In Navajo culture it's taboo. A teenage girl. All the boys in the audience laughed. It was a cultural misfit. As the producer, Svendsen selects a new director each year to keep productions fresh.
Directors come largely from the theatre department.
Each director can do what he or she wants with a production. My job is to get a mix so that it's not all modern riff or all long skirts and masks. Helen Richardson, for instance, took a novel approach to last year's The Libation Bearers , setting the tale of Orestes avenging his father's death by killing his mother and her lover as a Venice Beach biker gang piece with ritualized violence. The production was a finalist in the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival, where it received the award for best ensemble. Other directors have taken an African storytelling approach.