The Measure of a No-Holds Bard Director

Next, he plunges into trickier territory still: an original musical, written with composer James Sugg. Based on a recently discovered short story by Mark Twain, "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage" has its premiere at Round House Theatre in May.

Posner's output attests to the idea that a director with vision can thrive without exposure in the country's top theater town.

"I've never worked in New York and I've never set my sights there," he says. His concentration has been on developing contacts elsewhere. Still, he's aware of the profile-raising benefits of working there. "When New York calls and asks me to work there," he says, "I'd be thrilled."

He's not holding his breath, though. Too many other projects await on which he wants to get his paws. Shakespeare is a special fascination. A Posner production of "Twelfth Night" takes its cue from a famous line of dialogue -- "If music be the food of love, play on!" -- and what ensues is a song-infused evening, in which actors take enchanting turns at a piano. Or, playing off the idea of the manipulations of an enigmatic Duke, a "Measure for Measure" is staged in which puppets, which have faces straight out of bleak fairy tales, are cast in a slew of showy supporting roles.

"He was pretty influential on the way I direct," says Jeremy Skidmore, artistic director of Theater Alliance, who served as assistant director on Posner's "As You Like It" in 2001, his first production for Folger. "He has a playfulness he brings to rehearsal. I'm not a good listener in real life, but I am now in rehearsals, and that's because of Aaron.

"He's a really good listener, and one of the most curious people I know. Curiosity is a major thing that feeds him."

That's apparent in his "Measure for Measure," whose run at Folger was extended; it continues through the end of the week. The play is Shakespeare's strange and twisted story of an ambitious deputy to the Duke who, seeking to bring order to libertine Vienna, revives a draconian statute that prescribes the death penalty for extramarital intercourse. The deputy, Angelo, is a raging hypocrite. The crux of the plot is Angelo's attempt to force a religious novice, Isabella, to have sex with him, in return for the life of her brother, who has been condemned to die for the crime of fornication.

Michele Osherow -- an old friend of Posner's who plays Mariana, Angelo's spurned fiancee, in the Folger production -- had lobbied Posner for years to take on "Measure," a play she adored for its juicy ambiguities. She thought his lack of pretension made him right for the assignment.

"I loved his focus on telling stories," says Osherow, a Silver Spring resident and visiting assistant English professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. "And I loved his sense of humor."

For the longest time, though, Posner was on the side of the husbands with this thorny play. Isabella, the intransigent heroine, was a particular obstacle: How, he wondered, could audiences accept a woman who regarded her chastity as more important than her brother's life?

Ultimately, the play's thorniness won him over. He conceived of a production that would have audiences arguing about it into the night. "It was a willingness to trust the brilliance and the messiness of the play," he says.

The key for him became the mysterious Duke (played at the Folger by Mark Zeisler), who turns over the reins of the city to Angelo but who, in disguise, monitors everything, and sets in motion Isabella's revenge.

"The idea of the Duke as puppet master stayed with me," he explains. (The Duke-in-disguise is portrayed by a puppet that is manipulated by Zeisler.) Slowly, too, Posner developed the idea of having other minor characters, such as a constable and prisoner, played by puppets, because the portrayals were totally defined by their functions in society.

They also had the value, Posner says, "of constantly calling attention to the theatricality of the play." And a kind of theatricality that can be enjoyed by the wives as well as the husbands.