WHEN Emily Mann accepted the job as the artistic director at McCarter Theatre, she thought her stay in Princeton would last three years, maybe five at the most.

   That was in 1989.

   ”And here I am. As the Delany sisters would say, ‘Still here,’” she says, referring to Sadie and Bessie Delaney, the real-life sisters whose story is told in Having Our Say, Ms. Mann’s 1995 play that is finishing a revival at McCarter through Oct. 18. Ms. Mann is directing.

   Jennifer von Mayrhauser, a costume designer who has known Ms. Mann since 1979, remembers when her friend was offered the Princeton gig.

   ”One day we went out to lunch and she says, ‘Oh, I’ve been offered this job at the McCarter Theatre, what do you think?’ And I went, ‘Take it, take it!’” Ms. von Mayrhauser says.

   Since then, the two artists have collaborated on 20 McCarter productions. “I love working with Emily, we work very similarly and we have a great collaboration,” Ms. von Mayrhauser says. “It’s very inspiring and she means a lot to me as a friend, and definitely as a collaborator.”

   Over these past 20 years, Ms. Mann has overseen more than 90 productions on McCarter’s two stages, from classics like Twelfth Night and the current production of She Stoops to Conquer (see related story, Page 3) to world premieres from legendary playwrights like Edward Albee (whose My, Myself & I premiered there in 2007) and new voices like Tarell Alvin McCraney (whose first major work, The Brother/Sister Plays, premiered at McCarter last spring).

   ”It’s a match made in heaven, I’m so happy here,” Ms. Mann says of her tenure. “I get to do what I really believe in — in a community that supports and appreciates that — with one of the great staffs in American theater and one of the great audiences in American theater. For me, it’s an enormous blessing. I love the university and the town, and the communities around us.”

   McCarter’s 1,100-seat Matthews Theatre and intimate 360-seat Roger S. Berlind Theatre (which opened in 2003) have become the stages for Ms. Mann’s vision of theater, one where interesting, challenging works take place. They are a respite from the commercialism that she says is the engine of New York theater.

   ”That’s why it’s so hard to find these extraordinary plays having a life in New York,” she says. “Some of them squeak through but it’s harder and harder.” Other new plays that have graced McCarter’s stages in recent years include August Wilson’s last play, Radio Golf, and Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly. There have also been noted revivals of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and Brian Fiel’s Translations.

   That’s not to suggest McCarter is some ivory tower. Audiences young and old delighted to the whimsical Lookingglass Alice a few years ago, and last season saw a revival of Lanford Wilson’s romantic comedy Talley’s Folly. (McCarter has also remained affordable, with tickets available for as low as $20.)

   This year kicked off with a stellar staging of Ms. Mann’s Having Our Say. While the story of the Delany sisters addresses some big topics, most notably race in 20th century America, it’s also funny, touching and heartwarming, hardly an elite night of theater.

   One amazing moment in the play comes when the sisters argue over whether there will ever be a black president (the sisters wrote their book, also titled Having Our Say, in 1993). That political discussion plays differently today than it did 16 years ago, and Ms. Mann said she was interested in seeing how different audiences would react to that moment and others in her Tony-nominated play.

   ”It’s a live conversation between the audience and the stage,” she says. “It’s a very different kind of experience when it’s a mostly white audience as opposed to a mostly African-American or black audience.” She adds that churchgoers may respond in their own way because the play was written for call and response.

   ”That’s going to be a different crowd than the corporate people from Wall Street, white and black,” Ms. Mann says. “Everyone has their own way of responding to the things that are being said, depending on who they are and where they come from, which is also a very unifying and exciting event because we learn from each other. If you see some black people laughing, you think, ‘Oh, I want to know why that’s funny.’”

   Sure enough, cries of “amen” were heard during a weeknight performance. And when Bessie (played by Yvette Freeman) said she’s just as good as the white “Rebby boys” who hated her, an audience member could be heard saying Bessie was better. Ms. Freeman worked with the moment, pointed to the crowd and emphatically said her line: “In fact, I’m better.”

   ”The great thing I give Emily here is that it seems like quite a nice community, with not only the students but with people who live here or in neighboring areas,” says Kristine Nielsen, who’s playing Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. She was also in the world premiere of Christopher Duran’s Miss Witherspoon, directed by Ms. Mann, at McCarter in 2005.

   After the annual production of McCarter’s acclaimed adaptation of A Christmas Carol, the season will continue with Fetch Clay, Make Man, a world premiere by Will Power about the relationship between Muhammad Ali and Stepin Fetchit, who became a symbol of stereotyping of African-Americans in Hollywood movies. In March, the theater will stage a revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, directed by Amy Morton. The season will conclude with Take Flight, a new musical by John Weidman, Davie Shire and Richard Maltby Jr.

   Ms. Mann is also McCarter’s resident playwright. She describes the plays she writes as “documentary theater.” She wrote her first play, Annulla, An Autobiography, in 1977. It was based on interviews with Holocaust survivors and inspired by her father’s work on an oral history project by the American Jewish Committee. Her most recent original play, Mrs. Packard, premiered at McCarter in 2006 and shared a little-known story of an Illinois woman who, in 1861, was sent to an asylum because she disagreed with her husband on religion.

   ”I’m always taking the words of real people and trying to find a theatrical structure that will give you a play, but try to channel the real people,” she says, “so that I’m not standing between you and their own recollection of things, but rather finding a way theatrically or dramatically to get it out so it’s real and alive.”

   Something else that’s notable about Ms. Mann is her versatility. One year she’s writing and directing Mrs. Packard, a dark period piece, the next she’s directing the sparsely staged Me, Myself & I, then she’s directing A Seagull in the Hamptons (“freely adapted” by Ms. Mann from Chekhov).

   Ms. von Mayrhauser says that versatility reflects how she and Ms. Mann work so well together and approach plays in terms of creating characters from different worlds.

   ”It’s very comforting and encouraging to be able to work with someone like Emily where we have this history,” she says. “We understand the language that we speak to each other. We know the process and that the process works well.”

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  Having Our Say is being staged at the Roger S. Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, through Oct. 18. She Stoops to Conquer is on the Matthew Theatre stage through Nov. 1. Performances: Tues.-Thurs. 7:30 p.m., Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3, 8 p.m., Sun. 2, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $20-$65; 609-258-2787; www.mccarter.org