Michael Rau is a dynamic young American theater director specializing in new plays, re-imagined classics, and opera.
Michael Rau (Director) is a live performance director specializing in new plays, opera, and digital media projects. He has directed projects internationally in Germany, the UK, Brazil, Ireland, Denmark, Mexico, Canada, Australia and the Czech Republic. He has created work in New York City at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, PS122, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, 59E59, 3LD, and Dixon Place. Regionally, his work has been seen the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, and the Humana Festival at Actors Theater of Louisville.
His work with composer Kate Soper has been performed at the Seattle Symphony, Smith College, and The New York Festival of Song at the Dimenna Center. He has developed new plays at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Realm and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. His production of "temping" was selected by the Guardian and the Telegraph as one of the best productions of the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the piece was featured twice in New York Times.
He is a recipient of a 2021 Artists + Machine Intelligence Research Award from Google, as well as fellowships from the Likhachev Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the National New Play Network. He has been a resident artist at the Orchard Project, E|MERGE, and the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Rau is a Forward/Story fellow and a speaker at Books in Browsers, Performing Robots and StoryCode. He has been an assistant director for Francesca Zambello, John Turturro, Robert Woodruff and associate director for Anne Bogart, Les Waters, and Ivo Van Hove.
He is a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and received his MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University. At Stanford, he is an affiliate faculty member with the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, and within TAPS serves as the head for the Theater-Making Concentration as well as the Artistic Director for the department.
Die Fledermaus (Strauss) Liebeslieder Waltzes (Brahms)
Evanston: A Rare Comedy (Crowley) The Ted Haggard Monologues |
NYU Steinhardt School of Music |
2011 |
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Aida |
Francesca Zambello Anne Bogart |
Santa Barbara Opera Glimmerglass Fest. |
2013 2011 |
RIGHTEOUS MONEY - “A poetic and seductive tour-de-force...Go see this show!”
NYTHEATRE.COM, 2010
WAS ÜBRIG BLEIBT - “Director Michael Rau and Dramaturge Katrin Michael have set the women's roles to be played by men. This could easily look ridiculous but here it works. The absurdity of the family becomes even more apparent...A piece to laugh, then think, full of cynicism, exaggeration of clichés, and bitter humor.”
NEUE WESTFÄLISCHE, 2010
EVANSTON: A RARE COMEDY - “Michael Rau's direction is as smart and crisp as could be hoped for, with the characters only leaving the playing space to sit on its edge, still on stage, either reading or staring out longingly into space...this is show not to be missed.”
Joshua Conkel, NYTHEATRE.COM, 2009
THE TED HAGGARD MONOLOGUES - “Michael Rau's staging is tight and effective...and the monologues are alternately funny, touching, and provocative.”
Martin Denton, NYTHEATRE.COM, 2007
THE TED HAGGARD MONOLOGUES - “Director Michael Rau has done a great job of creating simple but effective staging...even once the show started, it felt very collegial and intimate. That kind of summed up the overall vibe of the show: low-key, laid-back, bare-bones and enjoyable. The Ted Haggard Monologues is a very promising debut from a very gifted group of young artists.”
Andy Horowitz, CULTUREBOT, 2007
THE GAMES WE USED TO PLAY - “This powerful and intimate show was one of the more thoughtful gifts Wesleyan audiences have received. It was a chilling gift, a gift of noir uncertainty and unexplainably quickened pulses.”
Liz Thaler, THE WESLEYAN ARGUS, 2004
