Bill Rauch (born 1962) is an American theatre director. He was named the inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (PACNYC) at the World Trade Center in 2018. [1] The Perelman was the final piece of the plan to revitalize the World Trade Center site. [2]
Previously, Rauch served as the fifth artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), from June 2007 through August 2019, where he commissioned several critically acclaimed, diverse plays that transferred to Broadway including Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, Paula Vogel’s Indecent, Robert Schenkkan’s Tony Award-winning All The Way, the Go Go's musical Head Over Heels, and Robert Schenkkan's All The Way sequel, The Great Society.
Rauch is also the founder of the Cornerstone Theater Company, a traveling company that brought theatre to rural communities across the United States before settling in Los Angeles to work with urban communities. He has been an Associate Artist at Yale Repertory Theatre since 2002 and at South Coast Repertory since 2004. Rauch has been described as an "interpretive director," one who “believes in creating ‘dynamic… twenty-first century’ productions that are ‘mined’ for various points of view." [3]
Rauch (born 1962) graduated from Harvard College in 1984 with a B.A. in English & American Literature and Language, where he was a recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize for Outstanding Graduating Artist.
Rauch co-founded the community-based, touring Cornerstone Theater Company in 1986 with Alison Carey, where he directed more than 40 productions, most of them collaborations with diverse rural and urban communities across the United States, and served as artistic director from 1986 to 2006. [4] He oversaw an additional 25 commissions of new work.
Their first adapted production was The Marmarth Hamlet, set and staged in Marmath, North Dakota as a Wild West musical. [5] In 1989, Cornerstone created a Romeo and Juliet in Port Gibson, Mississippi, with 11 members of the company and over 50 local residents as cast and crew. It starred Amy Brenneman as Juliet and local high school senior, Edret Brinston as Romeo. [6] In 1994, they staged the medieval morality play, Everyman, at Santa Monica Place and "Death chases Everyman in the shadows of Victoria’s Secret." [7] In 2004, Rauch collaborated with playwright José Cruz González to adapt Washington Irving's story, "Rip Van Winkle" into Waking Up in Lost Hills. [8]
Rauch became the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's fifth artistic director in 2007, after five seasons at the Festival as a guest director. [9] As visiting director at OSF, Rauch directed Handler (2002), Hedda Gabler (2003), The Comedy of Errors (2004), By the Waters of Babylon (2005), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (2006), and Romeo and Juliet (2007).
The Green Show (free, pre-show entertainment) had "hosted Renaissance dancers and Elizabethan music," and under Rauch's tenure, they expanded it to "include an ever-rotating bill of fare of artists from our own region and as far away as Mexico City or New York." [10] In 2015, OSF launched the inaugural sessions of "artEquity, a facilitator training initiative on inclusion and equity issues for theatre companies nationwide." [11] In his final season, actors of color made up 70% of the performers at OSF." [12]
On February 16, 2018, Rauch announced that his directorship would come to an end in August 2019. [13]
During his 17 seasons at OSF, Rauch directed nine world premieres including, Mother Road, La Comedia of Errors, Off the Rails, Roe, Fingersmith, The Great Society, All the Way, Equivocation and By the Waters of Babylon. He also directed 19 other plays at the Festival including Othello, Richard II, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Cymbeline, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors . He also directed Oklahoma!, Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, The Pirates of Penzance, The Music Man, The Clay Cart, Hedda Gabler, and The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler and Handler.
During his time at OSF, Rauch was known for diversifying the company and the audience. [14] Rauch's programming combined Shakespeare, other classics, contemporary work, and plays commissioned for the company, as well as classical musicals and plays outside the Western canon. [15]
Rauch commissioned 37 new plays as part of American Revolutions: the U.S. History Cycle, to dramatize moments of change in American history, inspired by Shakespeare’s history plays and funded in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon, Collins Family, and Paul G. Allen Family Foundations. [16] He also initiated the Black Swan Lab for New Work and a community-based format for the Green Show. [17]
Rauch directed several OSF plays at other theaters, including Equivocation, All the Way and The Great Society at Seattle Rep; The Pirates of Penzance at Portland Opera; Mother Road, Equivocation, A Community Carol, and Roe at Arena Stage; Roe at Berkeley Rep; Othello , Fingersmith, and All the Way at the American Repertory Theater for which he twice won the Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) award for Best Director. All the Way then moved to the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway in 2014, where it won the Tony Award for Best Play and Rauch also earned Drama Desk [18] and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for directing. [19] The Great Society moved to the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway in 2019 and opened October 1, 2019. [20]
Rauch has directed a number of world premieres, including Naomi Wallace's Night is a Room at New York's Signature Theatre; [21] The Body of an American at Portland Center Stage [22] which, along with All the Way, was co-winner of the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History; [23] The Clean House at Yale Repertory Theatre; and Living Out and For Here or To Go? at the Mark Taper Forum. He directed the world premiere of Peace by Culture Clash at the Getty Villa, an adaptation of Aristophanes's play of the same name. He also directed the New York premiere of The Clean House at Lincoln Center Theater. [24] Work elsewhere includes productions at South Coast Repertory, Guthrie Theater, Long Wharf Theater, Pasadena Playhouse, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Touchstone Theater, and En Garde Arts.
In 2014, Rauch directed the Broadway production of All the Way by Robert Schenkkan, after commissioning and directing the play at OSF in 2012. The limited-engagement production opened on March 6, 2014 at the Neil Simon Theatre and concluded on June 29, 2014. [25] The production won two Tony Awards, the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play and the 2014 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, which went to Bryan Cranston. [26] The play also won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Play. Rauch was nominated for both a Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award for his direction.
