Rouse directed Maria Irene Fornes' Fefu And Her Friends at Brown University's Production Workshop in 2002. Fefu is the story of a group of female friends who spend the weekend together at the title character's country house without their husbands. Stirrings of insanity, violence, heterosexual frustration and lesbian desire contribute to the play's dynamic atmosphere.

Mid-play, the audience is divided and each group rotates, walking from room to room in Fefu's house, viewing intimate scenes featuring smaller groups of characters. Fefu seeks to peel back the gilded facades of middle-class life and allow us to become fascinated by our repulsion for what lies beneath. This play was a particular challenge to produce not only because of its provocative content but also because of the logistics involved in moving the audience through the second act.

Additionally, there were the challenges associated with surrealist elements in the writing. To encourage the audience to activate their imagination, Rouse and the design team created non-realistic imagery to compliment the language of the script, utilizing soundscapes, levitating trees in part of the set, and a reproduction of the Frida Kahlo painting The Two Fridas. This surrealist image exploded from a 4' x 5' size to a 12' x 12' size during the pivotal moment of the play when Fefu has a vision of Julia, who cannot walk, getting up from her wheelchair and walking across the stage.

Rouse implemented some less-traditional techniques in rehearsal to help the performers and design team access the poetic language and imagery in the script, including a screening of Kristof Kieslowski's film La Double vie de Veronique and several free-writing exercises developed by Fornes herself that Rouse had learned from a student of Fornes', Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.