Michael Rau is a dynamic young American theater director specializing in new plays, re-imagined classics, and opera.
Mr. Rau made his opera directing debut at San Francisco Opera (2007) assisting Robert Woodruff in Philip Glass’ Appomattox. The following year he was Assistant Director for Anne Bogart’s production of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at Glimmerglass Opera where he returned (2011) for Carmen (dir. Bogart), Later the Same Evening (dir. Leon Major), and Francesca Zambello’s world premiere staging of Jeanine Tesori/Tony Kushner’s A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck. For New York University he directed Die Fledermaus, Weill’s Down in the Valley, and Amahl and the Night Visitors, as well as creating four fully staged operas based on song cycles by Brahms, Bach, Ravel, and Hugo Wolf. This season he returns to NYU to direct Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon. His collaborative work with Francesca Zambello continues in 2012 on her new productions of Aida at Glimmerglass and Show Boat at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
As a theater stage director, Mr. Rau has premiered numerous works including The Games We Used to Play (co-created with Max Goldblatt) at Les Fêtes Théâtrales du Suroît, and Absent (with Jeremy Paul) which used the entire span of the Detroit-Superior Bridge in downtown Cleveland. His staging of O’Neill’s The Great God Brown was exhibited at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. He directed the German-language premiere at Theater Bielefeld, Germany of Thomas Bradshaw’s Was Übrig bleibt (The Bereaved). He has frequently created theater work in cutting-edge venues in New York City at PS122, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, 59E59 and Dixon Place.
Michael Rau is the Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Wolf 359 with playwright Michael Yates Crowley. Since 2009 their production of Righteous Money has toured to Berlin, Edinburgh, Dublin and, after receiving critical acclaim, had two successful runs in New York City. In 2012 the production returns to NYC and goes to Mülheim, Germany. The Ted Haggard Monologues, selected “Critics Pick” by New York Magazine, was filmed by HBO and awarded the undergroundzero prize for Artistic Excellence.
Michael Rau is a recipient of the Willard Fellowship from Columbia University, as well as other prestigious awards such as the Kennedy Center Directing Fellowship, the New Play Network Directing Fellowship, and a TCG National Conference Grant. His interpretation of Virgil Thompson’s Four Saints in Three Acts was selected as a “noteworthy production” of the 2008 OPERA America Director-Designer Showcase. He was an Artist-in-Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center and held a Guest Artist residency at Wesleyan University. He has been on the faculty of the Steinhardt School of Music at NYU since 2008 and is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Michael Rau a graduate of Wesleyan University (2005) and holds an MFA degree in Theater Directing from Columbia University (2008).
Die Fledermaus (Strauss) Liebeslieder Waltzes (Brahms)
Evanston: A Rare Comedy (Crowley) The Ted Haggard Monologues |
NYU Steinhardt School of Music |
2011 |
|
Show Boat |
Francesca Zambello Anne Bogart |
Lyric Opera of Chicago Glimmerglass Fest. |
2013 2011 |
