The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco is set to captivate audiences with a dynamic slate of performances in 2026, including the North American premiere of 'Paranormal Activity,' the world premiere of '||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||,' a live session of the acclaimed 'Ear Hustle' podcast, and the U.S. premiere of 'Hamnet.' Featuring a mix of horror, coming-of-age tales, real-life transformations, and historical drama, these events promise to push the boundaries of theater, offering something for audiences with a diverse range of tastes.

Exploring the Boundaries of Art and Storytelling: A.C.T.'s Enchanting 2026 Lineup

Dive into a series of immersive theatrical experiences at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. This season, the theater presents a diverse lineup ranging from haunting paranormal tales to heartfelt musical journeys and historical reflections. Audiences can expect to be captivated by 'Paranormal Activity,' '||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||:,' 'Ear Hustle Live!,' and 'Hamnet.' Each production offers a unique exploration of human emotions, relationships, and the power of storytelling, promising to leave a lasting impact on attendees.

Exploring the Depth of Human Experience: Spotlight on A.C.T.'s Compelling Stage Productions

Four highly-gifted teens collab and collide one pivotal summer at a prestigious Berkeley girls’ music program. They improvise and crack wise atop a steadily thrumming undercurrent of disaster and emergency. This world premiere play with music comes from A.C.T.-commissioned playwright Eisa Davis, the singular writer-musician-actor whose keen ear for the language and inner lives of adolescent women brought us the Pulitzer finalist Bulrusher. At turns hilarious and melancholy, raucous and poetic, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is an exquisite and achingly true story of friendship, self-discovery, and the salvation of art-making.

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

The Strand Theater

James and Lou move from Chicago to London to escape the past… but they soon discover that places aren’t haunted, people are. An original story set in the world of the terrifying Paranormal Activity film franchise, this thrilling new play from celebrated Chicago playwright Levi Holloway (Broadway’s Grey House) and Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett (Sleep No More) with illusions by Tony Award winner Chris Fisher (Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Harry Potter & The Cursed Child) will haunt you long after you get home. Experience the horror of this North American premiere. Can you even believe your eyes?

Paranormal Activity

Toni Rembe Theater

This production of A Streetcar Named Desire has an intimate staging, featuring seating in the round by utilizing onstage seats. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to sit on the Toni Rembe stage and experience Streetcar from a unique perspective. To book the onstage seating online, simply select "Stage" as your section, and choose your specific seats from there.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Set during Christmastime in 1950s New York, Todd Haynes’ adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt centers on shy, aspiring photographer Therese Belivet (Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara), whose world changes when she meets the elegant Carol Aird (two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett). As Carol struggles to maintain custody of her daughter amid a heated divorce, she and Therese develop a secret-yet-passionate romance that changes them both irrevocably.

Carol Day 2025

Rudolph and Scrooge: A YC Holiday Double Feature is a two-act show featuring young actors in two classic holiday tales. Our Fall Junior Actors Ensemble (grades 3–6) presents the classic animated TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Jr. as Act One. Act Two features our Middle School Actors Ensemble (grades 6–9) in A Christmas Carol Project – a collection of scenes and songs from various adaptations of the classic Dickens story. Together, the shows explore themes of redemption, belonging, and the true spirit of the holidays.

Rudolph & Scrooge: YC Holiday Double Feature

Because this show is produced by BroadwaySF, exchange and purchase policies and processesare different from your regular A.C.T. tickets.

Stereophonic

The Curran Theatre

EPSG:4326

A.C.T.'s Annual Gala

Saint Joseph’s Arts Society

This hilarious and heartwarming award-winning comedy drama about a Korean family-run corner store that inspired the popular Netflix hit is a feel-good ode to generations of immigrants who have made Canada the country that it is today. Mr. Kim works hard to support his wife and children with his Toronto convenience store. As he evaluates his future, he faces both a changing neighborhood landscape and the gap between his values and those of his Canada-born children. Playwright Ins Choi, who will also star in the production as the title character, calls Kim’s Convenience his “love letter to his parents and to all first-generation immigrants who call Canada their home.”

