Photo © Bruce Damonte
Midway in time between the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire and the advent of sound in motion pictures, the Jewel Theater opened its doors on San Francisco’s Market Street, part of a surge of such theatre openings in the early years of cinema. In spring of 2015, A.C.T. completed a $34.4 million renovation project (which A.C.T. terms a “reclamation” and architecture contractor Skidmore, Owings and Merrill call “a complete transformation”) and opened the doors to the public for the first theatre production at the Strand in, quite probably, ever, the West Coast premiere of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information.