Linda A. Hill, of the Harvard Business School, wrote "Becoming a Manager" (Penguin Books, 1993) in which she describes the process of moving from worker to leader. It's fascinating reading as the process is almost universal, and really resonated with my own experience starting out as a stage manager way back when.
People are promoted to management because they do well at working - but are not given any management training. So most new managers start by trying to do what they know, by taking over from the labor they are managing (perceived as "micromanaging" by those workers). After completing one "business cycle" - in our world, one production - they "began to accept their agenda-setting and network-building responsibilities and to behave, think, and value more like managers." (p.77)
But during that first production, your new director is uncertain about how to bring order out of chaos and so falls back on what has worked for him in the past; not completely understanding that those responsibilities have devolved to someone else and there's a whole raft of duties that he is responsible for that he just can't see yet because he hasn't gone through it all.
Hope this helps,