Get half-price tickets at American Conservatory Theater
May 18, 2007
One of San Francisco’s most prominent stages, the American Conservatory Theater is now offering half-price rush tickets to San Francisco hostel guests and Hostelling International members.
Simply go to the ACT box office up to two hours before showtime and receive one ticket at 50 percent off the regular price, by showing your HI membership card or paid receipt from your current stay at one of our three San Francisco hostels. The price of your ticket will vary between $7.25 and $40, based on the day of the week and seating section you choose. Tickets must be paid for in cash, and are subject to availability.
ACT is located in Union Square, just one block from the San Francisco Downtown Hostel and six blocks from the San Francisco City Center Hostel.
Now Playing
Blackbird
2007 Olivier Award Winner for Best New Play
West Coast Premiere
April 27 - May 27, 2007
“A drama that promises to be the most powerful of the season.”
Ben Brantley, New York Times
David Harrower’s tense and controversial play deals with the aftermath of an affair which ended when Ray set out to buy a packet of cigarettes and never returned. Fifteen years later, Ray has a whole new life, including a new identity, while Una has spent the time obsessively searching for a resolution. As Una confronts him about the true nature of their past, what emerges is a complex portrait of a relationship that blurs the boundaries between lust, love, sexual obsession, and something far more sinister. Blackbird is uncompromisingly honest, surprisingly tender, and riveting with tension that will leave you hanging on every word, every motion, and every ominous silence.
Coming Soon
ACT lowers the curtain on its 40th anniversary season with Constance Congdon’s world premiere adaptation of Moliere’s riotous send-up of wealth and wellness, The Imaginary Invalid. Directed by Bay Area native Ron Lagomarsino––who directed the original productions of Driving Miss Daisy (off-Broadway) and The Last Night of Ballyhoo (Broadway)––The Imaginary Invalid plays June 7 through July 8.
A source of some of the most hilariously over-the-top comedic characters in dramatic literature, The Imaginary Invalid lampoons the 17th-century health care industry (and the requisite leeches, elixirs, enemas, and other dubious practices that cured the day). The play explores the maladies and mischief of the wealthy Monsieur Argan, a penny-pinching hypochondriac who believes in nothing and no one except the dubious diagnoses his quack doctors keep delivering. A rollicking expose of society’s fatuous devotion to staying “well,” The Imaginary Invalid is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical comedies in the canon.
Upcoming Productions
ACT’s 41st season opens in August with John Doyle’s Tony Award-winning re-imagining of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical about the infamous barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd. A West Coast premiere of the production that won Tony Awards best director and best orchestrations, Sweeney Todd features a multitalented cast of actors playing all the instruments onstage. John Doyle’s Sweeney Todd is an exclusive engagement at ACT before the production goes on a national tour.
The season continues in October with N. Richard Nash’s radiantly hopeful heartland fable The Rainmaker, and furthers ACT’s strong recent track record with David Mamet (American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross) with a revival of his bitingly funny Hollywood satire Speed-the-Plow.
The 41st anniversary season also features two very different explorations into the areas of politics and identity. February brings Athol Fugard’s brave and masterful The Blood Knot to centerstage. One of Fugard’s searing early works that explores the meaning of racial identity, The Blood Knot portrays two brothers living together in 1960s Apartheid South Africa. And Carey Perloff directs Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, an outrageous political satire about a small town’s desperate government.
As attentions turn toward the spring harvest, ACT presents the 30th anniversary revival of the darkly funny tale about the extreme measures taken by one farming family in Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class. The 41st season closes with a rare and boldly interpreted revival in Perloff’s vigorous re-imagining of John Ford’s poetic and potent Jacobean drama ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore.