Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand Giving Thanks to the Godhead (In the Lydian Mode)

About Wolf 359
Founded by playwright Michael Yates Crowley and director Michael Rau, Wolf 359 is known for highly original works that take on everything from Wall Street to gay Evangelicals. Their production Righteous Money was hailed as “a seductive and poetic tour de force,” by New York Theater Review and “an example of that sublime and uncommon marriage of good acting with good material,” by EDGE Magazine. Evanston: A Rare Comedy was chosen for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference (spake the Huffington Post: “Prepare to be rocked!”). The Ted Haggard Monologues was a New York Magazine Critic’s Pick and was filmed by HBO.

Michael Yates Crowley is a Brooklyn-based playwright and performer. His work has been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Edinburgh, among other cities. His plays include Evanston: A Rare Comedy (selected for the 2013 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference; 2015 Alliance/Kendeda Prize Finalist; developed at the Orchard Project); The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias (UMASS New Play Lab 2015); The Tourists (2013 NNPN/Kennedy Center workshop); Righteous Money (produced at 3-Legged-Dog, 59E59 Theaters; toured to the Edinburgh Fringe and theaters in Germany); and The Ted Haggard Monologues (published by S. Fischer Verlag in Germany; filmed by HBO and adapted for feature film by Harmonium Films & Music). In New York, his work has been produced at Joe’s Pub/The Public Theater, PS 122, HERE Arts Center, 3LD, Dixon Place, the Bushwick Starr, and Ars Nova. He is a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow (2014-2015), a graduate of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and former Artist-in-Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Crowley was a Fellow in Playwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

Michael Rau is a live performance director specializing in new plays, opera, and digital media projects. Since 2008 he has been working internationally in Germany, the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the Czech Republic. He recently made his German language-directing premiere at Theater Bielefeld. He has also created work in New York City at The Public Theater, PS122, The Culture Project, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, 59E59, 3LD and Dixon Place. He has directed productions regionally at the American Repertory Theater, in Cambridge, MA, Chicago and Cleveland, and was a guest artist at Wesleyan University in 2011. He has developed and directed new plays at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Lark and New York Theater Workshop. His recent work includes the world premiere of Petr Kotik’s opera Mistrovská díla at the Jiří Myron Theatre in Ostrava, Czech Republic. His devised work includes the games we used to play, which took first place at Les Fêtes théâtrales du Suroît; Absent, which used the entire span of the Detroit-Superior Bridge in downtown Cleveland; Four Saints in Three Acts, which was selected as a noteworthy production of the 2008 Opera America Director/Designer Showcase; and The Great God Brown, which was exhibited as part of the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Rau was the 2014 artist-in-residence at E|MERGE, and is a recipient of the Likachev Foundation fellowship, the Willard Fellowship at Columbia University, the Kennedy Center Directing Fellowship, the New Play Network Directing Fellowship and the TCG National Conference Grant. He was an Artist-in-Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center for three years, and has taught at New York University, Wesleyan University, Columbia University, the Kennedy Center, and Baltimore’s Strand Theater. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a graduate of Wesleyan University and received his MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University.