Kenny Ramos

Kenny Ramos

(they/he)

Accountability Rider Coordinator, Where We Belong

In one season at OSF: Understudy, Alexie in Off the Rails.

Kenny Ramos is an Iipai theater practitioner from the Barona Band of Mission Indians/Kumeyaay Nation and he grew up on the Barona Indian Reservation in Southern California.

Kenny is an ensemble member at Cornerstone Theatre Company in Los Angeles, where his favorite projects include a trilogy of collaborations with Sicangu Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse, director Michael John Garcés, and various tribal nations and communities around the United States: Urban Rez in 2016 (Tovaangar, Los Angeles, CA); Native Nation in 2019 (O’odham and Piipash lands, Phoenix, AZ); and Wicoun in 2023 (Oceti Sakowin lands, North/South Dakota statewide tour).

Highly active in the contemporary Native theater movement, Kenny's favorite theater credits include the world premiere productions of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Return to Niobrara (The Rose, Omaha Theater Company); Dillon Chitto’s Bingo Hall (Native Voices at the Autry); Vera Starbard’s Devilfish; A Tlingit Christmas Carol; and Frank Henry Kaash Katasse's Where the Summit Meets the Stars (Perseverance Theatre); and Madeline Sayet’s The Neverland (Krannert Center, Illinois Theatre).

Other Regional: productions, workshops, and readings at South Dakota Shakespeare Festival (Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream; Roderigo in Othello), Passage Theatre Company, Playwrights’ Center, American Players Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Denver Center Colorado New Play Summit, Seattle Rep, Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, and The Kennedy Center.

TV: Spirit Rangers (Netflix).

Awards: 2019 Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellow; 2019 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow; Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) 2021 Mellon Artist Fellow; 2021 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow; Center for Cultural Innovation 2022 CALI Catalyst Grantee.

Education: BA in American Indian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Kenny continues to live in his ancestral tribal homelands today, where he is an Artist-in-Residence at La Jolla Playhouse and under commission at Diversionary Theatre. @krayramos

‘Eyay ‘ehaan to the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa peoples and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.