New Conservatory Theatre Center

San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Company (NCTC) is one of the region’s key producers and presenters for LGBT themed theater. Through youth oriented productions at its three small theater spaces in SF’s Civic Center neighborhood and through the YouthAware touring program it reaches 24,000 K-12th grade students annually and is a significant arts education provider not just for the Bay Area but increasingly into the Central Valley and rural communities of Northern California as well. The cultural climate has changed tremendously since founder/director Ed Decker started NCTC in 1981 just three years after Harvey Milk’s assassination and the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. It is partially due to NCTC that gay-themed theater has, in the intervening decades, entered the American mainstream. The organization has produced work by leading gay writers Edmund White, Lanford Wilson, and Terrance McNally and includes in its seven play 2008-09 Pride Season the West Coast premiere of Alan Benett’s multipleTony winner The History Boys. While NCTC’s core audience (of 22,000)is gay men aged 32-65 a second multi-year grant for the organization will support its efforts to engage LGBT youth and communities of color in its programming and its Youth Conservatory programs. With a budget of $1.3 million, a deep cash reserve, and 50% of its revenue earned through ticket sales and tuition, NCTC is a financially sound mid-size company well positioned to make good on its aspirations to be, as the organization describes itself, "a safe harbor and a home for our youth constituents and LGBT audiences."