American Conservatory Theater

The American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco consists of: a core company that stages an eight-play season in the 1,000 seat Geary Street theater, a conservatory that is one of the nation’s leading Masters in Fine Arts programs for actors, multiple youth and adult acting training programs and a new-play publications program. Founded in 1965, A.C.T. has been led by artistic director Carey Perloff since 1992 and executive director Heather Kitchen since 1996. In the past decade the company has grown into a $20 million a year operation presenting work to over 200,000 audience members annually and employing over 250 full and part time theater artists, technicians and teaching artists. A.C.T. has distinguished itself artistically as one of the nation’s foremost champions of contemporary stage work that is linguistically dense and intellectually challenging. Playwrights Tom Stoppard, Edward Albee and the director/musician duo of Robert Wilson and Tom Waits have all enjoyed successful productions during Pearloff’s tenure. A.C.T. was awarded a $5,000,000 extraordinary reserve grant from the Hewlett Foundation in 2006 to seed a New Works Endowment Fund that anchored the organization’s broader Next Generation Campaign which has thus far raised $28.5 million towards its $30 million goal. Regrettably, the organization reports that the downturn in the economy in 2008 has significantly reduced the income derived from the endowment and as a consequence has laid off staff and curtailed the company’s second-stage program and its commitment to new works. With renewed support, A.C.T. will continue to develop an interdisciplinary collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet ("The Tosca Project") and will seek to grow the audience for adventurous interpretations of classic plays.