24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Why this theater leader is leaving one of the top arts jobs in S.F.
American Conservatory Theater Executive Director Jennifer Bielstein is leaving her role after seven years on the job, opening one of the top leadership positions in Bay Area theater as the industry continues to absorb pandemic aftershocks.
A first-class professional with a sterling résumé, Bielstein is heading to the Alley Theatre in Houston, where she'll be managing director to another Bay Area expat — Artistic Director Rob Melrose, who co-founded the Tenderloin's now defunct Cutting Ball Theater.
'I remain a friend to and champion of ACT and the San Francisco Bay Area arts community and look forward to cheering you on from across the country,' Bielstein said in a statement.
Melrose called Bielstein 'a legend' in the theater world — lauding her time at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in addition to ACT — and emphasized the personal qualities he believes will guide the Texas company forward.
'I also feel that Jennifer's warmth, kindness, and collaborative spirit are just what we need as we chart our way to Alley Theatre's next era of success,' he said in a statement.
That same spirit helped guide ACT through one of the most turbulent periods in its history, which ACT Board President Joaquín Torres (who's also the assessor-recorder for the City of San Francisco) acknowledged.
'Because of her contributions, ACT is better positioned to address the challenging times arts organizations are facing throughout the Bay Area and across the country,' he said in a statement. 'She will be deeply missed.'
Bielstein's foremost accomplishment during her tenure was keeping San Francisco's flagship theater afloat through the COVID-19 pandemic as many other theaters in the region closed. She led the company through initial performance postponements; reopening schedules penciled, then scrapped; fitful government relief; Zoom and radio theater; wars among audience members with different masking and vaccine preferences; and the halting, ongoing challenge of re-engaging and retaining audience members who got out of the habit of going out to shows.
With Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon, Bielstein presided over the historic night when ACT first reopened to post-pandemic audiences, for 'Freestyle Love Supreme,' and her term brought to the theater such notable productions as 'Hippest Trip — The Soul Train Musical,' 'Big Data,' 'The Wizard of Oz,' 'Fefu and Her Friends,' 'The Lehman Trilogy,' 'A Strange Loop' and 'The Headlands.'
In 2022, she also oversaw an anonymous $35 million donation to the theater, the largest single gift the company had ever received from any source. Made in honor of Toni Rembe, a longtime ACT board member, it occasioned the renaming of the former Geary Theater in Rembe's honor.
But Bielstein also had to make difficult decisions during her tenure. In 2020, the theater shuttered its storied costume shop, where thespians and members of the public alike could rent stage-quality attire for Halloween, immersive shows or themed parties.
The following year, the theater announced plans to close its Master of Fine Arts acting program, a crown jewel of the Bay Area theater scene that had trained such celebrities as Denzel Washington, Anna Deavere Smith, Annette Bening and Elizabeth Banks and attracted generations of young talent to the Bay Area who might otherwise head straight to New York or Los Angeles.
Bielstein departs at the end of August. David Schmitz, whose company Amplify Leadership Advisors specializes in interim leadership and consulting, will serve in Bielstein's stead until the board names a successor following a national search.
Whoever takes the helm will inherit an organization with 60 years of history, a budget of $25 million; a year-round, full-time staff of 105 plus more than 500 seasonal or temporary workers; a six-show mainstage season across two prominent downtown venues, and a robust Young Conservatory program that's educated such talented alumni as 2025 Tony Award winner Darren Criss.