Kim's Convenience

Witness the launch of the next great hip-hop musical, born in the heart of the Bay! Co-Founders is the story of an underrated young Oakland coder, Esata, who hacks her way into the most competitive startup accelerator in San Francisco. Determined to save her house as an influx of wealth threatens to push her community out, Esata forms an unlikely partnership with a prep-school dropout. In a field where the privileged make a killing while folks across the bridge grind to survive, can Esata win Silicon Valley’s game without leaving her community behind? Created by three extraordinary Bay Area voices, the piece features a deliciously catchy score that draws from the Bay’s rich hip-hop traditions, as well as soul, gospel, funk, jazz, R&B, and more. Employing visual technology entirely new to theater, Co-Founders is a sharply funny, deeply felt, exuberant celebration of the Bay and the dreamers, hustlers, and innovators that make it magical.

Co-Founders

Shakespeare’s quintessential comedy, this farcical tale of separated families and mistaken identities delights audiences young and old. Antipholus and his servant, Dromio, travel in search of a long-lost family member, only to get mixed up in a madcap race against the clock, love-at-first-double-take, run-ins with local law enforcement, and double trouble—times two. Christina Anderson’s translation maintains all we love about Shakespeare’s language even as it updates the jokes and wordplay, breathing new life into the double (and triple) entendres. This madcap whirl through bawdy adventures, mad scientists, romance, heartfelt reunions, and even a few happy endings will excite and titillate any audience. Additional support for The Comedy of Errors is provided by the Hitz Foundation and Play On Shakespeare.

The Comedy of Errors

From the author of The Piano Lesson and Fences comes the story of Memphis Lee, a diner owner in a historically black neighborhood in Pittsburgh at the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, who must decide if he should allow the government to take over his building or sell the property to a ruthless businessman. Full of vivid characters, joy, hope, love, and perseverance, this Tony-nominated play celebrates the spirit, laughter, heart, and resilience of the people who make our country great even when faced with overwhelming odds.

Two Trains Running

Following her triumphant triple-extended New York run, a box office record-breaking two-week run at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and a six-week London run which Dame Judi Dench called “Spectacular,” Eddie Izzard performs her solo performance of Shakespeare's HAMLET at the Strand Theater for just three weeks.

Eddie Izzard Hamlet

The game of love is on! “Nobody Loves You” is a wildly popular reality dating show in which eager contestants compete for love (and social media stardom). When Jeff, a philosophy grad student, snags a spot on the show to win back his ex, he breaks all the rules and tries to blow the game wide open. That is, until he falls for Jenny, an enticingly prickly “Nobody Loves You” producer who yearns to make Serious Films. In a world where every kiss comes at the end of a selfie stick, can two people really connect? Bay Area hometown heroes Itamar Moses (Tony Award winner, The Band’s Visit) and Gaby Alter provide an uproarious book, witty lyrics, and a winsome pop score in this madcap musical comedy helmed by Tony Award winner and A.C.T. Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon.

Nobody Loves You

From Obie-winning playwright Craig Lucas and Tony Award winner and A.C.T. Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon comes a joyous and puckishly funny adaptation of Charles Dickens’s beloved classic. A small theater troupe in the town of Whynot has gathered to put up their director’s new version of A Christmas Carol. From the first rehearsal to opening night, we follow these sometimes-reluctant comrades on their quest to put on a great show with too little time and money but no shortage of opinions. An ingenious set and costume design by Tony Award winner David Zinn (A.C.T.’s The Wizard of Oz) transports us behind the curtain as our ragtag cast boldly tackles prop mishaps and dance blunders, collaborating against all odds in hopes of a holiday miracle: real change. With festive music, magical ghosts, an effervescent cast of kids, and ample hijinks, this fresh telling amplifies Dickens’s moving and evergreen call for true generosity all through the year.

