Although not an exhaustive history, Programming Theater History: The Actor's Workshop of San Francisco provides unique insight into the Actor's Workshop. Herbert Blau, co-founder of the workshop, curates a collection of the programme notes that accompanied the theatre's productions. Organized chronologically, the book charts the trajectory of the workshop from its earliest days performing for invitation-only audiences in a run-down loft, to its final season in 1965 when the company had grown into a fully fledged organization with a rotating repertory operating in three spaces.

Blau's programme notes now represent a ‘virtual archive of what, at first by dubious increments, made our theater exceptional’ (p. 13). In their contemporary moment, these notes provided him with a venue for articulating the social, aesthetic or political importance of each production, and made it clear from the outset that the Actor's Workshop would be defined, at least in part, by ‘a literal/critical consciousness and a questioning disposition, which showed up from the start in my writing of program notes’ (p. 12). Commentary contextualizing the corresponding production within the overall history of the workshop precedes each programme note and, because the book is focused exclusively on preserving these notes, it is intentionally limited in scope (as Blau repeatedly reminds the reader as he skips over productions for which there is no corresponding note). As a result, it cannot possibly provide a fully realized analysis of the development of the workshop's identity, but the programme notes reveal to the reader an ongoing struggle to reconcile aspiration with pragmatism.

An iconoclast if ever there was one, Blau frequently railed against the American theatre. He demanded a theatre that not only engaged with the sociopolitical moment, but also pushed theatricality to its limits. The workshop earned a reputation for work that met both of these objectives head on. But of course the workshop, like any theatre with bills to pay, often had to compromise, and many of the most revealing notes are those that Blau wrote to accompany productions about which he had reservations. In these notes, the reader can detect Blau's attempt to rationalize those moments when the convictions of the workshop seemed to flounder. For example, in the 1959–60 season, the workshop presented a new play entitled Twinkling of an Eye. ‘It may be that I had doubts about doing it’, recalls Blau, ‘because the program note was not about the play, but the idea of repertory, which had over the years been gathering momentum at the Workshop’ (p. 120). By omitting the play entirely from the programme note and focusing instead on the importance of the repertory ideal, of which ‘constant performance’ and ‘ripening variety’ were vital tenets (p. 120), Blau suggests that the occasional lesser production is a small price to pay for that continuity.

The notes serve as a lens through which the reader learns not only of the circumstances surrounding individual productions, but also of the workshop's maturation as an institution. In addition to being a valuable resource for the historian, this is a handsomely assembled volume that includes numerous production photos as well as three dozen colour photographs of programme covers. Taken together, the notes, production photos and programme covers coalesce to create a clear picture of the evolving identity of this important theatre.