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Featuring the Inaugural Artistic Director of The Perelman Performing Arts Center and former Artistic Director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Bill Rauch | he/him : Will is pleased to welcome Bill to this very special bonus episode. We begin by ruminating on the cyclical nature of storytelling feeding queerness and queerness feeding storytelling. Bill shares the trials and triumphs of being the first openly gay AD of
OSF while urging all listeners to see the potential for outreach in even the most abrasive feedback. Will asks Bill to consider how directing his lifelong passion project, 2018’s genderqueer OKLAHOMA!, has forever changed his artistry. With the coming of the Winter Solstice, Will asks Bill to look ahead and expound on the future of The Perelman before a surprising end of year tarot spread.
Join host Will Wilhelm (they/them) for an intimate chat and a tarot reading with America’s coolest and queerest theatre creators. Each episode, Will and their special guest create space to summon a brighter, bolder, binary-breaking future. As the candle burns low, Will offers a unique tarot reading that folds in Shakespeare’s sonnets. This podcast is your all-access hand stamp to the genderqueer party you never knew was all around you!
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Hello, dear hearts and lovers. Welcome to teacakes and Tarot conversations with queer futurists. I am your host, Will Wilhelm. Welcome to our final episode of the very first season of tea, cakes and tarot. Yay. I'm so, so glad you're here with us. And this is a very special episode indeed. Before we dive in, I want you to reconnect with yourself. Take a nice, deep breath. Think about something that made you grateful today, or think about something that made you feel tingly in a really exciting way and find yourself right here in the space between our very special friend who's occupying the space with us today has been a huge inspiration to both Aaron and myself. It was so exciting to have this lovely encounter with him. He was the founding artistic director of cornerstone theater company, based out of Los Angeles. He was the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare festival, and he will be the new founding artistic director of the Pearlman center at the crowds of the world trade center in New York City. My guest today is renowned director and number one sweet, softy bill Rash. Our conversation was originally recorded on December 10, 2020. 2s Hey, Will. How are you? I am so great. I'm so happy that you're here. I'm so happy that we get to do this together. Yeah. I'm just feeling grateful right now. How are you feeling?
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I feel grateful to be with
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you. 3s I want to dive right on into it. There are so many things that I want to talk to you about, but pared it down to a few things. To start with, I want to sort of jump in and talk a little bit about Journey. 2s I feel like as far as being a queer person who makes art and also just being a queer person who receives art for centuries, we sort of have this habit of translating stories to fit our own needs because we're not necessarily the target audience, 2s but 1s that's how we get things. Like, we hear Dorothy Gales think Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and we're like, okay, well, I can sort of map that onto my experience, even though that's not what was intended. And you've been an artistic director for your whole life, basically, you've been an artistic director for longer than you've been, like, publicly. And so I'm really curious to know especially I'm curious to know about your experience of translating and adapting 1s and sort of what your queerness gives to your storytelling and what your storytelling gives to your queerness and how that's changed over time.
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3:09
Great topic. Yeah. You know, you mentioned that I've been an artistic director longer than I've been out. And it's true in the early days of Cornerstone, my husband is a founding member of Cornerstone. So we were together 1s always. You know, we've been together since I was 21 and he was 19, and we we were together, but we were closeted in these small communities that we were working with. Not closeted to everybody, but closeted to a lot of people. We always found queer people in every community that we worked in, always. And I have to say that I was not out to my parents for a long time, for the first nine years of my relationship with my husband. And 1s it was a lot of straight allies. Alison Carey, who, you know, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, who 1s were so supportive and so 1s brave and so pushed. I think me and all of us and Cornerstone began to explore queer work within our body of work more and more overtly over the years. And I think a lot of that was, in a way, part of my coming up process 1s was through the work 1s and then the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I will just say 1s that I was accused so often by so many of our patrons of having a gay agenda. And it was always really interesting to navigate that accusation because it was always offered as a criticism, but I actually took it as a compliment 3s and would always try to frame I have a human agenda and the human agenda includes a queer agenda. Absolutely. But it was really interesting. I remember 1s I realize I'm probably not answering your
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question. No, this is all great,
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but I'm responding. 2s I remember after one of my first lectures at OSF, a patron came up to me and said to mention, your husband wants bye. In your talk was something that we could swallow, but to mention him twice was putting it in our faces, and that was so inappropriate. And we hope this is not a sign of things to come. And honest to God, doing the queer Oklahoma that you were such a glorious part of Will was in some ways a direct response. Response to being told that on the sidewalk in front of the Carpenter Hall,
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that that actually gave me more purpose and 1s more
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excitement about doing the work we needed to do together.
