Art in the Metropolis
Special Deadline: October 24, 2025.
Eligibility
Open to all undergrad levels.
Prerequisites
Please note, because this seminar involves a trip to New York over spring break, it has a special application process outside of the IntroSems' VCA. Review the course description below for more information and important links. Students may apply for the Winter Quarter seminar between September 23 and October 24, 2025.
Course Description
This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the trip (and vice versa). The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. For further details and updates about the trip, please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website.
In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we’ll encounter in person during our stay in New York. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about and responding creatively to the art that interests and engages us.
The Arts Immersion trip is subsidized by an Arts Institute endowment, but students are responsible for some minimal on-site costs. Details are available on the Arts Immersion website.
Please note, this seminar has a special application process and deadline of October 24, 2025. Visit the Arts Immersion website to learn more and subscribe to the Arts Update for updates and info session announcements.
Apply here by October 24, 2025 to be considered for the trip and enrollment in the Winter Quarter IntroSem. If admitted, students must reserve 3 units of space on their Winter study list for the IntroSem.
- Applications Open: September 23
- Info Session: October 8
- Apply by: October 24
- Acceptance Notification: November 14
- Student Participation Agreements Due: November 21
- Travel to New York: March 21–28, 2026
Meet the Instructor: Michael Rau
Michael Rau 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. He has created work in New York City at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, PS122, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, 59E59, 3LD, and Dixon Place. Regionally, his work has been featured at the 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, Smith College, and The New York Festival of Song at the Dimenna Center. 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 2022 and 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the piece was featured twice in New York Times He is a recipient of a 2021 Artists + Machine Intelligence Research Award from Google, as well as fellowships from the Likhachev Foundation, 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 is a fellow of the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität and a resident of Stochaistic Labs. 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 Assistant Professor, Theater and Performance Studies and an affiliate faculty member with the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence.
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