Anonymous Movie Response: Bill Rauch

Columbia Pictures new movie Anonymous has been creating a revived buzz about Shakespeare and the authorship debate.  In response, CSC has asked a few theatre artists and academics to weigh in on the topic. We asked:

1)      What was your first exposure to Shakespeare’s work?

2)      What are your thoughts on who wrote the plays widely attributed to Shakespeare and why?

Response from Bill Rauch*

When I was in seventh grade, I was bussed to see Yale Repertory Theatre's production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. It changed my life, which is part of why I am so passionate about the large student audiences attending our shows here at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In eighth grade, I staged my own adaptation of MIDSUMMER with that year's seventh
graders, my first attempt to direct. Ever since, Shakespeare's work has been at the heart of my artistic life.

I am quite confident that the man from Stratford wrote the plays. I spent twenty years of my career working with low-income rural and urban communities through Cornerstone Theater Company, and so I completely reject the notion that a literary genius cannot come from relatively humble means. It is also very clear from the texts themselves that the plays were written in a deep collaboration with a theater company with an acting company at its heart. It just shouts off the page of every scene that the author did not write at an isolated remove but was creating alongside the actors who originated the roles.

*Bill Rauch currently serves as the Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. 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.