Croatian.

A.C.T.'s A Christmas Carol is broadcast by the Arts and Entertainment Network.

1982

Conservatory teachers Edward Hastings and John Pasqualetti trade places with two Shanghai theater professionals and travel to China to work with acting students at Shanghai's Drama Institute. The Theater Bridge Project, funded by the U.S. State Department, is responsible for this decade-long, ongoing cultural exchange between the two cities.

A.C.T. presents the world premiere of New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton's Happy Landings.

1983

A.C.T. presents the world premiere of The Holdup, by Marsha Norman and directed by Ed Hastings. The Dolly, by Robert Locke, becomes the first play developed in Plays in Progress to move to the Geary Theater.

1984

Lawrence Hecht is named conservatory director.

The Western Association of States and Colleges grants A.C.T. full academic accreditation and the authority to award the master of fine arts (M.F.A.) degree in acting.

1986

Founder William Ball leaves A.C.T. Edward Hastings becomes the new artistic director. Joy Carlin and Dennis Powers are named associate artistic directors, and John Sullivan is named managing director.

1987

The company joins forces with the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC) to present Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, by August Wilson. The California premiere is a critical and popular success in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The Theater Bridge Project sends Joy Carlin to direct You Can't Take It with You, in Chinese, with the Shanghai Youth Drama Troupe.

1988

Sabin Epstein and Susan Stauter are named codirectors of the conservatory, and Craig Slaight becomes the new director of the Young Conservatory.

The Theater Bridge Project brings the great Chinese actor Sun Dao Lin to play Kublai Khan in A.C.T.'s stateside production of Marco Millions as part of the nation's Eugene O'Neill centennial.

1989

The company's Saint Joan and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum are invited to the Stratford Theatre Festival.

The Los Angeles Theatre Center and San Francisco's Lorraine Hansberry Theatre join forces with A.C.T. for another collaborative August Wilson production, Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

A collaboration between A.C.T. and international performance artist George Coates results in the critically acclaimed Right Mind. The San Francisco Chronicle review predicts: "The Geary Theater will never be the same!" Little did they know . . .

On October 17 at 5:04 p.m. the Loma Prieta earthquake rocks the Bay Area, bringing Right Mind to a close. No company members or friends are harmed, but the landmark Geary Theater suffers extensive damage. So begins A.C.T.'s nomadic all–San Francisco touring season.

1990

A.C.T. presents the mainstage world premiere of Food and Shelter, developed at A.C.T. by playwright Jane Anderson during the 1989 Plays in Progress series, directed by Joy Carlin.

The Oakland Ensemble Theatre joins with A.C.T. to present a rousing San Francisco first: The Gospel at Colonus, Lee Breuer and Bob Telson's retelling of the Oedipus legend, as part of San Francisco's Multicultural Festival 2000.

The Young Conservatory hosts its first playwright-in-residence, Timothy Mason, inaugurating the renowned New Plays Program. Mason writes Ascension Day for the students.

1991

Theatre Crafts International honors A.C.T.'s production department, headed by Production Director James Haire, for exceptional work in getting the theater back on its feet after the earthquake.

Edward Hastings is invested in the College of Fellows of the American Theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

A.C.T. presents the world premiere of South African playwright Lisette Lecat Ross's Dark Sun, directed by Edward Hastings.

A.C.T. founder William Ball dies, at the age of 61, in his home in Los Angeles.

Carey Perloff, former artistic director of Classic Stage Company in New York, is appointed artistic director of A.C.T. to succeed Edward Hastings. The third artistic director in A.C.T.'s history, Perloff is known for her groundbreaking productions of classical works and bold explorations of contemporary playwriting.

Susan Stauter is named director of the conservatory.

