At a young age while growing up in England, Mark Clements declared his life agenda. He wanted to be a pilot or soccer player, and he wanted to live and work in the U.S.

The occupational ambitions didn't pan out, but the geographical one did. The Milwaukee Rep announced Wednesday that Clements has been chosen to be its new artistic director, succeeding Joe Hanreddy, who held the top creative job in the company for 17 years.

While Clements did not excel on the soccer field, he is a passionate fan, and he possesses a certain rough-and-tumble everyman quality that reflects the American image of English football. Pass him on the street, and you wouldn't guess he is a stage director soon to assume artistic control of a major regional theater. Check his iPod and you will find Springsteen, the Stones, Elvis Costello and Coldplay, as well as opera.

The 48-year-old director represents an English stage tradition not particularly known in this country. He was born into a theater family and went on the road with his parents as a child. Rather than go to college, Clements went straight into the professional theater at 17, taking a stage managing job.

By 22 he was managing a theater company, and he was directing Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night" at 27. "For many years I was always the youngest person in the company," the Englishman said while sitting in a downtown Milwaukee coffee shop.

Clements' mother, June Grey, was an actress before retiring, and his father, Alan Clements, is an actor and director who appeared in some episodes of the BBC television series "Doctor Who." Alan was especially involved in producing British pantomime shows, a particularly English genre of theater typically staged during the Christmas holiday season.

Despite his parents' acting careers, Mark says he has had no desire to perform. "When I was 16, I did a few small things on TV. I was suckered into it, and I didn't want to do it," he adds.

Clements' 10-year tenure as artistic director of the Derby Playhouse in Derby, England caught the eye of the Rep's artistic director search committee. Derby is a working class, soccer loving town of 300,000 about 100 miles north of London. One of Clements' principal missions there was to attract a younger audience to the theater and reach out to the east Indian and Pakistani population of the city.

"We dropped the age of the audience down big time, down by 20 years," he said. "And we got the Asian (Indian and Pakistani) communities involved. It took judicious programming. Something like that doesn't happen overnight with one production, but you work to bring people in and eventually have them make the theater a part of their social calendar."

Clements mentioned the Berkeley (Cal.) Repertory Theatre's current collaboration with Green Day on the band's Grammy-winning concept album "American Idiot" as an example of programming that appeals to a new and younger audience. "Some of the people who buy tickets will never set foot in the Berkeley Rep again, but others will. We can turn our productions into events -- date nights, music events, etc."

The Rep's new artistic director developed an affinity for American theater from a mentor at one of his early jobs in England. "Miller, Williams, O'Neill, those are playwrights who have always rocked my boat," he said.

Actor Alan Bates, a Derby native, became chums with Clements, who also developed a close working relationship with Corin Redgrave, Vanessa and Lynn's less famous brother. Clements directed Corin in "Blunt Speaking" in England and off-Broadway in New York, and he became associate artistic director of the Redgraves' Moving Theatre Company.

Philadelphia's historic Walnut Street Theatre has been Clements' chief connection to the U.S. Its producing artistic director is also an Englishman, and when he saw one of Clements' Derby Playhouse productions, a collaboration between the two companies began. Clements has spent the majority of his time directing in New York and Philadelphia for the past five years.

He currently lives in Philadelphia, is a British citizen with an American green card, and will seek American citizenship when he becomes eligible. He plans to move to Milwaukee during the current Rep season and will officially assume artistic control at the beginning of next summer.

Clements' resume includes directing quite a bit of musical theater, but that doesn't mean we should expect to see "Miss Saigon" on the Rep's main stage. "I have always seen myself as a play director who also does musicals," he said. "My tastes are very eclectic. A theater of the Rep's stature should be presenting the best of American theater and world theater. It should have the opportunity to explore everything."

The Rep will continue to have a resident acting company. Clements describes his directing style as "very visual. Lighting is a great big deal for me. Sets are important. But it must support the story and not be the dominant force.

"Whatever serves the story best," he continued. "As a younger director I was more prone to showing off."

Rep audiences should expect to see more collaboration with local, national and international arts groups. While he was in Derby, Clements' company partnered with such London powerhouses as the National Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse.

"We take a year to develop something that is onstage for only four weeks. It then goes in the Dumpster, and that is pretty heartbreaking," he said in explaining his interest in doing co-productions with theater companies from other cities.

The Rep received about 80 applications for the job that Clements has won. "Mark was our first choice and our dream choice," managing director Dawn Helsing Wolters said. "We were intrigued from the moment we first saw his resume, and we were even more captivated when we met him in person."