“It becomes part of my dreamscape,” he explains after a performance at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City, a marvel of exposed brick and soaring space, where the company’s current season is underway. “For a while, before I start rehearsing, and while I’m rehearsing, I can’t get away from it, and it becomes part of my dreams. I try to direct as though I’m still in a dream.” Even in the most realistic pieces he directs Canuso’s hope is that the audience might feel that they, too, are in that dream. “It couldn’t be happening in real life,” he says. “Too crazy.”

Canuso, who helmed a theater company prior to Exile, said when he began planning productions for Exile he felt the need to do more challenging work. “I was acting and directing, and not always doing all the things I wanted to do. I just felt like, ‘If I want to do the kind of work I want to do, I guess I’m going to have go back and do it myself.’” He remembers many actors at the time who were on the brink of giving up theater altogether—there simply weren’t a lot of good roles or projects to go around.

Since Exile’s inception, actors have been given the opportunity to tackle the kind of roles that are generally described as those “of a lifetime.” Amanda Schoonover won a first Barrymore—the region’s top theatre honor—for her work in last season’s “Killer Joe,” a brutal story of drugs, sexual abuse and murder. This season, Philly favorite and Exile regular Harry Philibosian is cast in the most perfect role since Dustin Hoffman was the graduate—Shelley Levene in Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” This actor/character match alone promises to be one of the most memorable Philadelphia theater events of the year.

Canuso seems to revel in giving these actors a chance to do great—and difficult—work. “I know that as a director that’s one of my strengths,” he says. “To really be an actor’s director—help them get to that place, even if it’s a very sensitive and very vulnerable place to go. That’s a lot to ask of someone, and that’s what a lot of our pieces are about.”

Since “Killer Joe’s” success (the production also won a Barrymore for Best Ensemble) it is evident that Exile, contrary to name, isn’t going anywhere. “We really defined our nook—to be bold. This is unadulterated theatre, it’s gritty and it’s not afraid to be what it is. Sometimes people need to be woken up, and I think for better or worse that’s how people thought—they thought of it as a wake-up call.”

Last year’s addition of Deborah Block—one of the founders of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe— co-artistic director has given Canuso a chance to challenge further his company’s vision.

“What we’d like to do now is expand our audience,” he says. “There’s a whole younger generation of movie goers who will go out and see indie films, and I don’t think they realize they’ll find those elements in theater. If it doesn’t grab them, it’s not immediate, they run away from it. But here it is,” Canuso gestures to the open space of the theater, “alive!” Glengarry Glen Ross runs April 20 through May 15, 2007

For more information about Theatre Exile’s upcoming season, visit www.theatreexile.org.