Wooster Group, among the most venerated avant-garde theater troupes of our time, returns with a new production that melds Shakespeare into American history. Artistic director Elizabeth LeCompte will stage a developmental production of “Cry, Trojans!”, Jan. 8-Feb. 9, at Wooster Group’s Performing Garage home.

The show sprang from a collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company at last year’s World Shakespeare Festival. Both groups took sides in “Troilus and Cressida”, with the RSC staging the Greek scenes while the Woosters took on the Trojans (who, famously, lost the war when the Greek gift of a giant horse turned out to be full of soldiers). The resulting production was intentionally ragged and jarring, since the RSC and experimental Woosters have completely different aesthetics. Beyond that, LeCompte Americanized her take on the material and based her Trojans on the American Indians, perennial losers in the manifest destiny sweepstakes. For the month-long run of “Cry, Trojans!” (which won’t be open to the critics), LeCompte has now adapted and directed all the scenes, although Troy will remain the main focus.

Since its founding in 1975 as an offshoot of Richard Schechner’s experimental Performance Group, Wooster Group has boasted such alumni as Spalding Gray, Willem Dafoe and Ron Vawter. Wooster veterans Ari Fliakos, Kate Valk and Suzzy Roche (of the singing Roches fame) are among the cast of “Cry”.