On Saturday March 27, Limelight and Accents gave students the opportunity to have a question and answer with “Hamilton” star Anthony Ramos via Zoom.
Ramos started his career at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA), which is one of the top 10 programs in the country based on how many of their students end up on Broadway. Ramos worked his way up through bigger and bigger acting opportunities and eventually ended up being dual-cast as John Laurens and Phillip Hamilton in “Hamilton” in 2015.
Students were able to purchase tickets to the event for $5 and were then given access to a Zoom link and a Google Form where they could submit their questions for Ramos.
Theater major junior Tessa Hensler then read off the questions submitted for Ramos for the hour-long event.
“It was really cool to do the Q & A with Anthony Ramos. I’m really grateful to my co-Limelight and Accents coordinator Emily Zandy for all her work on the event because she did a lot of the planning and behind-the-scenes work,” Hensler said.
Due to the massive following of “Hamilton,” there were several questions about Ramos’ involvement in the show, the first being how he got the role. Ramos explained that he went through four different auditions before he was offered the role in “Hamilton.” At his first audition, he assumed he wouldn’t get the role because it didn’t seem like his style.
Ramos was also asked about his experience working with Lin-Manuel Miranda. He explained that he looked up to Miranda and learned a lot from him throughout the show.
“[Lin] has this incredible discern in him where he knows when to let go and hang on,” Ramos said. “That's such a hard thing as a creative person, because [the] tendency is usually to hang on ... He knows what's going on and he knows what to let go, and that's such a gift.”
This means that as an actor sometimes you’ll have ideas that are worth hanging on to and that you should keep pushing for, and other times you need to pivot and understand that it just might not come together, Ramos explained.
Ramos talked extensively about his different acting experiences and gave a lot of advice for aspiring actors, which Hensler said were their favorite questions to ask.
“I felt like he gave authentic and inspiring answers that really stuck with a lot of people. I loved hearing about his perseverance and how grateful he seemed. I think that’s what has stuck with me the most,” Hensler said.
Theater major senior Griffin Netti attended the event and agreed that Ramos’ answers to these questions were particularly inspiring for him.
Netti said his favorite message from Ramos was that if acting was what you want to do, go and fight for it.
“No one is going to hand it to you. Ramos mentioned that if it is fear holding you back, to find something to push you out of that shadow, for him it was the song ‘I Aint Never Scared’ by Bonecrusher,” Netti said.
Both Hensler and Netti enjoyed the event and thought it would be a good idea to do events like it in the future, as they felt it taught them a lot.
“One of my biggest takeaways from this is kind of cheesy but it’s really to not give up,” Hensler said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time worrying about studying theater and musical theater in a global pandemic and about what I want to do after college, and hearing his stories about being in the industry just kind of inspired me.”