A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by theatre and opera director William Ball in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Mellon University. Ball relocated the company to San Francisco after being invited by philanthropists and officials from that city to do so, and presented twenty-seven fully staged productions in rotating repertory, in two different theaters – the Geary Theater and the Marines Memorial Theatre – during the first 40-week season. "San Francisco Chronicle" critic Paine Knickerbocker called Ball's opening performance of Molière's "Tartuffe" "a screaming, bellowing unbelievable triumph."