STAGE : Classic Choice : The reconstruction of the American Conservatory Theatre will be directed by a scholar with credentials in both the past and present

A glance at Carey Perloff, the American Conservatory Theatre’s artistic director-designate, is all it takes to tell you that change is in the air for the 25-year-old company.

First: Perloff is a woman, coming to a theater created, ruled and, in the middle ‘80s, nearly destroyed by a flamboyantly strong man.

Second: She is a young woman who just celebrated her 33rd birthday.

Youth. Style. Energy. These are the key words written all over the trim five-foot Perloff as she flies into the restaurant where we met for a breakfast interview, apologizes breathlessly for being late (not really) and settles into a chair. They are the attributes she’ll need when she takes over June 1, to oversee the reconstruction of both the company and its Geary Theatre, dark since it was severely damaged by the 1989 earthquake.

Nothing in her svelte outward appearance--the darting blue eyes, the blond hair boyishly bobbed--suggests that she’s a classicist and scholar who walked away from an academic career to direct theater. This daughter of a Polish-Russian cardiologist and Viennese mother went to Oxford University on a Fulbright and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, where her mother teaches English literature.

“I was an archeologist to begin with,” she corrects, recounting a trek by bus across the Sinai from Israel to Alexandria, Egypt, in the early ‘80s, “because I’d studied the (ancient library at Alexandria) and remembered it so clearly.

“It certainly colors your world view.”

That world view, which played some role in her ACT appointment, looms large in Perloff’s career and consciousness. Aside from her “immigrant parents,” her time at Oxford and two quarters of overseas study in Florence, Perloff took a job as program officer with the International Theatre Institute in New York and studied Kabuki in Stuttgart (of all places) before becoming artistic director of New York’s struggling CSC Repertory in 1986.

“The appeal for me was that it was a classical theater in New York,” she explains in the rush of words that characterizes her speech. “There was no such thing. I wish I’d kept a diary of the first year. The first production we did was Ezra Pound’s ‘Elektra’ which had never been seen.

“Every day I’d go to rehearsal and think this had better be good because it’s the last day we’re gonna be here. Our Equity bond bounced. I kept thinking the doors were going to be padlocked. The landlord called New Year’s Eve and said if you’re not (paid up) New Year’s Day you’re out of there. Every day a disaster and every day, by some miracle, we’d get through.

“But by the end of that season we actually had done well ticket-wise, so we started to chip away at the debt which now has pretty much been erased. Everyone said it would take five years. It did.”

The tough sledding may have been fit preparation for the uphill climb in San Francisco. The American Conservatory Theatre nearly collapsed in the early 1980s, when its maverick founder, Bill Ball, in a dispute with the board, decided to assume total control. He sent the company into a downward spiral that forced his resignation in 1986. Edward Hastings, a veteran ACT director, succeeded Ball (who died last year) and worked diligently to restore equilibrium, until the second blow struck: the earthquake that made the Geary Theatre unusable.

Hastings, 60, kept ACT alive against monumental odds, renting other space in which the company could continue to perform, and gathering support to once again pick up the pieces. His decision to resign, he says, came when he concluded that the capital campaign and Geary reconstruction should be left to someone fearless and young enough so the future would weigh more heavily than the past. Of Perloff he says: “She was on my original list. “I wanted a good administrator, someone who had a wide range of knowledge of the repertoire of the theater and who loves actors. Carey fit the description.”

Board chairman Alan Stein said Perloff was picked from a field of more than 100 applicants. “But,” he said, “there are always only 10 real candidates. She was the unanimous choice.”

“What impressed me when I talked to the search committee,” Perloff said, “is that I was talking to informed people who’d invested time and energy discussing what they wanted this theater to be.

“I knew that I was going from one financially troubled institution to another, but the opportunity for growth here is very different. Also, I missed doing new plays. I really believe the Royal Shakespeare Company model is the right model, that you can’t do great classical work unless you do contemporary work and you can’t do really rich contemporary work if you don’t have a sense of your own past.”

