Lileana Blain-Cruz Is Trying Something Wilder

Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, written in 1942, is often performed regionally, but it hasn’t seen a large New York production in quite some time. Enter Lincoln Center and Lileana Blain-Cruz. “I was looking for a play that wrestled with what it means to be alive in the midst of chaos, a play that would speak to the moment we’ve been living through,” she says of what drew her to the piece. “The Skin of Our Teeth was a catalyst for so much experimental theater. It gets at the way life can be a combination of joy, pain, excitement, hilariousness, grief and strangeness all at the same time.”