Directing new or little-known plays can be an awfully thankless task. Even in San Francisco, a lot of season subscribers are perfectly content with yet another production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Amy Glazer makes a point of delivering thoughtful productions of well-written, little-known works by major contemporary playwrights. Last fall she brought Conor McPherson's devastating ghost story Shining City to SF Playhouse, and followed it this spring with Donald Margulies' nightmarish The Model Apartment at Traveling Jewish Theatre — a play that eerily stages post-traumatic memories of the Holocaust amidst a riot of '80s pastels. From these two shows alone, it's evident that Glazer's greatest talent lies in drawing careful interpretations of extraordinarily long, difficult monologues from her actors. She also has a knack for forging an intense intimacy between actor and audience — and when she combines that with a challenging, disturbing script, the results are uncannily good.