Hastings acknowledges that “the logistical troubles have been tremendous,” but insists the company’s artistic health “is good.” Subscribers total 18,230, the highest number in 10 years, and not far from the all-time peak of nearly 21,000. In this 25th anniversary season, Alan Ayckbourn’s “Taking Steps” and the current “Cyrano de Bergerac,” he says, have been sellouts.

Unlike Ball, who had little interest in new plays, Hastings has done quite a few during his tenure. “It’s important to continue that,” says Perloff, “and get writers associated with this institution who’ll be committed to creating work for us.”

Her own hope for ACT’s new direction is simple: “First, that it should be a great classical theater, because I think that was the intention and because that’s what’s lacking in the country--not because I’m a historian, but because I feel we have so little understanding of where we fit in the continuum of our existence.

“I see my role as expanding on what I think Bill Ball originally envisioned, which was a great classical theater doing the major repertoire.” But Perloff, who’s also interested in such Eastern European writers as Witold Gombrowicz and Slawomir Mrozek, hopes “to look also at the great French, Greek and Spanish repertoires.”

“I’m trying to create a season for next year that exploits, in the best sense, the actors we have here and some we’ll bring in to fill the blanks. I want to do a lot of work with women, and a couple of great plays with older women, something we don’t do very often in this country.”

Since the quake damage to the Geary, ACT actors haven’t been on company contracts. Only a few are employed all year performing and teaching. The conservatory, in Perloff’s estimation, is “the greatest asset ACT has. It’s a rush to walk into that building and see those young faces, at a time when people are so cynical and everyone says nobody’s going into the theater. These students are pushing ACT in all the right directions.”

Perloff herself has always taught, at CSC and New York University. “That’s what keeps you alive,” she says.

“If you believe in classical theater, the million-dollar question in the 1990s is, ‘Whose classics?’ What is our canon? What does it mean to be an American? What is our literature, our heritage, our history? How do we teach it?

“Those are the big questions and the ones we can do something about if we have a training program. Language and literacy. That’s the challenge. You see, I don’t think that (classics) are forbidding or academic. They were the popular culture of their time. They’re great plays because they survived the audience test of time.”

It was through Perloff that L.A. Theatre Works’ Susan Loewenberg came across Steven Berkoff’s “Greek,” a huge hit at the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles where Berkoff staged it in 1982. But while Perloff, who served briefly as associate director on the project, admires his Theater of Abuse (“I’m always looking for that kind of bold voice in theater”), she claims not to be “enormously interested” in resetting classics into another period. “Ultimately,” she says, “what you see may have contemporary elements, but I’m loathe to make it too anachronistic and put video cameras and Clarence Thomas tapes on stage.

“What’s critical is translation,” says Perloff, who is fluent in French and Italian (“I’m an Italian obsessive”) and has done a fair amount of translation herself. “Peter Sellars and I have talked about this. Why would you set ‘Marriage of Figaro’ in Trump Tower and sing it in Italian?,” she asks rhetorically about Sellars’ controversial staging.

“My great passion is Racine. When you read it in French, his vocabulary is small--about 2,000 words. Yet it’s the richest, most exquisite poetry--and untranslatable. A great Racine would be a service to English-language theater, because the plays are erotic and political and accessible.”

She admits, though, that it was “reading Pinter” that originally drew her into the theater, where she has demonstrated she has a flair for unconventional casting. Who would have thought to put Jean Stapleton in Pinter’s “Mountain Language” (CSC, 1989) or Charlotte Rae in Beckett’s “Happy Days” (the Mark Taper Forum’s 50/60 Vision festival in 1990). The latter, also revived in New York, received glowing reviews.

“She’s sharp,” says Rae, “a strong director, wonderfully open, and a true scholar. I couldn’t get over her maturity.”

But the largest task ahead for the new artistic director is the $24-million rehabilitation of the Geary, so the company can have a home again and do some healing.

“I’m pleased that enough was left open-ended that I can have some input into what it will look like and how we’ll structure the stage space,” she said.

The restoration is targeted for completion in time for the 1993-’94 season. The 82-year-old Geary will lose about 350 seats and gain a seismic wall, a new grid and a counterweight system to replace the old hemp and sandbags that were still being used to raise and lower scenery.