1992

A.C.T.'s 25th-anniversary silver season gala, Starry, Starry Night, features renowned artists and A.C.T. alumni and former company members Rene Auberjonois, Annette Bening, Kathryn Crosby, George Deloy, Peter Donat, Gina Ferrall, Andrea Marcovicci, Ruth Kobart, Deborah May, Jeff McCarthy, Sydney Walker, Ann Weldon, and Gretchen Wyler, together with conservatory students, in an evening of music and theater directed by outgoing A.C.T. Artistic Director Edward Hastings.

1993

The National Endowment for the Humanities grants A.C.T. $75,000 to initiate A.C.T. Perspectives, a free symposium series open to the public, enlisting scholars, writers, performers, and other artists to exchange ideas on topics inspired by A.C.T. productions.

1994

David Mamet's incendiary drama Oleanna, directed by A.C.T. Associate Artistic Director Richard Seyd, sparks heated debates following each performance, launching A.C.T.'s popular postperformance discussion series, Audience Exchanges.

On June 13, festivities hosted by A.C.T. company member Sydney Walker mark the beginning of reconstruction of the Geary Theater.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is recognized for her efforts on behalf of the company in securing federal support for the rebuilding of the theater.

Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize–winning Angels in America, directed by Mark Wing-Davey, opens at the Marines Memorial Theatre and is extended five times, becoming the longest-running and most successful production in A.C.T. history.

1995

Melissa Smith, formerly director of the program in theater and dance at Princeton University, is appointed conservatory director. With her appointment at A.C.T., the company renews its commitment to excellence in actor training and to the relationship between training, performance, and audience.

The Kresge Foundation awards A.C.T. a $750,000 challenge grant for the Geary Theater Capital Campaign, one of the largest awards ever given by the foundation to a regional theater.

Olympia Dukakis stars in a critically acclaimed, smash-hit production of Euripides' Hecuba, in a new translation by Timberlake Wertenbaker, directed by Carey Perloff. The production features original music by David Lang, sung by the choral ensemble Kitka, and movement by choreographer Margaret Jenkins.

Studio A.C.T. (formerly the Academy), A.C.T.'s part-time theater-training program for adults, is founded under the direction of A.C.T. actor and educator Bruce Williams.

ACT One, A.C.T.'s affiliate organization for young professional Bay Area residents who share a love of theater, is founded.

A.C.T.'s season-opening production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, directed by Carey Perloff, is a critical and box office success, playing to sold-out houses.

1996

Six years after the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake, renovations to the historic Geary Theater are complete. The theater is reopened on January 10, 1996, with the gala event A Galaxy on Geary. A.C.T. alumni Rene Auberjonois, Annette Bening, Peter Donat, Ruth Kobart, Andrea Marcovicci, and William Patersen join newcomers David Strathairn and Michael Tucker, among others, in the homecoming celebration.

On January 13, A.C.T. holds an open house at the Geary Theater. Five thousand members of the community show up for backstage tours of the theater.

The homecoming celebration concludes January 24 with the Geary Theater inaugural production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, directed by Carey Perloff, featuring David Strathairn as Prospero and the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet playing a commissioned score by David Lang.

In the summer, A.C.T. surpasses its $27.5 million capital campaign goal to fund the renovation of the Geary. This is the largest capital campaign ever undertaken by an American regional theater.

A.C.T.'s two-year Advanced Training Program is expanded to become a three-year program granting a master of fine arts degree in acting.

The $50,000 Jujamcyn Theaters Award is granted to A.C.T. in recognition of A.C.T.'s outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent for the theater.

After a year-long search, Heather Kitchen is appointed managing director. Before her arrival at A.C.T., she served as general manager of the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta, as a strategic planning consultant for arts and educational institutions and taught for more than 20 years throughout Canada. With her appointment, A.C.T. returns to a partnership structure of leadership.

1997

A.C.T. opens the 1997–98 season with the world premiere of the Broadway-bound Cole Porter musical High Society, which becomes the company's biggest financial success at the Geary Theater.

U.S. News & World Report ranks the A.C.T. Advanced Training Program sixth in the nation among drama/theater graduate programs.

