New Direction

Directors who have an interest in style are not prevalent in the American theatre. Mostly, directors are there to serve the play and keep the bodies moving in space as clearly, effectively, and entertainingly as possible. Downtown legends who have bucked that particular trend—juggernauts like Elizabeth LeCompte, who heads the Wooster Group, and the late Iranian-born director Reza Abdoh—are rare, and their influence is so pervasive that you can’t really separate their legacies from the work of younger artists who aspire to a similar level of invention. There are, however, directors such as David Cromer, who works with standard material and brings to it an eye or a vision that has both a downtown edge and an emotional realness that lifts the script up, thereby creating something unpredictable, new, and fresh.