American Conservatory Theatre

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American Conservatory Theatre (San Francisco). Popularly known as ACT, the company was founded in Pittsburgh in 1964 by William Ball, who remained its general director until 1986. The company moved in 1965 to Stanford University, then a year later took up residence at the 1,040‐seat Geary Theatre in San Francisco, its home ever since. For a time, beginning in 1968, it added a second San Francisco house, the small Marines' Memorial Theatre. After the 1990 earthquake, which severely damaged the Geary, the company performed in the nearby Palace of Fine Arts Theatre while repairs were made. Offering a full season in true repertory fashion (that is, different plays every night or two), the troupe mounts seven or eight major works a year, ranging from Greek classics to the latest European successes. Under Ball's successor, Edward Hastings, the policy has been to bring out at least one new American play per season and to hold a “Plays in Progress” workshop. More recently, the ACT has presented the American premieres of new British works, most memorably plays by Tom Stoppard. The company also operates a widely respected conservatory‐style school that has trained such actors as Annette Bening, Danny Glover, Winona Ryder, and Denzel Washington. Among its most acclaimed productions have been superior revivals of The Taming of the Shrew, Misalliance, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Saint Joan. Its productions and training program were honored with a Tony Award in 1979.

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.