In 2019, Rauch again worked with Schenkkan on The Great Society, the sequel to All the Way, which ran for a twelve week limited-engagement on Broadway at The Vivian Beaumont Theater, beginning September 6, 2019. [27] The play starred Emmy-winner Brian Cox as President Lyndon B. Johnson.
In February 2018, Rauch was named the inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (PACNYC), a new, flexible midsize performance space at The World Trade Center that will produce theater, dance, music, and chamber opera. [28] The PACNYC opened in September 2023. [29] Rauch's first show that he is directing there is Cats: The Jellicle Ball, which he is co-directing with Zhailon Levingston and will premiere in June 2024. [30]
Rauch has served as an adviser, keynote speaker, commencement speaker, and advocate for the arts.
In 1999, Rauch testified to the U.S. Congress on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts. He said of Cornerstone, "'By bringing together people face to face to create community-based theater, we build bridges across differences of racial, economic and religious backgrounds.'" [31]
In 2019, he delivered the keynote address at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference. It was later published in the journal, Theatre Topics . [32]
Rauch has taught at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, and California State University, Los Angeles. From 2005-2007, he was Claire Trevor Professor of Drama and Bren Fellow at University of California, Irvine.
Rauch launched the Cornerstone Institute, an international model for training activist artists that "teaches participants its community-engaged aesthetic by mounting an original production". [33]
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue." She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is a professional not-for-profit theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1979 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts reinterpreted in refreshing new ways. Over the past forty years it has garnered many of the nation's most distinguished awards, including a Pulitzer Prize (1982), a Tony Award (1986), and a Jujamcyn Award (1985). In 2002, the A.R.T. was the recipient of the National Theatre Conference's Outstanding Achievement Award, and it was named one of the top three theaters in the country by Time magazine in 2003. The A.R.T. is housed in the Loeb Drama Center at Harvard University, a building it shares with the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club. The A.R.T. operates the Institute for Advanced Theater Training.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States, founded in 1935 by Angus L. Bowmer. The Festival now offers matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and contemporary plays not limited to Shakespeare. During the Festival, between five and eleven plays are offered in daily rotation six days a week in its three theatres. It welcomed its millionth visitor in 1971, its 10-millionth in 2001, and its 20-millionth visitor in 2015.
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Robert Frederic Schenkkan Jr. is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 for his play The Kentucky Cycle and his play All the Way earned the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play. He has three Emmy nominations and one WGA Award.
Arena Stage is a not-for-profit regional theater based in Southwest, Washington, D.C. Established in 1950, it was the first racially integrated theater in Washington, D.C., and its founders helped start the U.S. regional theater movement. Its theater complex was completed for the company in 2010; it is called The Mead Center for American Theater.
Melvin Richard "Dakin" Matthews is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and theatrical scholar. Best known as Herb Kelcher in My Two Dads (1987–1989), Hanlin Charleston in Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), Joe Heffernan in The King of Queens (1998-2007), and as Reverend Sikes in Desperate Housewives (2004–2012).
Robert Cuccioli is an American actor and singer. He is best known for originating the lead dual title roles in the musical Jekyll & Hyde, for which he received a Tony Award nomination and won the Joseph Jefferson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Fany Award for outstanding actor in a musical.
Michael Wilson is an American stage and screen director working extensively on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and at the nation's leading resident theaters.
A. J. Antoon was an American theatre director. He attended the Yale School of Drama. Beginning in 1971, Antoon directed numerous plays at the New York Shakespeare Festival over a period of nearly 20 years. In 1973, Antoon became one of the few directors to have been nominated for two Tony Awards in the same category in the same year. In addition to winning the Tony Award with one of his nominations, Antoon was also the winner of a Drama Desk Award, a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and an Obie Award. His career lasted until 1991; he died less than a year later from AIDS-related lymphoma.
Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.
Michael Kahn CBE is an American theater director and drama educator. He was the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. from 1986 until his retirement in 2019. He held the position of Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division of the Juilliard School from 1992 to 2006.
Production history of plays performed by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, as of September 2021.
Mel Shapiro is an American theatre director and writer, college professor, and author.
Jeffrey Finn is a Tony-Award winning American theatrical producer. He is the Vice President of Theater Producing and Programming at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Artistic Director of Broadway Center Stage. He received the Commercial Theater Institute's 2013 Robert Whitehead Award for outstanding achievement in commercial theatre producing. Finn is the President of Jeffrey Finn Productions and Hot On Broadway. He attended Connecticut College, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1992. He attended Beaver Country Day School from 1984 to 1988. Finn is a executive member of The Broadway League and The Independent Presenters Network.
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Robert Petkoff is an American stage actor known for his work in Shakespearean productions and more recently on the New York City musical theater stage. Petkoff has performed on Broadway, the West End, regional theatre, and done work in film and television. Petkoff was featured as "Perchik" in the Tony award-nominated 2004 revival cast of Fiddler on the Roof but is perhaps best known for his role as "Tateh" in the 2009 revival of Ragtime on Broadway. Petkoff has also provided the voices for over two dozen audiobooks, winning awards for his reading of Michael Koryta's So Cold the River. Married to actress Susan Wands, Petkoff has lived in New York City for the last twenty years, and often performs in benefit concerts for theater-district-related charities.
Norman L. Berman is an American theater composer and playwright.
All the Way is a play by Robert Schenkkan, depicting President Lyndon B. Johnson's efforts to maneuver members of the 88th United States Congress to enact, and civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. to support, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The play takes its name from Johnson's 1964 campaign slogan, "All the Way with LBJ."
Saheem Ali is a Kenyan theatre director. He is Associate Artistic Director at The Public Theater in New York City.