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What an amazing way to say thank you to our haters. Like, thank you so much for giving me the fire to prove you wrong.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah. I know you had so many experience. You had hate mail. There are a lot of people in the world 3s that feel like there is a way that it's supposed to be and not just audience members. Like, a lot of artists are like that. And to be frank, a lot of directors are like that. 1s Having worked in a room with you, you mentioned, like. 3s One of the things I love most about collaborating with you is that it's true collaboration that we spent truly just so much time hearing every single idea there was to be had. 1s But how do you sort of deal with like, artistic director is a very diplomatic position. So how do you deal with people 1s who just have ideas of, like, it has to be X, Y or Z? Do you ignore them? 1s How do you move forward from that point, whether it's like a designer or a producer or audience or whoever? 1s Well,
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I genuinely love people, and even
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when somebody expresses a point of view that I find offensive or that I think, oh, man, this is going to be a brick wall, I love the challenge of trying to find the common ground. 1s So actually it's another audience member story, and I think it's one, you know, will, but I'll share it for anybody else who's listening. When we did Oklahoma, I got a letter from a patron saying I have a long term most of patron. I've been coming for decades, but Oklahoma is my favorite and I'm so upset about what you're doing that I'm not going to come next season and protest because I don't want to give my money because I'm so upset. And so I reached out to her and I said, okay, first of all, why aren't you coming to Ashland and just seeing everything but Oklahoma? 1s And she said, oh, good point. And I said, and actually, given that it's your favorite musical, aren't you curious to see what we've done with it? And she said, well, because you personally invited me, I'll think about it. Maybe I'll come. And she came, and she and her husband saw it, and then I met with her in my office afterwards, and I said, what did you think? And she said, I had a shit eating grin on my face, Ace, from beginning to end. I loved every minute of it. And it would have been so easy to take that letter and crumple it up and dismiss her like there was a reach out in there, right, saying, I protest. I won't come. There was an effort to communicate. 3s You're right. You can't always win over the haters. But I think every
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yeah, it's always an opportunity to communicate more deeply and to learn something together. I really believe that and certainly everybody in the room. I'm a director. I'm an editor of other people's good ideas, and maybe I'll have a few ideas of my own that I'll be proud of, but ultimately, it's really about editing the brilliant contributions of everybody else in the room. And that's why I love directing. And being an artistic director is, like, a bigger expression of that because then you're inviting people into the artistic home that you're privileged to be part of, to realize their own visions, and it just gets more and more expensive. And that's why, as hard as it is to be an artistic director, that's why I've done it since I was virtually a
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kid. 2s Thank you for sharing that story. I did know that story. But also, hearing you say it, like, hearing you frame it in that way, I always think of you as, like, a person who makes space for a lot of people, but I think of it like, oh, you're making space for, like, the artist whose voices need to be heard and whose story needs to be told. And I'm just struck. I'm realizing, like, wow, Bill also makes space for people who, on paper, would be his enemy or his naysayer. And I'm just sort of like having my own realization of how potentially powerful that is, because I think I'm much quicker to the camp of, like, screw you by, 2s and it's much harder to try and engage with them. But also that's I think, like you said, where a lot of the magic happens. 3s You mentioned Oklahoma a few times, which yes was the show that we collaborated on and the way that that was presented to us and to the public was like, oh, this has sort of been Bill's like dream. He's been ruminating on this for a quarter of a century, 25 years in the making. And then we did it and it was really special and it did cause shit eating grins on the people who thought they would love of it and the people who thought they would hate it. But I'm curious if there's something 1s in realizing that sort of long held dream. Was there something that you learned or something that you gained in that process that you were like, oh, having had this experience, I will never ever go back. If there was an element that's like marked the pre Oklahoma years and the post Oklahoma years in Bill's art, I'm curious what it would be.
