Rau ’05 Directs Comedy at Two Summer Play Festivals in NYC

David LowJuly 14, 20092min

Michael Rau ’05 is the director of the play Evanston: A Rare Comedy by Michael Yates Crowley at the Undergroundzero Festival at P.S. 122 (150 First Ave.) July 14–17 and at the Summer Sublet Series at HERE! Arts Center 145 Sixth Ave., between Spring and Broome Streets, enter on Dominick Street) Aug.  3–5 in New York City.

Presented by Wolf 359, Evanston: A Rare Comedy begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl in deepest suburbia and ends when a meeting of The Evanston Women’s Book Club goes horribly awry. In between, a transgender student dreams of death, a housewife dreams of Mexico, an economics professor has an affair with a Whole Foods check-out clerk, and the financial crisis rages on. The latest show from the Wolf 359 team is inspired by the words of Psalm 137 and the streets of Evanston, Ill.

Wolf 359, founded in 2007 by playwright Crowley and director Rau, is dedicated to radical new theater. Its last show, The Ted Haggard Monologues, was a New York Magazine Critic’s Pick and was filmed by HBO and presented in Germany as part of a festival of new American plays. Crowley and Rau are currently artists-in-residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City, where their adaptation of Gilgamesh, titled Rag Fur Blood Bone, was performed in March 2009.

Performances of Evanston: A Rare Comedy at P.S. 122:
July 14, 15, 16 at 9:30 p.m.
July 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: Call 212-352-3101 or visit http://www.ps122.org

Performances at HERE! Arts Center:
August 3, 4, 5 at 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: Call 212-352-3101 or visit www.here.org