Summary
The University of Vermont's Theatre Department recruited Gregory Ramos to expand cultural diversity in its courses - perhaps a tall order in a predominantly white state. "My decision to come here was really an opportunity to have this kind of dialogue with people who hadn't been exposed to a lot of Latino people or a lot of the questions around issues of diversity," says Ramos. "I'm teaching a course right now - LGBT Queer Theater of Color in America - and it's a really smart, really active, interested group of students."
To Ramos, the classroom challenges seem more easily surmounted than the broader cultural and commercial hurdles he observed in his recent work as a Broadway marketing executive. "Broadway has cultivated an affluent white audience," he says, and "panders to that sensibility." Working on The Color Purple, however, provided a glimmer of hope. Houses were 60 to 80 percent African-American. And, yes, he met Oprah. "The reason she gave her name and her money to that production was because she wanted to offer Broadway to an audience that doesn't feel like it's for them," Ramos explains.[Brown] finds himself continually drawn to "movement-oriented" work. This fall, he will direct Charles Mee's Big Love, "a postmodern adaptation of a Greek tragedy. It's almost theater juxtaposed against modern dance," he explains. "It's that weird genre in the middle where movement and text become one."See the full content of this document
Extract
Two Theater Profs Make Green Mountain Entrance
Two dramatically fresh faces have brought colorful resumés and ambitious agendas to local college theater departments this year. Both new to the Green Mountains, the men are seasoned stagehands, with experience before and...
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