A.C.T. presents a 50th-anniversary production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, which is unanimously acclaimed and becomes a standing-room-only hit.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awards A.C.T. a $300,000 grant for the research and development of new plays.

The 1997–98 subscription campaign brings in more than 19,400 subscribers, an increase of nearly 6,000 subscribers since the 1993–94 season and the company's largest subscription base since the 1981–82 season.

1998

A.C.T. breaks a 20-year record with more than 20,000 subscribers for the 1998–99 season.

1999

In recognition of the strides the company has made toward fiscal stability in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation awards A.C.T. a $300,000 challenge grant. One third of the grant is for operating expenses; the remaining two-thirds are earmarked for elimination of accumulated debt. To meet the challenge, A.C.T. must produce an operating surplus of $300,000 by June 30, 2000.

A.C.T. breaks the all-time company record with more than 22,000 subscribers for the 1999–2000 season.

2000

The Advanced Training Program graduates its first three-year M.F.A. class.

The Leading National Theatres Program donates $1.05 million to A.C.T. A.C.T. is one of just nine theaters in the United States to receive generous operating support and endowment capital from this new initiative, which is jointly funded by The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew Mellon Foundation.

A.C.T. presents the American premiere of Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love. Directed by Carey Perloff and featuring James Cromwell as A. E. Housman, the production plays to sold-out houses nightly.

The A.C.T. Young Conservatory launches its first series of public performances at the Magic Theatre with the world premiere of Constance Congdon's The Automata Pieta.

The class of 2001 becomes the first ensemble of M.F.A. Program students to appear on the Geary stage in A Christmas Carol.

2001

A.C.T. opens its 35th San Francisco season—and celebrates Carey Perloff's tenth anniversary as artistic director—with performances of Harold Pinter's most recent play, Celebration, on a double bill with his first play, The Room. With this production, A.C.T. revives one of its founding principles with the debut of a new core acting company: René Augesen, Marco Barricelli, Steven Anthony Jones, and Gregory Wallace. The four actors sign multiyear, 52-week contracts with A.C.T., allowing them to create three to four major roles at the Geary Theater per season, as well as to teach and direct in the conservatory throughout the year. It is expected that the core company will expand gradually in future years to include a larger pool of resident actors and other theatrical artists.

In an unprecedented community partnership, A.C.T. becomes theater-in-residence at Zeum, San Francisco's interactive center for youth and families in Yerba Buena Gardens. Serving as A.C.T.'s second performance space, A.C.T.@Zeum provides a stage for the conservatory's ever-increasing number of student and professional productions, either produced or presented by A.C.T., that complement the work at the Geary Theater. A.C.T.@Zeum is designed as a three-year partnership, with the possibility of an extension after the three-year term. A.C.T.@Zeum officially launches on October 22, 2001, with the first-ever staging of Marc Blitzstein's musical and working-class drama No for an Answer, directed by Carey Perloff, and featuring the M.F.A. class of 2002.

With its transatlantic production of Timothy Mason's Time on Fire, the Young Conservatory becomes the first American theater company of young people to play London's Royal National Theatre (RNT) as part of a new collaboration between the two companies. Several new works are co-commissioned to be performed in London and San Francisco over the next three years, led by casts of student actors from the two companies.

Steven Anthony Jones portrays the first African-American Scrooge in A.C.T.'s perennial holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol. The M.F.A. Program Class of 2002 appears in individual roles on the Geary stage in A Christmas Carol.

2002

Internationally renowned opera singer Julia Migenes stars in the world premiere of the major new music theater piece The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a Rashomon-like mystery based on the short story by Ambrose Bierce and directed by Carey Perloff. Commissioned by A.C.T. and developed in an unprecedented multiyear artistic collaboration with San Francisco's renowned Kronos Quartet, Difficulty features a libretto by Mac Wellman, music by David Lang, and orchestration by Kronos, and is presented at Theater Artaud in San Francisco. Upon its debut, Marc Swed of the Los Angeles Times hails Difficulty as "a major contribution to American musical theater" and an "astonishing work [that] must not be allowed to vanish into thin air."

