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Kevin Ramsey

Kevin Ramsey headshot

Chair/Theatre Division Director

Theatre

The Hartt School
860.768.2489 Handel Performing Arts Center - N 124 https://www.urbanmusicaltours.com
Education

Dillard University

NYU Tisch School of Arts

The New School


Professor Ramsey is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary creative artist, life-long educator, and Broadway veteran of five Tony Award-winning and nominated shows: The Life, Five Guys Named Moe, Oh, Kay!, Black and Blue, and The Lion King. (1st Natl. Tour/Los Angeles)

In Film/TV, Mr. Ramsey has guest starred on Emmy-nominated TV shows and films including Cold Case, CSI: Miami, 24, The District, Trial By Jury, Night Falls On Manhattan, Saving Grace, Judging Amy, The Hughley’s, and Charmed. As a voiceover actor he can be heard in Ken Burn’s award-winning documentary films, Civil War and Jazz.

He is a recipient of many honors and citations including the Outer Critic Circle Award, Theatre World and Fred Astaire Awards for Best New Talent on Broadway, the Zoni Award, New York’s Audelco Award, as well as, the Barrymore Award for his collaboration with the Delaware Theatre Company for co-developing arts literacy programming for at-risk youth. He is a recipient of the Tapology Legacy Award for his work in teaching and preserving the art of tap dance.

Professor Ramsey has worked internationally, in Europe, Germany, Amsterdam, Asia, Switzerland, the Caribbean, and performed to sold out audiences in Japan, as the featured vocalist/tap dancer with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops Orchestra.

As a skilled storyteller, writer and director for theater and film/new media, Professor Ramsey is committed to the historical examination and retelling of the African-American musical experience, and its artistic contribution to world culture.

He is the co-author, along with Lee Summers, of the new Broadway-bound musical, I Remember Harlem: A Tap Dance Tale, which is in development, as well as, the creator/writer of critically acclaimed commissions and produced works, including: Chasin’ Dem Blues: Untold Story of Paramount Records, Sam Cooke: Forever Mr. Soul, Sirens of Song, Fire On The Bayou, Tap Rap, A Cappella Humana, Election Day, Thirst Trap, and Soultime.

As an educator, he continues his strong advocacy for arts education, and presides on several boards aligned with his mission of service, and he has spent the past eighteen-plus years developing curricula for the 21st century performing artist/storyteller, while serving as former Senior Faculty member at AMDA College of the Performing Arts, (BFA, Los Angeles), and adjunct faculty at Florida Atlantic University, (MFA/BFA Theatre program). He is a native of New Orleans.

  1. The experimentation with performative digital technology in storytelling, both in performance and the classroom.

  2. A site-specific multimedia performative installation and deconstruction of the myths and beliefs of race, sex, and gender of the BIPOC experience in theater/film/media.

  3. Develop and explore through performance the cultural and economic impact Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance has had on entertainment history.

  4. Reexamination and restructuring of a new business model for the theater that provides equity in process, practice, performance, participation, and profit in the digital, and post-Covid landscape.

  5. Book - “Performative Freedom” A retrospective look at the Black Theatre Movement from 1900 to the Present.