Bill Rauch

Bill Rauch.

Bill Rauch (born 1962) is an American artistic director. Rauch succeeded Libby Appel as the fifth artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in June 2007. As artistic director, he is responsible for selecting eleven plays each season as well as their directors, design teams and cast.

Biography

Rauch graduated from Harvard College, USA, in 1984 where he was a recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize for outstanding graduating artist. He has taught at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, California State University, Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine as a Professor of Directing and Community Based Theater. Rauch has directed plays at South Coast Repertory, the Mark Taper Forum, Yale Repertory Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatre, Arena Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and many others. He co-founded the community-based Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, where he was artistic director for twenty years, during which time he directed over forty plays.

Work at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Before becoming artistic director, Rauch directed Handler (2002), Hedda Gabler (2003), The Comedy of Errors (2004), By the Waters of Babylon (2005), and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (2006) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Known as a risk-taker, he is moved by programming that combines Shakespeare, other classics, contemporary work, and plays commissioned for the company. His vision for OSF includes expanding the definition of 'classic' theatre to world classics; Rauch directed the Sanskrit "The Clay Cart" in his first season as Artistic Director. Rauch is making direct connections between classic plays and contemporary concerns, exploring beyond the Western Canon to incorporate Asian and African epics into the Festival, and is reaching out to youth. He also is committed to continuing OSF's reputation for fostering new work with the production of at least one new play per season. Finally, "American Revolutions: the U.S. History Cycle"--inspired by Shakespeare's history plays—has been launched by Rauch and funded in part by grants from the Andrew W. Melon, Collins Family, and The Paul G. Allen Family Foundations.

Rauch is the recipient of the 2009 Margo Jones Award, founded by Inherit the Wind authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee and presented annually by Ohio State University. The award honors “that citizen-of-the theatre who has demonstrated a significant impact, understanding, and affirmation of the craft of playwriting, with a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of the living theatre everywhere.” Specifically, Rauch was recognized for his concept of writing plays in the context of an acting company, for working with established playwrights such as Lisa Loomer and Robert Schenkkan, for commissioning works by new ones such as Bill Cain and Sarah Ruhl, for launching a ten-year project to create 37 plays about American history, and for initiating the Black Swan Lab to develop new works for the stage.

Notes

Information from the archives of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Used with permission of Amy Richard, Media Relations.