Anthony Ramos vividly remembers the first time he saw Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acclaimed musical
In the Heights on Broadway. It was 2010, and his college, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA), had bought a block of tickets for its students. Ramos identified straightaway with the show’s protagonist. Beyond their Latin roots (Ramos is of Puerto Rican descent, while the fictional Usnavi’s family is Dominican), they were both New Yorkers and dreamers immersed in the struggle for a better life. “I left that theater with electricity going through my body,” he recalls. “In the context of Broadway, for the first time, I felt seen.”
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With âIn the Heights,â Anthony Ramos Finds Stardom on His Own Terms
Teachers urged him to cultivate a more ethnically ambiguous image. He refused, and now heâs having a breakout moment.
Anthony Ramos in Bushwick. Spike Lee said of the actor: “He was not handed this artistic life. He had to put the work in.”Credit.Camila Falquez for The New York Times
June 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
The Bee Geesâ âStayinâ Alive,â that classic dance-floor ode to doing whatever it takes to keep your head above water, was playing in a coffee shop in Brooklyn when Anthony Ramos sidled in one chilly April morning.