Tobin Distinguished Lecture: Clint Ramos: Designing Through An Immigrant Lens

Tony-Award-winning designer Clint Ramos describes the immigrant experience as an essential spine for storytelling. Frequently his work in costume and scene designs make international stories familiar to American audiences and attempt to infuse western classics with an outsider’s worldview. Audiences know his designs from Six Degrees of Separation with Allison Janney, Sunday in the Park With George with Jake Gyllenhaal, Eclipsed with Lupita Nyong’o, and Violet with Sutton Foster. In the current musical production of Once on this Island, Ramos takes inspiration from Haitian people and those affected by hurricanes and natural disasters with increasing frequency.

A native of the Philippines, Ramos is a professor of scenic design at SUNY Purchase College. In 2016, Clint Ramos and Paul Tazewell, 2007 Tobin Distinguished Lecturer, were the first artists of color to receive the Tony Award for Best Costume Design.