The American Repertory Theater (ART), Harvard's resident drama company, will embark on a 20-city tour October 22, Robert Brustein, the company's artistic director said yesterday.

The troupe will present "Sganarelle: An Evening of Moliere Farces," and offer theatrical workshops throughout the Northeast, returning to Cambridge in late November to open their 1981-82 season.

Brustein said yesterday the tour fulfills his long-awaited plan to bring theater to cities not often exposed to drama, adding that ideas for the tour originated two years ago, but financial and logistical arrangements were made only recently.

Inaugural Trip

Grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts are partially subsidizing the tour, the first ever for ART.

The tour allows ART to perform while the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club uses the Loeb Drama Center, the home for both companies, to stage its two fall-term productions, "Threepenny Opera," and "Twelfth Night."

ART, a non-profit organization, "will barely break even" on the tour, Janet Haudelman, the tour's manager, said yesterday.

Last fall, ART performed at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston while the HRDC played the Loeb. Brustein, who formerly directed the Yale Repertory Theater, moved to Cambridge and formed ART in 1979.