DIRECTING

See below for directing work, and "Resumes" tab for a comprehensive list. More work as director can be found under "Devising" tab above.

Full Productions

POSTER CONCEPT by Cathy Muskett
POSTER PHOTO by Justin Barbin

Click below to download the first 10 pages of The Liberation of Carmela Lopez in play form.

Note that the script does not include notes on our physical work, which was crucial to our production.
The Liberation of Carmela Lopez - Script Excerpt
File Size: 226 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

The Liberation of Carmela Lopez
by Marisel Vera
Adapted & Directed by Alyssa Vera Ramos
Northwestern University | FEBRUARY 2011

The coming-of-age story of Carmela, a witty, strong-willed young Puerto Rican girl growing up in Chicago's Humboldt Park in the 1970s, The Liberation of Carmela Lopez is a beautiful, incendiary and acutely relevant exploration of one girl's struggle to become the person she wants to be. Throughout the story, she grows to confront cultural expectations about her sexuality, familial demands of her future, and her own visions of relationships, reality, and her very self.

This dramatic adaptation of the unpublished novel by author Marisel Vera was an utterly ensemble-based process, staged in the chamber theatre tradition, with full exploration of narration, movement, and sound. I also pulled on principles of Grotowski's "poor theatre," working with the cast to create the multiple worlds and locations of Carmela through the almost exclusive use of exposition boxes and bodies in space.
GRAPHIC DESIGN by Max Cove

"We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change." - John Michael Hayes

- This quote became the inspiration for the chain-linked paper set pieces, partly obscuring the scene from the audience. Viewers became peeping toms in a meta-theatrical experience.

What If Elephants
Adapted and Directed by Alyssa Vera Ramos
from Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
White Elephant | APRIL 2011

As part of a "collaboration of pachyderm proportions" - 9 artists, 1 story, 1 week - I created a performance piece called What If Elephants, as part of this unique, site-specific adaptation festival curated by Abby Zan Schwarz and Naomi Rosen, artistic collective members of White Elephant. The festival, called Hills Like White Elephants, was the theatre company's inaugural production.

With the words of Hemingway and a cast of two - my boyfriend Daniel Howard and myself - I imagined my own future as the story. We placed audiences literally on the outside looking in, privy to a conversation about a potential abortion that they were never meant to hear. The piece ran on loop: a statement about the circumlocutory nature of the piece, while also empowering audiences to come and leave as they pleased - or whenever they felt discomfort.
Picture
This poster was meant to make the word "vagina," and VagMon itself, approachable and fun. The frame images - which also translated to the play's set, designed by Breanne Ward - emphasized the snapshot, individual nature of the show's monologues. The pants were also important: an independent, matter-of-fact sexy.
GRAPHIC DESIGN by Alyssa Vera Ramos
From the director's note: 


THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES makes some of us scream, some us laugh, some of us feel uncomfortable for weeks after seeing it - and then we talk about it.

And the floodgates open, and we realize that that's okay.

"Vagina" isn't a dirty word, and sacredness is not forsaken when we use it in every day speech. I - we - believe, and have found, that its use (and this show) helps us to truthfully explore our sexuality: to claim awkwardness, frustration, fear, exuberance, and complicated desires as our own.

Now, we share - for ourselves, for you, and for all the women who feel that they can't - in hopes that more people (and more vaginas) will start talking.

                                                                    - AVR

The Vagina Monologues
by Eve Ensler
Directed by Alyssa Vera Ramos
Northwestern University | FEBRUARY 2010

This version of The Vagina Monologues, was created and performed for V-Day 2010 with the intention of broadening - and making playful and fun - conversations around women's sexuality (including, of course, vaginas). The rehearsal room, first and foremost a space to create an ensemble of women artists and friends, yielded bursts of ideas for movement, song, and lighthearted set pieces (hilarious vagina doodles). All were included in this open-minded, open-hearted production.

READ press about the process & concept HERE and about the production itself HERE.
Above, Candace Mittel performs "My Angry Vagina" and Katie Northcott performs "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy."

Readings, Workshops & AD work

Art Heist
by Alberto Mendoza
directed by Nathan Green
Abraham Werewolf | June 2012

PHOTOS by Ian Issitt / edits by Jen L'amour Dorman

Assistant Directed by Alyssa Vera Ramos:

I served as Assistant Director for the most recent Abraham Werewolf production Art Heist, a brand-new ensemble-based play which begins in an art gallery, staged in the promenade style with plenty of fight choreography.

From the company website: Gallery owner Miles Bryson, wishing to honor Chicago-based street artist WhereWolf, curates a posthumous retrospective of his provocative ouevre. Unfortunately for Miles (and his patrons), the show's opening reception is infiltrated by a band of armed robbers intending to "liberate" the late artist's work.

ART HEIST is a hilarious send up of the commercialization of street art that will (literally!) take you hostage. As Abraham Werewolf's first foray into promenade theatre, ART HEIST marks a continued commitment to bring challenging and experimental new works to the Chicago storefront scene.

Woman on Fire
by Marisela Treviño Orta
Staged Reading Directed by Alyssa Vera Ramos
Teatro Luna | March 2012

As part of Teatro Luna's Lunadas reading series, I directed a staged reading of this still-unpublished play by San Francisco playwright Marisela Treviño Orta, who was present during the rehearsal process. The work in rehearsal was focused on bringing to life the stories and relationships within the play, simultaneously working out kinks and asking new questions of our playwright to further her development process.
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Marigolds, the ritual flower for El Dia de los Muertos, are an important part of WOMAN ON FIRE. For my staged reading, a vase of marigolds was our centerpiece: our only color and one of our only props in the entire piece.