Everyone in finances over at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre was a bit happier July 25 when the theatre's managing director Heather Kitchen announced the company would receive $1.05 million from the Leading National Theatres Program. These funds are a gift of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and were only awarded to nine theatres in the United States.

ACT plans to use the $750,000 Doris Duke endowment to help launch their own endowment program and the $300,000 Andrew W. Mellon grant to commission and develop new plays and fresh adaptations and translations of theatre classics.

Eight other theatres were awarded similar grants:

Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, CT ($975,000)
McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, NJ
New York Theatre Workshop, New York, NY
Playwrights Horizons, New York, NY
Repertorio Espanol, New York, NY
The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC
Sundance Institute, Sundance, UT
Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI

Both the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation seek to better people's lives through the arts, medicine, the environment and education. Both awarded more than $100 million worth of grants throughout 1999. American Conservatory Theatre kicks of its 2000-01 season with a world premiere stage adaptation of Frank Loesser's Hans Christian Andersen running Aug. 31-Oct. 8. Also in the season are Moliere's The Misanthrope (Oct. 19-Nov. 19), A Christmas Carol (Dec.), David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (Jan. 4-Feb. 4), Richard Nelson's Goodnight Children Everywhere (Feb. 15-March 18), Luigi Pirandello's Enrico IV (March 29-April 29) and Athol Fugard's "Master Harold"...and the boys (May 4-June 3).

-- By Christine Ehre