2003

A.C.T. presents the West Coast premiere of Carey Perloff's The Colossus of Rhodes at Zeum Theater.

In conjunction with its production of American Buffalo, A.C.T. establishes a "Write Like David Mamet" contest. Hundreds of scribes send in three-page scripts sending up Mamet's best-known works, and the ten winning scripts are presented to great ovation in Fred's Columbia Room following evening performances of American Buffalo.

The A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program class of 2003 presents an adaptation of the 2,000-year-old epic poem The Ramayana, written and directed by Ruben Polendo. A visually daring and dramatically challenging work, The Ramayana becomes the best-selling M.F.A. Program production in A.C.T.'s history.

The A.C.T. Young Conservatory creates a new international link with Theatre Royal Bath (TRB). The two-year program includes Bath commissioning a major American playwright (Jim Grimsley) and developing the play (War Daddy) in a two-week workshop at A.C.T. with 16 young people from TRB. Young actors from TRB also take A.C.T. classes and reside with A.C.T. families in the first student exchange project in A.C.T. history.

The A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program presents a tour of an M.F.A. Program presentation, a cabaret version of Of Thee I Sing, at the Napa Valley Opera House and the campus of software/gaming giant Electronic Arts.

A.C.T.'s production of Urinetown: The Musical—a West Coast premiere—sets a new opening-week single ticket sales record for the company, shattering the previous opening-week record set by A.C.T.'s production of The Threepenny Opera, directed by A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff, in the 1999–2000 season.

A.C.T. presents the Bay Area premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda's Yohen at Zeum Theater. Yohen marks A.C.T.'s second professional production of new work at Zeum, following January's West Coast premiere of The Colossus of Rhodes. Having already served as a showcase for two seasons of productions by A.C.T. Conservatory students, Zeum now is also A.C.T.'s home for professional productions, readings, and workshop performances of new plays, presented under the auspices of A.C.T.'s First Look series.

2004

A.C.T presents the world premiere of Paul Walsh's new translation of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 masterpiece A Doll's House, featuring A.C.T. core company actor René Augesen as Nora.

The Commonwealth Club of California and A.C.T. collaborate for the first time to present "The Commonwealth Club Presents Good Lit at the Geary," a series showcasing several of America's preeminent writers, actors, and artists in conversation with Commonwealth Club Literary Director Barbara Lane.

A.C.T. presents Steppenwolf Theater Company's production of San Francisco native William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life. Set in San Francisco during the Depression, the production plays to packed houses.

Eve Ensler presents the world premiere of her new solo show Eve Ensler's The Good Body.

The Robert Wilson, William S. Burroughs, and Tom Waits collaboration The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets—featuring Marianne Faithful and Matt McGrath and produced by BITE:2004, Cultural Industry, the Sydney Festival, and A.C.T.—opens A.C.T.'s 2004–05 season. A landmark piece of musical theater, the show extends twice, becomes the San Francisco Chronicle's choice for best theatrical production of 2004, and becomes the new single ticket sales recordholder at A.C.T.

A.C.T. celebrates its ninth consecutive year ending with an operational budget surplus.

2005

A.C.T. core company actor Marco Barricelli departs the company, moving east to New York to pursue other artistic goals. Barricelli's final performance as a core acting company member in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten dazzles critics and audiences.

A.C.T. presents its biggest OUT with A.C.T. night ever during San Francisco's Gay Pride Week, following a performance of Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?

A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff and A.C.T. Dramaturg Paul Walsh unveil a new adaptation of Charles Dickens's holiday classic A Christmas Carol.

2006

A.C.T. Executive Director Heather Kitchen celebrates ten years with the company.