American Conservatory Theater Selects New Artistic Director

SAN FRANCISCO – Tony, OBIE, and Drama Desk Award winner Pam MacKinnon was named the new artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater, the San Francisco-based theater organization's Board of Trustees and Executive Director Peter Pastreich announced Tuesday.

MacKinnon, selected in a nationwide search, succeeds Carey Perloff, who will depart A.C.T. at the end of the 2017–18 season after 25 years at the helm.

MacKinnon is planning the 2018–19 season alongside Perloff, and will partner with the leaders of A.C.T.’s actor-training and community programs, ensuring A.C.T. said.

MacKinnon won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards and received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for her direction of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Broadway) starring Tracy Letts, Amy Morton, Carrie Coon, and Madison Dirks. Her production also received the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

She won an OBIE Award for excellence in directing as well as Tony and Lucille Lortel nominations for Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (Playwrights Horizons, Mark Taper Forum, Broadway). Currently running on Broadway is her production of Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman starring Uma Thurman. Other Broadway productions include Amélie, A New Musical; the world premiere of David Mamet’s China Doll with Al Pacino; Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles with Elizabeth Moss; and Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance with Glenn Close and John Lithgow.

She also serves as Executive Board President of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and has directed extensively off Broadway and around the country.

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--Image courtesy of A.C.T.