AN ABRUPT CHANGE OF THE GUARD AT ACT

Opening nights traditionally fall on Tuesdays at the American Conservatory Theatre. This past Tuesday, the show was “Private Lives.” Noel Coward, sophisticated wit, a finely turned phrase that cracks like a whip--just the sort of entertainment at which ACT has always excelled. To add to the occasion, the lead roles were being performed by two popular ACT veterans, Fredi Olster and Rick Hamilton, each returning to the company after a 10-year absence.

But there were differences from ACT’s glory days. The set looked as if it had been thrown together from other productions. The two main supporting characters were played by third-year students from ACT’s conservatory, one of them clearly not ready to hold his own in such company.

Most notable was the absence in the audience of ACT’s founder and general director, William Ball.

Ball is leaving ACT, effective at the end of the current season, May 17. In characteristic dramatic fashion, the 55-year-old director issued an abrupt call for a company meeting on Friday, Feb. 21, in the hall where he was rehearsing an adaptation of a medieval “Passion Cycle.” After rehearsing the play’s crucifixion scene, Ball announced his resignation as ACT’s general director and left the room without speaking to anyone.

Later, he announced that he would also resign as president of the ACT board, effective immediately. He said that he intended “to pursue new creative opportunities.” He said that he would be available to provide assistance during the transition to new artistic leadership. He has not been available, however, to answer questions about his decision.

There has been widespread speculation here on the reasons for his sudden retirement. As the dust settled last week, several possible factors for Ball’s decision emerged. They ranged from simple burnout to questions regarding the company’s finances.

On the most obvious level, ACT has been in the financial and artistic doldrums for several years. Grants and contributions were down, reducing the company’s budget from a high of $7 million in 1981 to about $5 million this year and the company had accumulated a deficit of $1.5 million by 1985.

The economy measures that Ball introduced to cope with these problems had an adverse impact on production values. Sets became sparser. Lavish “style” productions gave way to simpler small cast shows. Conservatory students were cast in major parts for which they were not ready. The rotating repertory was scaled down to a standard series of one play presented after another. Ball, who had taken over the responsibilities of chief fund-raiser, absented himself from directing plays entirely for almost six years.

Company morale was down. “The last two or three years have been very difficult,” said actor Dakin Matthews, who left ACT in the middle of the season to work at the Mark Taper Forum in “Romance Languages.”

“You can go through one year of difficulty all right, but two or three years is really stretching the artistic temperament. The artist ends up having to go out there and take the brunt of the audience’s displeasure. You know, you work just as hard on a bad show as on a good one.”

The turnover of artistic personnel seemed to accelerate, almost to the point of an exodus. In the past three years, ACT lost such leading lights as Matthews, Raye Birk, Sydney Walker, Elizabeth Huddle (who returned for one show this season) and Ray Reinhardt, among many others. Earlier this season, Walker, Bruce Williams and other ACT alumni announced plans to open their own repertory company, the Actors’ Company of San Francisco, with plans to mount a six-play professional season in the fall.

Which came first, reduced funding or declining artistic quality? It may be a chicken-and-egg debate. Ray Tatar, theater grants administrator for the California Arts Council, pointed out that the CAC began to reduce its contributions to ACT ($145,000 in 1980, down to $50,000 this year) some seasons ago because its theater panelists thought that the company’s work had fallen off.

ACT’s audience was also down. The company stopped releasing subscription figures a few years ago, but reports were that the figure for this year was as low as 12,000. It was 20,000 not so long ago.

“Things had come to such a pass between Bill and the money sources that he had his back against a wall,” veteran ACT actor Peter Donat said. “I think Bill resigned really to save his theater. With a new artistic director, all kinds of avenues of communication will open again.”

Jim McKenzie, ACT’s executive producer from 1969 to 1982, and more recently treasurer of the ACT board--he, too, has resigned--said that the financial picture was not so bleak as it has been painted after the economy measures of the last three seasons.

“By the end of this fiscal year, I expect the total accumulated deficit to be under $500,000,” he said. McKenzie added that the company has about $10 million in assets, $8.3 million of it in real estate. (It owns the Geary Theater, in which it performs, and the adjacent corner building.)

McKenzie implied that persecution by the press might have been a factor in Ball’s resignation, referring to a series of articles in the San Francisco Examiner last year. That series raised questions about financial decisions that had led to the resignation of ACT’s key fund-raiser, Cyril Magnin; about the board of directors’ decision to purchase almost $500,000 in gold bullion in 1979; and about Ball’s own salary which, during the period of cutbacks and belt-tightening at the theater, had risen to a reported $120,000, plus such perks as a company car.

“It was a campaign to bring out the worst of everything,” McKenzie said. “It affected the way we were viewed in the community and all over the country. It’s just a shame. I’m sure it hurt Bill’s spirit. Eventually that kind of thing’s got to affect you.”