A Whynot Christmas Carol

San Francisco's best costume party returns! Join us in celebration of OL shared belief in the power of live theater and A.C.T.'s thrilling 2024/25 Season. A festive gala event to bring us together to be who we are, or who we want to be. It's going to be a ball...for ALL!

All Hallows' Gala

August Hall

Bay Area favorite KJ Sanchez reimagines and directs Noël Coward’s hysterical classic tale of the tempestuous dance that is marriage. Reset to 1930s Argentina and featuring sensual tango dancing, Coward’s iconic, wry comedy sings with spiky repartee. When an explosive divorced couple and their new spouses inadvertently honeymoon in adjacent rooms at the same hotel, combustible chemistry reignites, strong passions and stronger personalities take over, and mayhem ensues. Brace yourself and prepare to laugh at what director Sanchez calls a “saucy, brassy, and rude” battle of equals that’s “as much about fighting as it is making love.”

Noel Coward's Private Lives

On a cold September morning in 1844, a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside dreaming of a new life. He is soon joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins with a small store in Alabama. One hundred and sixty-three years later, the firm they establish—Lehman Brothers—spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy and triggers the largest financial crisis in history. Told in three epic parts over one evening, The Lehman Trilogy is a modern theatrical classic.

The Lehman Trilogy

Utilizing the multi-storied, multi-roomed Strand Theater as non-traditional theater space, audiences will be broken up into four groups that independently tour Fefu’s home. Stories and histories come into play as you happen across conversations as Fefu’s bohemian and raucous cohorts gossip, question, flirt, provoke, and ultimately reveal (or hide?) the universal understandings between women. As muscular and searing in her deliberate use of language as Albee and Miller at their best; as acidic as Clare Boothe Luce’s iconic play The Women; and patron saint to blockbuster hits like Sleep No More—Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends is an invitation to a theatrical experience like none other.

Fefu and Her Friends

The Young Conservatory Middle School Actors Ensemble presents an abridged version of Tennessee Williams's classic play, The Glass Menagerie. We follow the trials and tribulations of the Wingfield family as the matriarch, Amanda, desperately tries to carve out a future for her children—one at odds with the changing world around them. The young cast of The Glass Menagerie explores the conflict between personal dreams and familial duties, made more resonant as they take their first steps towards shaping their futures and creating the world they want to see.

YC Actors Ensemble The Glass Menagerie Project

Geary Theater

In this popular cabaret annual tradition, "Singer's Choice" allows student performers a chance to bring to the stage songs of their own choosing from a variety of musical genres. We look forward to this special night that celebrates the enormous talent and uniqueness of our cabaret ensemble members.

YC Cabaret Singer's Choice

Launching its American tour at the A.C.T.'s Geary Theater, Freestyle Love Supreme pays homage to John Coltrane's improvisational musical style as it takes audiences on a freestyle, never-before-seen-and-never-to-be-seen-again hip-hop comedy ride. Hailed as “sophisticated and haphazard, hilarious and serious” by Rolling Stone, no two shows will be alike, as performers—and special guest artists—take suggestions from the audience and spin them into instantaneous riffs and full-length musical numbers. Bay Area audiences will be the very first to see this slam-dunk hit, conceived over 15 years ago and as fresh as today’s Twitter feed.

Freestyle Love Supreme

Calling all Ear Hustlers! Join Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods, co-hosts and co-creators of the acclaimed podcast, live on stage as they share stories from inside and outside prison, accompanied by musical performances and never-before-seen visuals.

Ear Hustle Live!

When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, Agnes and William Shakespeare, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. Experience the U.S. premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “elegant and beguiling” (London’s Evening Standard) stage adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel, adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet) and directed by Erica Whyman.

American Conservatory Theater

Mar 12 - Apr 19, 2026

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

Apr 11, 2026

Ear Hustle Live!

Apr 22 - May 24, 2026

Hamnet

Mar 12 - Apr 19, 2026

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

Feb 19 - Mar 15, 2026

Paranormal Activity

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