Interviews and Articles
“A Year In: Rudy Ramirez, director and theater artist.” Sightlines
“Austin’s FuturX Festival is Carving Out a Space Where Latinx Performing Arts Thrive.” Texas Monthly
“Roll Call: People to Watch. 6 Theatre Workers You Should Know.” American Theatre
Reviews
Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven by Reina Hardy
“Bringing talent like this together to produce an improbable hit with quality and depth is down to two magnificent directors, Marcus McQuirter and Rudy Ramirez. This directing duo has overlooked no detail, and it shows. It would be easy to look at this play as a ‘kids show’ and do the minimum to make the children happy, but it’s evident that McQuirter and Ramirez wanted to entertain everyone, no matter their age, and they accomplished that and more.”–Lynn Beaver, BroadwayWorld.com
(Un)Documents by Jesus I. Valles
“Valles’s writing in this script is vivid, eloquent, always riveting and often full of anguish; Rudy Ramirez’s direction sends him slipping seamlessly from character to character and scene to scene, using the magic of memory, minimal props, and haunting effects.”–Michael Meigs, CTXLiveTheatre.com
“Such a life journey feels understood on a cellular level by director Rudy Ramirez, who directed the original production. Only on my second viewing of the digital presentation did it become apparent how this Austin theater veteran’s purposeful blocking serves to guide Valles through their own memories. Effortless pacing allows Valles to embody each trial and tribulation as if it were the first time, and Ramirez’s apt orchestration acts as the thread connecting each emotional high to the next.”–Trey Gutierrez, Sightlinesmag.org
Last: An Extinction Comedy by the Ensemble
“The show works because Ramirez and his assistants have cast whatever magic they have at their disposal to turn a crazy grab bag of styles, concepts, and references into a coherent whole.”–Elizabethe Cobbe, Austin Chronicle
Heartland by Gabriel Jason Dean
“Director Rudy Ramirez has cast actors whose sensitivity to these characters’ emotional core makes their every feeling – concern, amusement, affection, uncertainty, charity, frustration, tenderness, grief – as natural and genuine as breath.”–Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle
“Their characterizations and stage performances are excellent and precise under the direction of Rudy Ramirez. . . . Director Ramirez also shows deftness in creating scene transitions with split-second timing that advances the progress and pace of the play.”–David Glen Robinson, CTXLiveTheatre.com
Wild Horses by Allison Gregory
“Under the keen direction of Austin new play whisperer Rudy Ramirez, Jennings channels all of her natural vivacity into making this story hers, and she owns it so thoroughly, with such abundant humor and rowdiness and fervor and heartbreak, that in this tiny space the story becomes ours as well; the experience is as intimate as a slumber party.”–Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle.
“Rudy Ramirez… continues to add to his string of remarkable pieces of theatre. Ramirez has a clear skill for bringing remarkable performances out of actors. He also keeps what could be a very static show moving and fascinating.”–Frank Benge, BroadwayWorld.com
Storm Still by Gabrielle Reisman
“Director Rudy Ramirez moves the cast through the story with great pacing. He also benefits from three great casting choices. Individually, each performer is great to watch, but together they’ve committed to a shared physical language that Storm Still needs.”–Austin Chronicle
The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson
“Director Rudy Ramirez makes the most of Gunderson’s script and sculpts the fine talent of his cast with whip smart timing and pacing. . . . On the evening I attended, the show waxed and waned, rose and fell, leapt and crouched exactly when and where it should.”—Joni Lorraine, BroadwayWorld.com
“Director Rudy Ramirez neither shies away from nor leans into the comparisons between the French Reign of Terror and today’s America but rather allows the text to seduce audience members into reaching those conclusions on their own.”—Andrew J. Friedenthal, Austin360.com
Underground by Lisa B. Thompson
“Rudy Ramirez does his usual stellar job with the script, infusing the proceedings with subtle clues and hints that builds the evening to an electrifying chess game climax.”—Frank Benge, BroadwayWorld.com
“Ramirez’s direction keeps the two men contained and close, wisely eschewing ostentation to focus instead on the power of the text.”—Andrew J. Friedenthal, Austin360.com
“Lisa B. Thompson’s . . . flawless text, combined with top-notch acting by a couple of masterful performers – Marc Pouhé and Jeffery “DaShade” Johnson – and the ever vigilant eye of director Rudy Ramirez (an exemplary artist/activist himself) results in a hypnotically engaging story that will stay with you long after you leave the theatre.”—T. Lynn Mikeska, Austin Chronicle
A Perfect Robot by Sarah Saltwick
“Director Rudy Ramirez works his usual magic on the script by focusing on this set of characters, making them easy for the audience to relate to. Time and again he presents us with visual beauty on the stage.”—Frank Benge, BroadwayWorld.com
“From beginning to end, A Perfect Robot is a perfect production. . . . under Rudy Ramirez’s direction, every single performance is noteworthy.”—T. Lynn Mikeska, Austin Chronicle
Agent Andromeda: The Orion Crusade by Reina Hardy
“Rudy Ramirez appropriately uses the actors bodies as props in aerial segments that are pure amazement”—Amy Bradley, Austin360.com
Hold Me Well by Eva Suter
“Ramirez focuses on the script’s painstaking attention to the many forms of love these women have for each other. . . . And overall, Hold Me Well can be summed up in a simple word: beautiful.”—Shanon Weaver, Austin Chronicle
“Casting and direction are superb. One can almost believe that there is no cast, for the actors have all embodied their characters to the point of possession.”—Brian Paul Scipione, CTXLiveTheatre.com
Terminus by Gabriel Jason Dean
“Everything comes together magnificently in Gabriel Jason Dean’s Terminus to bring you to another place, another time and a situation as fraught, intense and haunting as those of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. Director Rudy Ramirez, wizard-like, has summoned forth all the needed arts and crafts to make it live.”—Michael Meigs, CTXLiveTheatre.com
“Director Rudy Ramirez has done a great job shaping this piece and has drawn stunning performances from his cast. His staging is simultaneously bold and lyrical.”—Frank Benge, BroadwayWorld.com
El Nogalar by Tanya Saracho
“Directed with a loving and highly personal touch by Rudy Ramirez . . . El Nogalar provides a strikingly intimate and welcoming bilingual context for examining social class in contemporary Mexico”—Adam Roberts, Austin Chronicle
Changelings by Reina Hardy
“Rudy Ramirez . . . takes a clean and efficient approach to stage action. His direction is deft and confident.”—David Glen Robinson, CTXLiveTheatre,com
“Once again, Ramirez has helmed a high-quality production..”—Elissa Russell, Austin Chronicle
Still Now by Katie Bender
“Director Rudy Ramirez has done a lovely job with this material. His direction imparts the qualities of butoh across the evening.”—Frank Benge, Broadwayworld.com
“The production, as directed by Rudy Ramirez, manages to show us something new about a painfully familiar disease: how we might dance with it.”—Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle
Cosmicomics Adapted by the Ensemble from the stories of Italo Calvino
“Rudy Ramirez once again proves himself to be a powerful force in the world of directing, not only by having a solid understanding of style and nuance, but also as a true inventive artist within the theatre community.”—Michelle Hache, BroadwayWorld.com
Stars and Barmen by Reina Hardy
“When paired with three immensely talented performers and a brilliant young director, Stars and Barmen is as spectacular as comedies get.”—Jeff Davis, BroadwayWorld.com