“Have you seen it lately? You must,” Perloff says. “It’s astonishing. So beautiful. We should do ‘Oedipus’ in there right now. It looks as if Peter Brook spent $800,000 to do it at the Majestic!

“At least the FEMA money is in place ($6-$8 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for seismic and code compliance). It took almost a year to convince the government that this was not just cosmetic damage,” Perloff said. “They had never dealt with a nonprofit arts organization, with (issues) such as ‘This is our lifeblood; if we can’t be in that building, are we still a theater? Who’s gonna cover the deficit that’s been accrued since we’ve been renting other theater space, which is fantastically expensive. . . ?’ ”

Through it all the 38-member ACT board of directors has been responsive and stoic.

“It’s a wonderful board,” says Perloff. “Very intelligent. They haven’t really been with the theater that long, because Bill Ball didn’t really have a board at the end.”

It also pleases her that quite a few women are serving on it. “This is not a theater that has had women in positions of power. I tried, as I met with them over the months, to be very honest about what it was I did. I believe they made their choice with their eyes wide open and that they’re committed to making it work.”

“Carey has a remarkable background for a person her age and terrific ambition,” comments board chairman Stein. “We need somebody with drive, vision, leadership. Somebody strong. It’s a bold choice. But every time I see her I feel better.”

Not that it’s the whole answer. Rebuilding will cost $17 or $18 million. Then there are campaign costs, the $1.5-million deficit generated from being out of the theater, funding for a new computer system and about $2 million in financing costs.

“I’m excited about it, but I also feel the city’s excited about it,” says Perloff. “This is a city interested in its arts. The Museum of Modern Art just raised $65 million. And if we can communicate why we need (the theater) back so badly and what we’re going to do, I think we’ll raise the money.

“At first there was some discussion: If it’s going to cost this much to renovate, is it worth it? But it isn’t just earthquake damage we’re restoring. This is a theater that was not seismically stabilized, that had no handicapped access, no sprinkler system, uncomfortable mezzanine lobbies and some uncomfortable seating. It’s our chance to make it a world-class theater.

“You can be very intimate or very large in that theater and it works. It challenges you to do large-scale sophisticated, visceral theater. That’s why, to me, it’s absolutely central. We have to be there. You couldn’t give a director a better gift.

“And it’s not as if ACT occupies a void. One of the attractions for me is that I admire Sharon Ott’s work very much, I love what she’s done at Berkeley Rep, I know the people at the Eureka and the Magic. This community will help feed this theater.”

Perloff has chosen the Eureka’s Richard Seyd, who staged Moliere’s ‘The Learned Ladies’ for her at CSC, to be her associate artistic director. “I’m an outsider,” she explained. “It was important that I work closely with an artist from the Bay Area, whom I know well and whose taste I trust. Richard is well respected and knows every actor and director in town.”

Outsider or no, moving to San Francisco is in some ways going home for Perloff. She remembers the city from her Stanford days when she’d go see plays at ACT. She’s now married to a British political scientist and journalist and has a young daughter who will benefit, she feels, from being closer to her parents who live in Los Angeles.

“I’d forgotten how plugged in I was to this community,” she says, surprised. “I’m meeting people I knew at Stanford and hadn’t seen in 15 years. And Stanford’s gone through its share of disasters . . . “

But she takes a dim view when the interviewer suggests that the Stanford drama department, seriously threatened by a recent budget crisis, has been saved. “Sort of,” she says. “They’re cutting a lot of key things--performance aspects. It worries me. They’re cutting set design. I’m hoping we can set up a working relationship and get their directors assistant-directing at ACT. You know what was great though? It never occurred to them that as many alumni as did would protest. They thought the football team was all alumni care about.”

One of the things she hopes to do is help create a West Coast network of production. “Gordon Davidson (artistic director of Center Theatre Group) and I are good friends and we’re talking about trying to co-produce something. Des (McAnuff, artistic director at La Jolla Playhouse) and I have spoken about it too. There’s a lot going on that’s very exciting, interesting material being generated all the way up to Seattle and Portland and all the way down.

“That kind of collaboration is the wave of the future. It’s how all of us are going to survive. You have to be crazy to be in this anyway. So why not go for the moon?”