Defining a new direction
ACT artistic director shares challenges of guiding theater through unprecedented times
Pam Mackinnon knew she would face challenges when she left New York and moved west to become the first new artistic director at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in more than a quarter century. It’s a post Carey Perloff had held since 1992, and Mackinnon knew she was inheriting big shoes for the 2018-19 season.
Yet, she could never have fully prepared for the unprecedented challenges that would come midway through the following season, as the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters around the globe in early 2020.
Mackinnon has guided ACT through these turbulent times, as the organization quickly pivoted from performing the West Coast premiere of the baseball play “Toni Stone” (which closed immediately after opening night) to streaming it online, becoming one of the earliest theater companies in the country to offer virtual productions during the pandemic.
We recently caught up with the award-winning director, whose 70-plus production credits include Broadway’s “The Parisian Woman” with Uma Thurman, “China Doll” with Al Pacino, “The Heidi Chronicles” with Elisabeth Moss, “A Delicate Balance” with Glenn Close and John Lithgow, and a revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” that earned a 2013 Tony Award for best direction of a play.
QYou’d seen so much success in New York, both on and off Broadway. Why did you decide to leave all that and take the job at ACT?
AThe rhythm of a freelance artist — or, at least, the rhythm I had — was these amazing projects over at most the course of 10 weeks. Sometimes
they would come back the following season. Everything came in two- to three-month chunks and it felt, at a certain point, adolescent. It felt like it wasn’t accumulating beyond myself. I got really interested in wanting to be part of building organizations, building institutions — being part of culture change, being part of something that has a time frame that is maybe a year or maybe five years.
I was approached by a headhunter — who I am sure approached a lot of people — for this coveted job at ACT, and I stepped into the interview process and got more and more interested.
QACT was obviously very interested as well …
AIt’s great to have an artistic home and it’s great just to have a bigger timeline. It’s been very gratifying thinking about projects for this community, for this city, for these times. And also thinking about how can this organization support artists who aren’t me — who don’t look like me, who are at different stages in their careers? Just thinking about the art form in a bigger way.
QHow would you review your first year or so on the job?
AIt’s hard. It’s a large organization and taking over from a leader who had been in the role for 26 years. We are still reorganizing. We are still figuring out how to move things forward. There is a lot of necessary culture change. There is a lot of very exciting equity, diversity and inclusion work.
But it’s stepping into sort of an ongoing machine that has a lot of institutional stickiness and figuring out how to move things forward — in particular, make it a more open and welcoming space to artists, staff, audience, students. So, that has been a lot of really exciting but difficult day-today, hour-to-hour work.
QCOVID-19 hit in March 2020. When did you first realize it was going to be such a game changer?
AI was in the late stages of rehearsal and previews for “Toni Stone,” a nine-character play that had been in my life for a long, long time. I was very excited to put it up at ACT. So, I was in a very focused space.
The word “pandemic” started to become something real partway through our rehearsal process. But I don’t think I am alone in having never dreamed that this would be now a year out, and this would affect my industry so devastatingly.
We closed and opened the show that I was working on the same day — March 11 (2020). We shut down another show in another space that same night. Then we canceled the remainder of the season by March 16 and left our office spaces to continue work remotely. I was thinking, “Well, we are going to be back together by the fall.” But, yeah, here we are.
QHow has ACT adapted to the new environment?
AIt’s devastating. The pillar of what we do (is) onstage storytelling,
gathering people together in place — the opposite of social distancing in every way, both in how we make it and then how we share it. We are a theater. We are about gathering together.
We pivoted. And we pivoted really fast. That’s the
word of the era in all industries right now, but especially one that is about live and in person.
We are living in a digital age, so we can actually deliver theater to homes. But both the making process and the delivery process is so different than
— I’ll speak personally — what I have spent my entire career on. Making digital theater has been rewarding. We have employed artists, which feels really great. As an institution, we are still being creative.
But we had to let go of a lot of people. That has been devastating.
QTalk to me about the financial impact. How will ACT recover from those pressures?
AWe don’t have as much ticket money coming in, obviously. We do have some. We certainly also have some very loyal and committed donors, who have continued to contribute. They recognize that they want ACT to come through this.
When I stepped in as artistic director, our budget was at $27 million. Going through my first year, we recognized that was too high — that was not sustainable — so we cut it down to approximately $22 million. Then coming through COVID, this year’s budget is $14 million. So, we are a very different organization. And coming out of COVID, yeah, we are in desperate need. Looking at next year’s budget, we will have a gap. And we don’t yet know how to cover it.
QHow can patrons help support local arts organizations like ACT?
ASubscribe. A subscription to any theater is a both a display of a commitment (and) it does get money to the organization upfront. Take a chance on digital programming. You would be amazed. Not of all it is fantastic out there. But there is a lot of really interesting content coming out.
We also do a lot of free content. Even if you don’t have the financial ability, let’s say, to subscribe, there are ways to get involved. And your involvement — even if it’s like clicking on a podcast so our numbers go up — actually helps us.