[2] Previously, Rauch served as the fifth artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), from June 2007 through August 2019, where he commissioned several critically acclaimed, diverse plays that transferred to Broadway including Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, Paula Vogel’s Indecent, Robert Schenkkan’s Tony Award-winning All The Way, the Go Go's musical Head Over Heels, and Robert Schenkkan's All The Way sequel, The Great Society.
Rauch co-founded the community-based, touring Cornerstone Theater Company in 1986 with Alison Carey, where he directed more than 40 productions, most of them collaborations with diverse rural and urban communities across the United States, and served as artistic director from 1986 to 2006.
"[7] In 2004, Rauch collaborated with playwright José Cruz González to adapt Washington Irving's story, "Rip Van Winkle" into Waking Up in Lost Hills.
[9] As visiting director at OSF, Rauch directed Handler (2002), Hedda Gabler (2003), The Comedy of Errors (2004), By the Waters of Babylon (2005), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (2006), and Romeo and Juliet (2007).
The Green Show (free, pre-show entertainment) had "hosted Renaissance dancers and Elizabethan music," and under Rauch's tenure, they expanded it to "include an ever-rotating bill of fare of artists from our own region and as far away as Mexico City or New York.
"[10] In 2015, OSF launched the inaugural sessions of "artEquity, a facilitator training initiative on inclusion and equity issues for theatre companies nationwide.
[13] During his 17 seasons at OSF, Rauch directed nine world premieres including, Mother Road, La Comedia of Errors, Off the Rails, Roe, Fingersmith, The Great Society, All the Way, Equivocation and By the Waters of Babylon.
[17] Rauch directed several OSF plays at other theaters, including Equivocation, All the Way and The Great Society at Seattle Rep; The Pirates of Penzance at Portland Opera; Mother Road, Equivocation, A Community Carol, and Roe at Arena Stage; Roe at Berkeley Rep; Othello, Fingersmith, and All the Way at the American Repertory Theater for which he twice won the Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) award for Best Director.
[20] Rauch has directed a number of world premieres, including Naomi Wallace's Night is a Room at New York's Signature Theatre;[21] The Body of an American at Portland Center Stage[22] which, along with All the Way, was co-winner of the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History;[23] The Clean House at Yale Repertory Theatre; and Living Out and For Here or To Go?
In 2019, Rauch again worked with Schenkkan on The Great Society, the sequel to All the Way, which ran for a twelve week limited-engagement on Broadway at The Vivian Beaumont Theater, beginning September 6, 2019.
Rauch launched the Cornerstone Institute, an international model for training activist artists that "teaches participants its community-engaged aesthetic by mounting an original production".