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Most of why I sat on it for 25 years was that I had become convinced that we would never get the permission of the Rogers and Hammerstein organization and that a state was going to be too conservative and that the idea was too radical for them to entertain it. But 2s as we did get the permission and as it did get closer, I realized that I was also and I know we talked about this a little bit in Ashland I was also battling. I had been out for so long and my husband and I have two kids and we're a very public gay couple in many ways. And I 1s was battling went into some internalized homophobia in terms of how deeply this project lived in my soul and how vulnerable I felt about it. 1s And 1s that I realized there was, like, internal shame going all the way back to childhood and my upbringing and all sorts of things and just the world, that white, supremacist, homophobic world that we live in, that 2s I had a lot of stuff to grapple with. So I think I came out on the other side of that project 3s less afraid to ask for permission, less afraid to 2s speak my truth about what a vision might be. And that doesn't mean I won't keep battling those demons, of course, because that's a lifelong journey. But something profound shifted. Absolutely. Absolutely.
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I'm so glad I remember that conversation. It was our first conversation long before we even started rehearsals. And I know that that show was therapeutic for me just to be in it and to have the experience. I know that it was therapeutic for a lot of our audience, and I'm glad to hear that it was very therapeutic for you.
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My daughter and I were just talking when I was helping her with homework, and I told her that I was about to do this conversation with you. And your role in Oklahoma was so impactful for her, and she was very excited to hear that I was talking to you 1s in particular.
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It was very sweet. Thank you. Tell her I say hi. 2s Okay. I have one more question. I want to look towards the future, because now you're about to, like you're about to again, like, create something where there currently is nothing, and you're introducing yourself and your artistry to, like, the Big Apple. And I'm really, really curious because you've been an artistic director your whole life, and you've always had to. 2s You're, like, you said, like, hurting a lot and, like, sort of making this huge potion of everyone's, different ingredients and sort of just, like, seasoning the soup and all these things. But I'm really curious, like, if you can imagine, you are embarking on this beautiful mission where you're creating this new theater company, and there's no board, there's no producer, there's no budget, there are no limitations. Basically, what is the thing you want to do from here on out and the thing you want to say and the mark? 1s What is this chapter for you and your artistic soul? 1s What
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a beautiful question.
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And
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I feel very clear about it. I got to say. I spent 20 years of my life co founding Cornerstone with the amazing Alison
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Carey. And
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Cornerstone's work was and still is about lovingly Handcrafting, a homemade work of art for a specific audience.
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And so the scale is very particular of that work. And then OSF, it was so amazing to be a temporary caretaker of a very historic, very large scaled institution and to see how we could collectively foreground more radical aesthetic impulses and foreground equity, diversity, inclusion, access in all of our decisionmaking. And so to be starting up something again, to be part of the beginning of something, my dearest dream is that that kind of community centered.
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Lovingly, handcrafting works of art that involve people from all walks of life and the scale
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of our
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marble cube with all the international, local, national, and international symbolic weight of building an art center at the World Trade Center, that somehow those things can be combined into something unique and special. So that's my dream, and that's what I signed up for. And let's check in in ten years and see how it's gone.
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I know that's exactly what's going to happen. And I personally and I know I speak for many other people, I cannot wait to see that realized as only you can 2s build. Can I give you a little reading? Yes. All right.
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17:39
Well, this is my first reading.
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I am going to take care of you. You have to do so little. I am going to let you know. We're going to switch our little scene and let you know what's happening. Excellent. So what I'm going to do is full tarot decks have, like, two parts. There's, like, four suits and 13 cards, like, a deck of cards, and then there's another 22 cards. They're called the major arcana. The other ones are called the minor arcana, and they sort of represent, like, the goalposts that we're sort of traveling through on the never ending circle of life. So I'm going to draw one card from those, and then I'm going to draw one of Shakespeare's sonnets, which is our own little spin on it. The only thing you have to do is I would love if you could set an intention, anything that you want greater clarity on. 1s Yeah. It could be a question or a word or a phrase or a color or absolutely anything.
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18:49
Can it be a bunch of
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words? Yes, it can. Not too many. Not for as little as you want. You are reading
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and you want to hear that now?
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I would love to, if you don't mind. Whatever you feel comfortable sharing.
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Post pandemic 1s artistic dreams, 2s personal, field
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wide.
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Will some of those be realized?
