Marie Ramirez Downing

Biography

Marie Ramirez Downing is an Assistant Professor of Voice and Speech for the BFA and MFA Acting programs in the Department of Theatre. Her previous appointment was Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts, Performance and Director of The Acting Program at Sonoma State University in the Bay Area. Marie is also a Voice and Text teacher and coach at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA for their Professional Actor Training Intensives. She has an M.F.A. in Acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University, and a B.A. in Theatre Arts, Acting from California State University, Fresno. She is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher via Kristin Linklater and the Linklater Center for Voice and Language in NYC.  Marie is also a director, performer and a scholar. Her 2022 production of Water By The Spoonful (SSU) received many commendations, an invitation for encore performances, and two national awards from the Kennedy Center for “A Brave Rehearsal Space”, and a “Citizen’s award”. Her latest workshop entitled, “Performing Shakespeare, Voice, Movement, and Intersectionality” was presented in La Paz, Mexico in July 2023 at the Voice and Speech Trainer’s Association (VASTA) International Conference where she is The Director of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Access and served a board term 2019-2022. Marie’s research and creative activity centers around voice within acting training for the stage and her intersectionality as Mexican American Woman in the theatre. She recently contributed a chapter called “Performance of Identity, A Practice” in the new book Latinx Actor Training published by Routledge in 2023 Co-edited by Cynthia Santos-DeCure and Micha Espinosa. Marie has coordinated, written, and taught in many innovative theatre and voice courses for the California State University (CSU) Chancellor’s office Summer Arts festival and program. These include “Theatre and Social Change: Politics, Performance, and Vocal Power, “Performance of Identity: Past and Present Voices Meet”, “Latinx Voices on Stage: Community Lineage and Performance”, and her latest course “Shakespeare & Company: Voice, Heritage, and Community” that will run in the summer of 2024 and feature several of Shakespeare & Company’s legacy members as training faculty and guest artists.  As an actor, Marie most recently worked with Patsy Rodenburg on Shakespeare’s Sonnets at the National Opera Center in NYC 2022 and was invited to the Classical Ensemble workshop in Portugal (date TBD) to perform one of Shakespeare’s plays in 1 week. As a director, Marie most recently directed Lin Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights at Sonoma State University in February of 2024. She has been a voice, text, and dialect coach and consultant on productions at Universities and in other professional settings. She will be the Voice and Dialect coach for The Goodman Theatre’s production of Inherit The Wind directed by Henry Godinez this Fall 2024.