Bill Rauch is a theater director and, since 2007, has been artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 1986 he cofounded Cornerstone Theater Company, where he was artistic director until 2006. It became one of the nation’s foremost community-based arts organizations, staging plays in underserved rural and inner-city areas with first-time artists onstage and backstage, generating stories with and from those communities. He has also directed at regional theaters such as Arena Stage, the Guthrie Theater, and Yale Repertory Theatre. In Oregon, Rauch is at the helm of the largest rotating repertory theater in the country, where he oversees an eclectic program of the classics and new commissions, including projects from Ping Chong, Lynn Nottage, as well as others, and a series of new plays on the theme of American revolutions.