Meet the Playwright: Marco Ramirez
The award-winning writer who brought Jay Jackson’s story to life in THE ROYALE
In an interview with Stay Thirsty Magazine, playwright Marco Ramirez said, “For me, the magic of theater is in the imagined space between audience and performance. I’m not impressed when an actor sits on a fancy throne on a stage. I’m impressed when an actor sits on a stool and calls it a throne and hundreds of people in the audience all see a throne.” In his play The Royale — onstage at Lantern Theater Company now through December 11, 2022 — the actors create fights both in and outside the boxing ring not with physical punches but with words, tension, and sound — and audiences all see those fights.
Ramirez was born and raised in Miami, Florida. As a child, he saw a production of Of Mice and Men at GableStage and fell in love with the stage. Writing about his experiences with that hometown theater, he said “there’s nothing quite like settling into an evening of intense theater. The kind that demands your attention. The kind that doesn’t just have the power to dazzle you, but that — ultimately — has the power to move you.” That early experience launched Ramirez into a life of storytelling on stage and screen.
Ramirez has written several short plays, which have been produced at City Theatre’s Summer Shorts Festival and the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. As a student at New York University, he won the American College Theater Festival’s Latino Playwriting Award, then went on to study playwriting at Juilliard, where he received the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship. His plays have been produced at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, The Old Globe in San Diego, The Bush Theatre in London, American Theater Company in Chicago, and ACT in Seattle. He has received Drama Desk and Helen Hayes nominations and won the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Playwriting Award for The Royale.
Ramirez has cited playwrights Tarell Alvin McCraney and August Wilson as important influences on his playwriting. In the Miami Herald, he had praise for each and their influence on The Royale. “Had I not read every August Wilson play ever, I might not have written The Royale,” he said. “His voice is such an important part of what made me a writer. These things are in my theatrical DNA… And Tarell, he’s influenced my work tremendously. His language is gorgeous, but he never forgets the medium or the bodies on stage. He never forgets the physical elements of theater.”
However, Ramirez’s work is not seen only in theaters. He is also an accomplished and acclaimed writer and producer for television, where he has been nominated for Writers Guild of America and Emmy Awards for work including Sons of Anarchy, Orange Is the New Black, Fear the Walking Dead, The Defenders, and Daredevil. While stage and screen share certain similarities in terms of narrative and structure, Ramirez enjoys the differences between the two mediums, determining what stories are best experienced live and in person — and which benefit from the production values of television or film. “I enjoy being able to toggle between them,” he said. “This way I can make sure I can lean into whichever medium works best. It’s a real luxury to be able to bounce between these three worlds.”
When returning to the stage for The Royale, he was drawn to tell an immediate, intimate story. “First and foremost, I set out to write a play about boxing. As a sport, its stripped-down aesthetic resonated with me because it felt like the simplest, purest form of theater… Then somehow the stuff that makes me ‘me’ came into play. Suddenly there was an element of hip-hop in the play. Suddenly there were race relations. And most importantly, suddenly the play became not about boxing, but about family.”
More reading: The History of Boxing — The development of the sport at the center of The Royale
Lantern Theater Company’s Philadelphia premiere production of The Royale by Marco Ramirez is onstage November 10 through December 11, 2022, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