The articles may have had more than a spiritual impact. Following their appearance early last year, the state Attorney General’s office announced that it was conducting an investigation into ACT’s financial affairs. It was later announced that Deputy Attorney General Joanne Condas had closed the investigation, having found “nothing improper.” But in the wake of Ball’s resignation, the attorney general’s office revealed this week that the inquiry is still in progress.

Another factor in Ball’s decision may have been the structure of ACT and its board of directors. As John Wilk recounts in his history of the company’s early years, “The Creation of an Ensemble,” when Ball founded ACT in 1965 in Pittsburgh he wanted to create a theater and conservatory that would function free of outside interference by “non-artists.” He was particularly anxious to avoid a situation where a strong board of directors could depose an artistic director.

It was just such an attempt that led Ball to pull up stakes at Pittsburgh and to look for another host city. In San Francisco, ACT functioned with a board that did not hold the power of the purse or even meet very often. It was, in fact, a national board, its members spread far and wide across the country. Its primary goal, McKenzie says, was “to provide support for Bill’s ideals.”

Fund-raising was left to an auxiliary organization, the California Assn. for ACT. Its director, Cyrus Magnin, resigned in 1981, after Ball had turned down a $1 million grant for refurbishing the Geary Theater. Its donor had insisted on a condition that, should ACT ever leave San Francisco (as Ball frequently threatened to do when fund-raising campaigns fell short of their goals), some of the money would stay behind.

After Magnin’s resignation, Ball dissolved the California Assn. for ACT and took fund-raising into his own hands. The company’s economic outlook has never really recovered.

The crisis led to demands for a greater degree of community involvement on the board. Ray Tatar pointed out that the CAC had recommended such a step to ACT each year for the past three years, and that community involvement is a significant factor in determining grants to prominent organizations. Last summer, ACT elected several community members to its board of directors.

The new board moved with surprising speed after Ball’s dramatic announcement. Within five days, the board had accepted his resignation and those of treasurer McKenzie and vice president Peggy Hughes, and announced their replacements.

Frank Ottiwell, a teacher with the conservatory from its earliest years, will become ACT’s new president. Its artistic director, at least for next season, will be Ed Hastings, another ACT veteran. A search for a permanent artistic director will begin and three more board members will be selected from the community.

“Right now our function is an aggressive campaign to look into every aspect of the theater,” said the board’s spokesman, Richard Carreon said. “It is business as usual. The Summer Training Congress will occur. The plays will be mounted. Ed Hastings will choose the next season. We venture to say that this board will never be called a rubber stamp again.”

“I get to be artistic director, with all the fun that goes with it, without being general director and the heartache that goes with that,” said Hastings from Ashland, Ore., where his production of “The Tempest” opened the new Oregon Shakespearean Festival season on Friday. Hastings, a founding member of ACT in 1965, and a frequent guest director there in recent years, intended to start work on the new season this weekend when he returns to the Bay Area to begin rehearsals for a new play and San Jose Repertory Theater.

“I told the board that I didn’t want to be called ‘interim’ artistic director,’ ” he said. “However, I do believe that part of my job is to look for my eventual successor and to get that person acquainted with the company. But the first thing is to get to work on next season.

“I want to make it a season that goes back to the old original ACT concept, which was choosing plays for the actors, creating challenges for the actors. I aim to restore the pleasure of working at ACT.”

The story does not end there. Present at Monday’s board meeting was Deputy Attorney General Condas. Why? “She was requested by the directors to attend,” said Carole Kornblum, Condas’ immediate superior in the charitable trusts division of the attorney general’s office. “The sudden announcement by Mr. Ball left the new directors in a state of some confusion. This is a bit of a crisis situation and I think they felt the need to have some guidance on procedural matters.”

But Condas’ presence at the meeting raises obvious questions about whether Ball’s resignation is in any way connected to the attorney general’s ongoing inquiry. Kornblum said only that her office was looking at ACT’s financial records over the past several years. “That’s a very slow process,” she said.

It may also be a slow process to restore ACT’s standing with audiences and critics--as well as with funding agencies. Tatar noted that they “tend to take a conservative wait-and-see attitude toward changes in artistic leadership.” But there was an immediate, predominantly favorable reaction to Hastings’ selection, at least as a caretaker, among those associated with the company.

“I think it’s good news,” Peter Donat said. “It required somebody with that kind of knowledge of the company and background, somebody like Ed or John Hirsch or Dakin Matthews. Ed’s been with ACT since day one. The result should be good in terms of support coming back to ACT.”

As for William Ball’s own plans for the future, he is still directing “The Passion Cycle,” scheduled to open March 25, and is also slated to direct the last play of the season, William Mastrosimone’s “The Woolgatherer.”

It would be sad to think that “The Woolgatherer” might be Ball’s last play with the company--an unremarkable two-character contemporary work more emblematic of ACT’s recent hard times than its best years. The two actors Ball has cast in the play are third-year conservatory students.