He'll join the company in September, at the start of the theatre's 89th consecutive season. Bloom will be the eighth artistic director since the theatre's inception in 1915. Two world premieres are scheduled for the upcoming season there.

Alan Rauss, co-president of The Cleveland Play House board of directors, hailed Bloom as "a rare combination of an award-winning artist, an experienced and capable educator and a dynamic community leader who has the ability to advance all aspects of the mission of The Cleveland Play House. We fully expect that Mr. Bloom will lead The Cleveland Play House to the forefront of regional theatre in America."

Bloom has directed at American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Alley Theatre, Alliance Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, and the Sundance Theatre Institute, among other places. Internationally, he directed productions for Geki Shobo, Inc. and the Aoyama Theatre in Tokyo.

At The Cleveland Play House, he staged Private Lives in 1995. His Off-Broadway production of Sight Unseen won three Obie Awards and earned Bloom a Drama Desk nomination for direction. Other productions include Gross Indecency at Huntington Theatre Company (Elliott Norton Award for Best Directing in 1998); the world premiere of Dinner with Friends at the Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville; the West Coast premiere of The Cryptogram/The Old Neighborhood at the Geffen Playhouse; Major Barbara and The Philadelphia Story at Missouri Repertory Theatre and the world premiere of Tennessee Williams' Spring Storm at Actors Repertory of Texas.

Bloom is co-founder of Actors Repertory of Texas and has served as associate artistic airector at the Hartman Theatre Company and as associate director at American Repertory Theatre. He earned his Ph.D. in Directing/Dramatic Literature from Stanford University and has taught at New York University, Harvard University, UCLA and Scripps College in Claremont, CA. His book, "Thinking Like a Director," was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2001.

Bloom replaces Peter Hackett, Cleveland Play House a artistic director since 1994, who earlier this year accepted an appointment to the faculty of arts and sciences at Dartmouth College as professor of theatre, with tenure, beginning September 2004.

For more information about Cleveland Play House, visit www.clevelandplayhouse.com.