American Conservatory Theatre

American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), San Francisco, California, company founded in Pittsburgh in 1965, which was invited to play in San Francisco. It settled in a theatre opened as the Columbia in 1910, one of eight theatres built to replace those destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906, and now the only one still in professional full-time operation. Seating 1,456, it was known in the 1920s as the Wilkes, the Lurie, and finally the Geary. Opening with Molière's Tartuffe in 1967, the company became the largest and most active regional theatre in the USA, playing an annual season of 33 weeks in true repertory, and presenting each season 10 classical and modern plays. It took over a second theatre, the small Marine Memorial, in 1968. In 1972 a programme of Plays in Progress was initiated, offering new plays in the small Playroom, seating 49. From its inception the company attached great importance to theatre training, and since 1978 has offered a master's degree in acting. It also presents guest productions and has been host to important companies from overseas, among them the RSC and the National Theatre company from Britain. The company tours in the USA and has visited the USSR and Japan. A financial crisis in the 1980s curtailed its activities, but by the end of the 1980s the situation had improved markedly. A successful revival of Mae West's Diamond Lil was mounted in 1988, and the 1989–90 season included a new version of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.