ACT CAN GET ON A ROLL WITHOUT BALL

William Ball’s decision to step down as head of the American Conservatory Theatre may be the best thing Ball has ever done for ACT, next to creating it.

As Robert Hurwitt’s adjoining article makes clear, ACT has suffered a severe loss of credibility over the last few seasons--not just with a few critics, but with key funding sources, with other regional theaters and (most important) with the San Francisco audience. They come to the Geary to see a major classical repertory company, not two actors doing “Mass Appeal.”

Since Ball has made the company’s major artistic and financial decisions, it’s fair to hold him accountable for its decline. His resignation will make it possible for San Francisco to sort out two ideas that are all muddled up right now: the idea of ACT as a theater and the idea of it as an emanation of the brilliant and perplexing man who created it.

It’s absolutely necessary to make that separation at the moment, for Ball has been so reclusive and above-it-all over the last decade that it hasn’t been clear whether he has been dealing with ACT’s problems realistically or not. There’s a story, for instance, that he sent back a design sketch for “The Gin Game” because it didn’t look cheap enough: He wanted the audience to realize what dire straits his theater was in.

A story may be all this is, but it’s in key with Ball’s announcing his resignation after having rehearsed a scene of Christ’s crucifixion. The impression was that Ball had come to believe that ACT literally was his theater, for whose miracles San Francisco should be grateful. His board of directors should have reminded him that the obligation ran two ways. The bill for their failure to do so isn’t in yet.

Whatever the results of the attorney general’s inquiry into ACT’s finances, it will be a hard departure for Ball, who built the theater to fulfill a personal vision. But it’s a necessary farewell--as necessary for Ball as an artist, probably, as for his company. At 55, he needs to get out of the bubble and breathe some fresh air.

Tyrone Guthrie is a good model here. He created theaters in Stratford, Canada, and in Minneapolis, and walked away from them on purpose. He had charted the course; now it was up to others to take the wheel. What Guthrie sacrificed in security, he got back in zest. He never suffered from the complaint of the modern resident-theater artistic director: burnout. He was always off to somewhere on a new job.

One of the sad things about Ball’s last years at ACT was that he directed so few shows himself, being so wrapped up in company matters. (Including an activity where he probably made more enemies than friends, fund raising.) This is a common complaint among artistic directors. They create theaters in order to have a place to direct plays, which turns out to the one thing they never have time to do.

Now Ball can forget fund drives and Equity negotiations and can concentrate on the thing that he does best, which is to put on a show. There’s no reason why one of the theaters where he works couldn’t be ACT. Or the Mark Taper Forum. Or the Vivian Beamont Theatre. Or the Metropolitan Opera. Or the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Last year, Ball published a delightful book on his craft, “A Sense of Direction.” After the murky rumors from the Geary, it was encouraging to find that the old Bill Ball yet lived: positive, practical, zany, life-giving. If his resignation restores that Bill Ball to us, the American theater will be a richer place.

It’s a richer place now than it would have been if Ball hadn’t brought ACT to San Francisco in 1967. Think of the actors who came of age at the Geary: Rene Auberjonois, Michael Learned, Paul Shenar, Peter Donat, Ray Birke, Angela Patton, Barbara Dirickson, Dakin Matthews, Deborah May, David Dukes, and many more.

Think of Gower Champion’s hysterical silent-movie ACT staging of “A Flea in Her Ear” (1969). Think of Ball’s tender staging of “Cyrano” with Donat (1972) and his lighter-than-air “Taming of the Shrew,” with Marc Singer and Fredi Olster (1974). Think of Allen Fletcher’s quiet, searching productions of Ibsen, especially “Pillars of the Community” (1974) and “A Doll’s House” (1972) with Marsha Mason--another ACT actress who got somewhere).

True, there were also the shows that looked like straw-hat theater, if straw-hat theater did the classics. And there were the 20-megaton disasters such as Tennessee Williams’ “This Is . . . (An Entertainment).”

But there was always a point of view. ACT was proudly, a museum theater, with an accent on elevated acting--what Ball called “heroics.” And it was serious about its mandate to train a new generation of actors. You would find last night’s Hamlet leading a class in scansion the next morning. We needed ACT then. We still need it.

Ball’s book says that the director’s basic job is to praise his actors. “If you have difficulty finding something praiseworthy, imagine that it doesn’t exist. . . . When we imagine the absence of something, it becomes extremely beautiful.”

In the presence of its potential absence, ACT suddenly looks very beautiful. It looks almost as beautiful as it did when Ball was envisioning it as a young man. But there’s no need for it to become a memory. His dream of a big classical rep company allied with training school was right, valid and practical. For years, ACT worked . With fresh leadership, it can work again.