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19:16
Post pandemic artistic dreams? Personal, field wide. Will some of those be realized? Personal
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and field wide. Yes.
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Personal and field wide. Okay, so I've been shuffling these cards, and now I'm sort of sort of bring them on screen a little bit
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19:32
because I don't know if there'll be a chance. I've been reading also the chat, and there have been so many really lovely comments. And I'd just want to thank people for what they've contributed.
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19:43
Yes, thank you. I love seeing all the chat and people telling us where they're from. 1s I can't really respond to it while we're doing this, but I do see you all and love you all. And thank you. Bye. 2s Yeah. Okay. So whenever you're ready, I'm just going to keep cutting and shuffling this deck, and then when it feels like the right time, say stop, and the top card will be yours. 4s Stop. 3s All right, I'm going to amend this a little bit, only because I don't know if you saw it on screen, but one of the cards flew out of the deck on their own because I was glumsy. So we're going to give two cards because this one clearly had something to say to you. 1s All right. Oh, my God, this is fun. 2s So 2s I'm going to start with the card that was on the top, 1s and that card is the fool, which is much lovelier than it sounds. 1s The fool is the first card in the major arcana. It's like the major arcana is the Fool's journey, and the fool actually represents joy and the embarking on new adventures. He is fearless and there is nothing but possibility. And the fool is, like, deeply optimistic and not afraid of risk and is just traveling with this little bag 2s of whatever meager possessions they have to start their journey. 1s And the card that jumped out of the deck while he was doing that, which I'm so glad I did, is actually the very next card in the arcana. It's the magician and the magician. 2s Basically controls all of the elements in a way that they're all powerful, in that they are able to channel energy through the sky into the ground. They're creative, they're resourceful, they have so many things, they're deeply prepared. 2s But the fool journey, the first stop, is the majority magician, because they manifest strength and give direction and guidance. So this is fun, and I'm going to talk about them more like in tandem with the Sonic I'm about to read. And we're going to do same thing, 1s just shuffling the deck, and then you let me know 2s when you're ready to stop. 5s Stop, 1s please. 4s All right. Are you ready? Yeah. This is psalnet. 46. 3s Mine I and heart are at a mortal war. How to divide the conquest of thy sight? Mine I my heart thy pictures sight would bar my heart mine I the freedom of that right. My heart doth plea that thou and him DOST lie a closet never pierced with crystal eyes but the defendant doth thou plead, deny and says in him thy fair appearance lies to side. This title is impaneled a quest of thoughts all tenants to the heart and by their verdict is determined the clear eyes moiety and the dear heart's part as thus mine eyes do is thine outward part and my heart's right. Thy inward love of heart 2s I love when Shakespeare gets into like full courtroom scene and this debate that the eye and the heart are having over, like, 3s who gets to consume the thing that they still love 1s and eventually they make a little compromise and they divvy it up. It's so dense. I'm going to read it again. 4s Mine I and heart are at the mortal war. How to divine the conquest of thy sight? Mine I my heart thy pictures sight would bar my heart. Mine I the freedom of thou right my heart doth plead that thou and him DOST lie a closet never pierced with crystal eyes. But the defendant DOST thou plead deny and says in him thy fair appearance lies decide. This title is impaneled a quest of thoughts all tenant to the heart and by their verdict is determined the clear eyes moie and the dear hearts part. As thus mine eyes view is thine outward part and my heart's right thine inward love of hearts. 3s So sonic 46 The Fool, the Magician before I get
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something you may not
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know is that
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one unfulfilled dream project that I've had in my heart for a long time is a version of the Sonnets on
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stage. 2s I
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feel like this tonight is a blessing on that and on the holiday season. And it's just such a joy to be with you.
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It's incredible. Is there anything about those three pieces that you respond to? Before I wrap this all up?
