Inside A.C.T.

By Livian Yeh On March 16, four days after performances of  Gloria  and  Toni Stone  were canceled in response to the coronavirus, A.C.T. began offering patrons access to recordings of both shows through a partnership with the streaming platform BroadwayHD. “We didn’t have the time or resources to invest in a five-camera shoot that’s directed and designed,” Executive Director Jennifer Bielstein told the  New York Times . “So we recorded with one or two cameras in the house. It’s more about making sure the audience gets to see the work.” For Ticketing Services, A.C.T.’s most forward-facing department, pivoting from live performances to online streaming required flexibility and adaptability. ”We’re used to selling an experience,” says Director of Ticketing and Sales Operations Jennifer Peterian. “Customer service is usually about the shows that are happening in the theater. For virtual tickets, we had to become technical troubleshooters.” The cast and c...

By A.C.T. Publications Staff You still have the opportunity to watch  Toni Stone  from the comfort of your home. Those who have purchased tickets to  Toni Stone  will receive an email with access to the recording. If you missed your chance to purchase tickets, visit  bit.ly/ACTStreaming  to see our video streaming options, available for a limited time. Toni Stone was the first woman to play professional baseball with men. Her contributions to the sports industry were supported by many who broke barriers before her, just as she paved the way for those who came after. Here we note some outstanding athletes whose dedication and perseverance overcame prejudice. Their efforts on and off the field continue to create a fairer and more diverse sporting community. Baseball player Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional baseball in the Negro League. Photo courtesy of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Tidye Pickett Home: Chicago, Illino...

By Claire L. Wong You still have the opportunity to watch  Toni Stone  from the comfort of your home. Those who have purchased tickets to  Toni Stone  will receive an email with access to the recording. If you missed your chance to purchase tickets, visit bit.ly/ACTStreaming to see our video streaming options, available for a limited time. A.C.T.’s Toni Stone choreographer Camille A. Brown is always reaching. She’s never giving up, and her rapidly expanding body of work proves it. The award-winning choreographer, director, and dance educator’s driving passion is to empower Black bodies to tell their stories in their own languages through movement and dialogue. The New York Times has called her “one of the most expressive, genuine and deeply felt choreographers working today.” Whether she’s exploring ancestral stories and sparking conversations with her dance company Camille A. Brown and Dancers, or choreographing Broadway productions such as Choir Boy , Once...

By A.C.T. Publications Staff Have you ever heard of the New York Black Yankees? What about the Homestead Grays, Baltimore Black Barons, or Cincinnati Tigers? From the 1880s until the 1950s, there were two professional baseball systems in the United States: one for white players, and another for Black Americans. Both contributed to the development of the modern game and baseball industry. This year, 2020, marks the centennial of the Negro Leagues, which was founded by Andrew “Rube” Foster,  retired pitcher and owner of the Chicago American Giants, in February 1920 to “create a profession that would equal the earning capacity of any other profession . . . keep Colored baseball from the control of whites . . . [and] do something concrete for the loyalty of the Race.” The 1943 Homestead Grays lineup included several future Hall of Fame players: Cool Papa Bell (back second from left), Josh Gibson (back fifth from left), and Buck Leonard (back second from right). Photo cou...

By A.C.T. Publications Staff Before Pam MacKinnon got a call from her friend Samantha Barrie in 2012, she had never heard of Toni Stone. Barrie, a theater producer and avid baseball fan, urged MacKinnon to read a biography published in 2010— Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League . MacKinnon found the book riveting. “It just works on so many different levels,” says the Tony Award winner and A.C.T. artistic director. “Historically, sociologically, and biographically.” Barrie purchased the rights from author Martha Ackmann, and MacKinnon approached playwright Lydia R. Diamond to dramatize the story of Toni Stone. “I had seen a few of Lydia’s plays,” says MacKinnon. “Even though we’d never worked together before, I felt like we shared the same theatrical sensibility. I felt that for this play to get written and produced, Lydia needed to write it. She can write really hard-hitting things that are also filled wit...

By Ted Sod Award-winning  Toni Stone  playwright Lydia R. Diamond grew up in a family of educators and musicians. She found playwriting in her third year at Northwestern while studying theater, and went on to act professionally for 10 years while writing and producing her own plays. It wasn’t until her first regional theater production of  The Gift Horse  at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, Diamond says, that she understood “I was happier and more adept at writing plays than being in them.” Toni Stone  premiered at Roundabout Theatre Company in 2019 before coming here to San Francisco. In addition to Toni Stone ,   Diamond’s playwriting career is expansive. Her other works include Smart People , Stick Fly (Broadway run at Cort Theatre), Voyeurs de Venus , Harriet Jacobs , and The Bluest Eye . She has also worked in television, and was a writer/ consulting producer for Showtime’s fourth season of The Affair , for which she was nominated for a Writer’s Guild ...

By Claire L. Wong Rules are made to be broken—and interrogated, rewritten, and overcome. The 2019–20 season at American Conservatory Theater features stories that examine the established rules of engagement, their violent and tumultuous histories, and the people chafing against these constraints. “Told with decorum, rage, spirit, and a wink,” says A.C.T. Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon, “this season’s offerings continue A.C.T.’s tradition of telling stories that provoke responses and lead to debates, dreams, and even action.” Women are pushing back against the rules of oppression in A.C.T.’s first two productions of the 2019–20 season. Tamilla Woodard ( Men on Boats ) returns to A.C.T. for her Geary Theater debut directing Caryl Churchill’s acclaimed modern classic Top Girls . Audiences may remember returning actors Rosie Hallett, who worked alongside Woodard in Men on Boats (2018), and Michelle Beck, last seen at the Geary in King Charles III (2016). In Margaret Thatcher’s d...

By Mads Leigh-Faire Everyone knows the old adage “rules are meant to be broken” . . . but when? And by whom? Welcome to American Conservatory Theater’s 2019–20 mainstage season, where we’re exploring ideas of “rules of play.” “What dictates how we behave?” “Who makes the rules?” “When are rules meant to be broken?” “Is the playing field ever level?” Curtains up! The season starts off on the Geary stage with a modern classic: Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls . Directed by returning A.C.T. veteran Tamilla Woodard ( Men on Boats ), Top Girls celebrates and challenges powerful women while examining power, gender dynamics, and what we are willing to do for “success.” First at The Strand will be a world premiere (directed by our very own Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon ) of Testmatch by exciting, rising writer Kate Attwell . Fresh as a summer mango, this plays dissects Britain's colonization of India through the lens of a rained-out cricket match, where tensions ar...