OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch to Receive Margo Jones Award, 10/24

Artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Bill Rauch, is the confirmed recipient of the 2009 Margo Jones Award.  He will be awarded the prize in a closed ceremony at the Ashland Springs Hotel on October 24.

The award is given annually to a theater artist who has makes a significant impact to the theater community, has demonstrated a talent for playwriting and demonstrates a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of theater.

Rauch 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.  He has been the artistic director of OSF since 2007. While at the OSF, Rauch has worked with playwrights including Lisa Loomer, Robert Schenkkan, Octavio Solis, Bill Cain, Sarah Ruhl, Jeff Whitty, Culture Clash, and Julie Marie Myatt. At OSF he has established American Revolutions: the U.S. History Cycle, a 10-year project to produce 37 plays about significant moments in American history.

The Margo Jones Medal commemorates one of the pioneers of the American professional regional theatre movement. The award was created in the spirit of theater maverick Margo Jones (1912-1955), an influential American stage director and producer. Best known for launching the American regional theater movement and for introducing the theater-in-the-round concept in Dallas, Texas, in 1947, she established the first regional professional company when she opened Theatre '47 in Dallas. Of the 85 plays Jones staged during her Dallas career, 57 were new, and one-third of those new plays had a continued life on stage, television and radio.