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I'm going to dream about all three of those pieces
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tonight. Yay. I'll tell you in the morning. Perfect. 1s I would say. 5s Between the two cars and the song at the pool, the magician and son at 46 and thinking about 1s the future, you're about to embark on this huge journey. I know you've had, like, we were talking before this. This is the first time you've ever, like, not actively been creating, like, literally in a rehearsal room. And I know it feels like so far into your career and so many accomplishments, like, you're somehow at a beginning again. 1s But I love that the magician comes right after, because I think you've just like you said, you've had all of these experiences, and you've channeled so much energy for so many people 1s and this beautiful, beautiful sonnet about 2s I don't even know what I want to see or how I want to feel. But I know that you have always been able to create the perfect marriage of those two things for your audiences and for the many artists who get to work with you. And, yeah, on a personal note, I think this project would certainly not be happening, especially not in the way that it is without your presence in my life. So I am very grateful 2s to be a part of the legacy that is your work, and I'm grateful that the legacy that will one day be my work very much has a big first chapter with you. And I think we're all really excited to see 1s what comes of the fool's journey and the first steps that you're about to take.
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I'm so touched, Will, and I just hope it's not only the first chapter, but later chapters,
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too. Oh, I'm writing we're writing these chapters. 2s Good. I very much agree and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and this is really lovely and yeah, I'll talk to you again soon. I
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love what you've created and I'm so honored to be part of it.
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27:54
Yes, Phil Rash, everyone. It is really moving to me to listen to someone at that stage in his career, at the point where he's been nominated for a Tony Award directed on Broadway, led all of these companies directed countless productions, are a huge cornerstone lol of our theater community. And to have that person still say, I am continuing to learn lessons about how to create and how to present myself. And the lesson that I am still learning in this day and age is how to go forward without asking for permission, how to be able to do my own thing and not worry about out everyone who is going to try to tell me that that's not possible, that's not interesting, that's not appropriate, and really cool and like. Sort of personally moving that. I think I was learning that same thing in that rehearsal room, in the Oklahoma rehearsal room. You've heard from other people who are in that room. You've heard from Jordan barbour, christian denzel buford, and Lynne valdivia. We were all in that room with Bill roush. Yeah, I think we were going through that process altogether of learning how to drop whatever nonsense we thought was not welcome, we thought was not desired, especially as queer people. All of us. All of us that were in that room have spent so much time feeling the need to apologize for who we are. When we take up space, it's with a question mark at the end of it like, this is okay, right? I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to be a vocally, visibly queer person, and I hope that no one's going to jump up and try and tear me down for that. All of us in that room and there were plenty of straight people in that room, by the way, but especially for the queer people in that room, all of us were dropping all of those barriers. We were letting all of that unnecessary armor fall to the wayside, and we were just creating, and we were creating with love. Like it was all about love. Listening to bill, whether that was the first time you've heard him speak or if you've heard him speak many times, you know he is all about leading with love, and he does it so damn well. And just to add to that creation experience, I loved it so much, but I'm making it seem like it was some utopia. And we had a lot of questions and conversations about utopia in the rehearsal room as well. You. 1s That paradigm shift where all of the queer people were given the space to not feel like they were on the sidelines any longer and to insert themselves into the center of something so American and so classic. It was really exciting to do, but it didn't come. I'm making it sound like the easiest thing in the world. It's a big thing. Bill touched on it when he realized that he had to address a lot of internalized homophobia during that process. We were all addressing all of the things that came out of that paradigm shift. It was a really welcome exploration. It was a really needed exploration. It was a really transformative exploration for us as the queer people in that room. I wish we all had space to do that. We all meaning all queer artists, all queer theater makers. It took a lot of infrastructure and time and money and clout to be able to get to that space. And I think that's a space we should all be able to access very easily. Maybe it is a space that's easier to access when we are doing a passion project and we're a group of friends and we're performing Shakespeare in the park. But I am saying, like, that leadership style with openness, authenticity, and love can and should be infused into any space where we create any space where we give each other and an audience the gift of live theater. And if that is not the thesis statement of this podcast, I just don't know what is. 2s Speaking of leading with love, I am thinking about rounding out this first season of tea, cakes and tarot with a beautiful reminder that Bill gave us and me to identify reach outs, even when they don't look like that. He was able to identify that sort of ask for a communication or ask for connection, even when it looked kind of hostile. He identified that as an opportunity. 