The Block

Who’s Who Behind the Scenes

MICHAEL YATES CROWLEY (Writer) is a writer and co-founder of the narrative technology company Wolf 359. Based in Brooklyn, his work for theater has been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, Munich, Edinburgh, and Dublin, among other cities. His plays include The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B Matthias (Playwrights Realm at The Duke on 42nd Street), Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand… (the Public Theater, A.R.T./Harvard), The Ted Haggard Monologues (published by S. Fischer Verlag; filmed by HBO); and TEMPING, which has been performed over 1,000 times at venues including Lincoln Center, American Repertory Theater, and three sold-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Honors: 2025 WELT/BÜHNE Residency at Residenz theater Munich, 2024 Fellow at the Academy for Theater and Digitality (Germany), New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting fellowship, Playwrights Realm Page One residency, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Millay Colony residency, Artist-in-Residence at Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Education: Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

MICHAEL RAU (Director) is a live performance director specializing in new plays, opera, and digital media projects. He has directed projects internationally in Germany, the UK, Brazil, Ireland, Denmark, Mexico, Canada, Australia and the Czech Republic. New York City credits include: Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, PS122, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, 59E59, and Dixon Place. Regional credits include: American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, and the Humana Festival at Actors Theater of Louisville. His work with composer Kate Soper has been performed at the Seattle Symphony, The New York Festival of Song, and the New York Philharmonic. He has developed new plays at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Realm and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. His production of Temping was selected by the Guardian and the Telegraph as one of the best productions of the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the piece was featured twice in the New York Times.

He is a recipient of a 2021 Artists + Machine Intelligence Research Award from Google, as well as fellowships from the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität, the Kennedy Center, and the National New Play Network. He has been a resident artist at the Orchard Project, E|MERGE, and the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Rau is a Forward/Story fellow and a speaker at Books in Browsers, Performing Robots and StoryCode. He has been an assistant director for Francesca Zambello, John Turturro, Robert Woodruff and associate director for Anne Bogart, Les Waters, and Ivo Van Hove. He is a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and received his MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University. At Stanford, he is an affiliate faculty member with the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, and within TAPS serves as the head for the Theater-Making Concentration as well as the Artistic Director for the department.

SARA C WALSH (Designer Consultant) is an interdisciplinary theatre artist, designer and teacher. She is a member of Wolf 359 in New York and has designed nearly everything Wolf 359 has created including Evanston, Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand…, and TEMPING (recently at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia, and for 3 sold out years at the Edinburgh Fringe). Sara is also a puppet builder, performer and director, having developed work at St Ann’s Puppetlab and the Object Movement Puppetry Festival (in New York City), and most recently designed and directed puppets for a production of Caucasian Chalk Circle at University of Washington in Seattle. Her scenic designs have been presented at numerous venues in New York City, including The Public, PS122, HERE Arts Center, The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, WP, The Chocolate Factory and Classic Stage Company; as well as across the country including Seattle Rep, A.R.T., The Wexner Center, Geva, Northern Stage, and the The San Diego Museum of Art. She is currently Associate Designer on a new opera with Basil Twist, The Monkey King, at San Francisco Opera. B.A. Loyola University Chicago. M.F.A. New York University, Tisch School of Design. Assistant Professor at University of Washington.

ASA WEMBER (Designer Consultant) is a sound and media systems designer for live theatre and interdisciplinary narrative experiences. Originally from Annapolis MD, he is currently based in Washington Heights, New York City.

KATHERINE KOVNER (Dramaturg Consultant) is a dramaturg and The Founding Artistic Director of The Playwrights Realm, an Off Broadway Theater Company currently in its 19th season; The Realm is devoted to early career playwrights and has been recognized with a special OBIE award for “its dedication to risk-taking new plays”. As a dramaturg Katherine has worked on many plays at The Realm, and at other theaters including New York Theatre Workshop, Actors Theater of Louisville, and most recently as the cycle dramaturg at The Huntington for Mfoniso Udofia’s nine-play The Ufot Cycle being produced across Boston over the 2024-2026 seasons. She is a member of Wolf 359 and a graduate of Brown University.

MADELINE M. SCOTT she/her (Stage Manager) is thrilled to be back at Paramount after collaborating on the stage management teams of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Billy Elliot, Next to Normal, and Fun Home. Chicago credits include the premieres of Boulevard of Bold Dreams (Timeline Theatre Company), Somewhere Over the Border (Teatro Vista), and Sons of Hollywood (Windy City Playhouse). Regional: The Adrienne Arsht Center, Children’s Theatre Company, Court Theatre, First Stage, Joffrey Ballet’s Grainger Academy, and Seattle Children’s Theatre.

KARA DAVIDSON she/her (Director of New Works and Associate Artistic Producer) Kara Davidson is a Chicago-based playwright, director, and performer, and joined the Paramount team as the Director of New Works in 2023. Previously, she was the Producer of the NOW Lab at the Omaha Playhouse and the co-director/co-founder of The Lab Chicago. Other Chicago and Regional credits include work with Lookingglass Theater Company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The House Theatre of Chicago, Manual Cinema, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Adrienne Arsht Center, Red Theater, The Plagiarists, and A.B.L.E. Ensemble.

JIM CORTI he/him (Artistic Director) is a Joseph Jefferson Award winning actor, director, and choreographer. He inaugurated Paramount’s Broadway Series with Tim Rater in fall of 2011, and by 2023, Paramount became the largest subscription-based theatre in the country, and soon became Jeff Award eligible in 2015, garnering 71 nominations with 20 wins in 3 years, including Best Musical awards for Les Misérables, West Side Story, and Sweeney Todd, which he directed. Recent collaborations: Fun Home, Into the Woods, Next to Normal, A Streetcar Named Desire, Million Dollar Quartet, The Full Monty and True West.

TIM RATER he/him (President & CEO) has been with Paramount Theatre since 2010. Under Tim’s leadership, the productions at Paramount Theatre, RiverEdge Park, Copley Theatre, Stolp Island Theatre, and the Paramount School of the Arts have helped establish downtown Aurora as an entertainment destination. Tim and his team continue to expand the artistic and institutional boundaries and strive for new ways to energize downtown Aurora. With love, as always, to Bridgette, Alana and Evan.