Gantner has directed worldwide. According to the Times, he has worked at the Melbourne Festival, in the town where he was born, and, since 2002, has headed the Dublin Fringe Festival.

He will likely bring a more international focus to P.S. 122. "There's some extraordinary young theater makers from Eastern Europe, amazing new media work from Australia, and some amazing new theater artists in Southeast Asia," he told the Times. "But the focus of all of that has to be, how does that relate back to artists back in New York?"

Anne Dennin is P.S. 122's executive director.

Russell headed P.S 122 since 1983, and was one of the few artistic mainstays known to Off-Off-Broadway, where he has shepherded the careers of many burgeoning talents, including Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Elevator Repair Service, Deb Margolin, Richard Maxwell and others.

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