2s He led with love when he was met with adversity. To be fair, I really do not think that that is 100% of the time possible. I'm going to acknowledge that a lot of time, a lot of times when there is adversity, you do need to sort of close off, protect yourself and be like, goodbye. No, I know that that survival and self protection is a part of my defense mechanism to hold those people at arms length, to cross the street, to run away sometimes. But Bill challenged himself in that moment, knowing that either he was in the position of power or his safety was not jeopardized. But he saw the opportunity when he could ignore, ignore and deflect, and he chose to try to make a positive impact. And I really think he did not know whether or not it would work. 1s But he tried anyway. I spend a lot of energy talking to my own community, talking to people outside my community about the experiences within my community. And I do focus a lot of my effort on the people with genuine asks and genuine questions or buy ins or whatever it is. There are times when I see people sort of trying to poke holes in the reasoning, or I just see them approaching the conversations without much kindness. And I'm a little quick to be like, I am not giving my energy to this person today. No, ma'am. And I'm really struck, especially in our country, that's so polarized 2s that Bill found a way to address that person when he'd had the ability to, and he made an impact. I think he changed someone's mind. Isn't that what we're trying to do all the time? We're, like, trying to get people to open up their minds and open up their hearts. And he did it by not running away from that interaction. And if there's one reminder we can all take from Mr. Bill Roush right now, let's search for the hidden invitations. Even when they're in scary packaging, there's some really cool bravery in meeting those head on and still trying to turn those into an opportunity for community building. Still trying to turn those into an opportunity to let your light shine through and invite someone, welcome someone into that, give them the chance, and then it's up to them. That sounds like an idyllic situation. That's not always possible. But I'm realizing sometimes, even if it's only once in a while. 1s It is possible. Let's think about that this summer as we all get back to reopening. How can we have a positive impact, even just once in a while when we're met with Adversity? Even if we try to do that and we're in a situation where the other party is not willing to receive, that, is not interested, is not trying, then maybe we can congratulate ourselves. You really did it. You really tried. And we can focus our energy more inwards on loving each other, loving our community, loving ourselves, our people. And even if the people on the outside didn't learn from our reach out to them, I think they'll learn from observing how we love each other, how we take care of each other, and how we take care of ourselves. I know I sound like a broken record some of the time because I'm constantly screaming like, hashtag, be your authentic self. But it bears repeating over and over and over again. And please recognize that you doing that is a gift to everyone else who witnesses. Your authentic self is giving a gift to the people who love it and the people who hate it. The people who hate it just don't know yet. And they're jealous that they can't be their authentic self as well. Give them an example. 2s Keeps laying. So, all that said, Bill Roush, you're a real one. Thanks for the inspo. Thanks for all the gifts that you give me, because I think you give a lot of gifts to a lot of people, artists and audience alike. And it's taught me a lot. It's taught me a lot. I said it. Then I'm going to say it again. This podcast would not be in your ears if that man were not in my life. So just given credit where it's due. Speaking of credit where it's due oh, my God, I'm so lucky to have the best team. Thank you to my partner in crime, the person who I feel like I'm in a second relationship with, my co creator, Erin Murray. Thank you to our incredible producer, Olina Hodges and the Island Shakespeare Festival, and my babes, Ray, katherine Morgan, our graphic designer, and Orion Schwalm, our sound engineer. This has been season one of Tea, Cakes and Tarot and know that we have been going forward having more enlightening conversations with amazing queer futurists. So more content is coming at you soon. If you want to stay in touch with me and with us, you can follow us on Instagram. My personal account is at w wilhelm. And we have our newly released Tea, cakes and Taro account at tea, Cakes and tarot? See you there. Follow us for more info and updates. Also, thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed your experience, which I really hope you did, please smash that subscribe button and give us a rate and a review. Thank you very much before I wish you goodbye for the summer. Here we go once more with Sonnet 46. 2s Mine I and heart are at a mortal war. How to divide the conquest of thy sight? Mine I my heart, thy pictures sight would bar my heart. Mine I the freedom of that right. My heart doth plead that thou in him DOST lie a closet never pierced with crystal eyes. But the defendant doth that plead, deny and says in him thy fair appear appearance lies decide. This title is impaneled a quest of thoughts. All tenants to the heart and by their verdict is determined the clear eyes moiety and the dear heart's part. As thus mine eyes to you is thine outward part and my heart's right. Thine inward love of heart 2s obey. Be. Thank you for being here with me. Always remember you don't ever need to apologize for being exactly who you are because that person is what the world needs. 1s Until the next time. 1s Keep on shining.