San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater has chosen Elizabeth Williamson as its next artistic director. She leaves Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York, which she has led since 2022, and takes up the post at A.C.T. on January 4, 2027.
A.C.T.’s Board of Trustees announced the appointment on October 6, at the end of a nationwide search led by Barbara Messing. For Williamson it is a return to the Bay Area, where she grew up and where her career began: before moving east she worked with A.C.T. itself, Aurora Theatre Company, Magic Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Cal Shakes, PlayGround, AlterTheater and Berkeley Rep’s School of Theatre.
“A.C.T. is both one of our country’s great flagship companies, and my hometown theatre,” Williamson said. “I started my career here (both my wife and I grew up in the Bay Area) and I couldn’t be more honored to be coming home to A.C.T. as its new Artistic Director.”
Her credits reach Broadway and the West End. She was dramaturg and commissioner on Matthew López’s The Inheritance, which won both the Tony and the Olivier, dramaturg on the Tony-winning musicals Some Like It Hot and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, and artistic producer and dramaturg on Anastasia. On screen she was dramaturg on Amazon’s Red, White & Royal Blue, and the live online production of Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm that she made with Jared Mezzocchi during the pandemic received a special Obie.
In Rochester she launched the ROC Geva Pass with the City of Rochester and sent Geva productions on to Off-Broadway and to theaters around the country. Before that she spent nearly eight years at Hartford Stage as associate artistic director and director of new play development, programming seasons alongside then-artistic director Darko Tresnjak. As an adapter she has worked on Molière and Marivaux, and her version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has played Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Alley Theatre, Geva and Hartford Stage.
“Elizabeth Williamson stood out for the clarity of her artistic vision, her deep commitment to artists and new work, her passion for training the next generation, and her belief in theater’s power to engage and inspire an entire community,” Messing said.
A.C.T. opened its first San Francisco season in 1967 and is currently led by interim executive director David Schmitz. Its season continues next month with the West Coast premiere of John Proctor Is the Villain, whose West Coast cast we reported earlier this month.
