Today we’d like to introduce you to Jerry Ruiz.
Hi Jerry, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am a stage director who grew up in Texas, left the state for college in the mid-90s, and then spent many years building my career in NYC and across the country. Around 2014, I started to feel an urge to return to my home state. Eventually, the right opportunity came up. In 2018, I moved to Austin for an Assistant Professor position at Texas State University. Luckily, I already had professional relationships with Stages, where I’d directed a reading of NEIGHBORS by Bernardo Cubria, as well as with the Alley Theatre, where I knew the Director of New Works, Liz Frankel, from our time in New York. I ended up directing two productions at Stages, THE RIVER BRIDE and WATER BY THE SPOONFUL in their gorgeous new theater complex. I also directed a workshop of THE SURVIVORS for the Alley All New Festival in 2020. All in all, I consider Houston a sort of artistic home. The theaters, actors, and collaborators I’ve met have been incredibly welcoming. I’ve been amazed by Houston’s vibrant theater community and arts scene – not to mention the delicious food.
Currently, I balance my teaching work at Texas State with an active directing career, now that theater is returning to live performances. I’m in Portland now, directing the play APPROPRIATE for Profile Theatre. And I have upcoming shows at Zach Theatre in Austin and The Public Theatre of San Antonio. I knew when I took the job at Texas State that I wanted to build strong relationships with theaters in the state and become a part of those artistic communities.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Theatre is an art form where we hopefully never stop learning and growing. I can direct a production where it is an enjoyable process and a successful product, and then the very next show, something could really go awry in the collaboration. I’ve actually had that happen, where one particular show was a success, probably the high point of my career, and then the next show proved very difficult in terms of the collaborative process. It was really a professional setback in a lot of ways. It actually took me about a year to fully absorb it, accept my own shortcomings, and move forward. My next few professional productions came after I moved to Texas, and in some ways, I thought those were some of my best work.
You have to be willing to take a hard look at yourself and learn from mistakes you might have made. No one is immune to failure in this line of work. But one of my favorite quotes, from the book A SENSE OF DIRECTION by William Ball is: ‘failure is the threshold of knowledge.’ It’s the one way we can grow, learning from our mistakes.
The other huge challenge has been the pandemic. Not just in terms of trying to keep a career going when theaters could no longer produce live performances, but also as a university professor. To try to keep the students engaged when we were suddenly meeting over Zoom, to adjust and adapt on the fly (constantly.) was incredibly challenging and exhausting for faculty and students alike.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work has been primarily in the theater and mostly collaborating with playwrights on new plays, or directing contemporary plays. Of course, as a Latinx director, many of my opportunities have been doing culturally specific shows, plays by Latinx playwrights like Tanya Saracho, Quiara Hudes, or Marisela Treviño Orta. I’ve also developed some good relationships with Texas-based playwrights like Katie Bender, Raul Garza and Adrienne Dawes since I moved to the state. I look back now and it’s funny that my very first play in NYC after college was a new play written by a college friend. It sort of cemented my professional destiny, my calling to work on brand new plays as opposed to Shakespeare or classic American plays. It’s really a labor of love. There have been some plays that I’ve worked on with playwrights, directing readings and workshops, for five years before they finally get a professional premiere. One play I’ve been working on with Katie since I moved to Austin in 2018, and while I believe we’re getting closer to a premiere, it hasn’t happened yet. But it’s work I am very passionate about.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Luck definitely has played a role in my career. Very early on after moving to NYC, I met someone who was working as a Casting Director for a Broadway show directed by film director Baz Luhrmann. Heidi Miami Marshall is her name. She was eventually hired as the Resident Director for that show, and suggested me as a directing intern. So here I am at age 23, meeting with Baz (who was very visible at the time following Moulin Rouge) in his loft offices in Soho. I think I must have been so nervous that I just went into ‘the zone’ and had a really good interview. I remember Baz saying he only wanted to add someone if they would be ‘all in.’ They brought me on as an intern and the show indeed became my whole life. That eventually led to a paying job for a year and a half, as the show toured to San Francisco and Los Angeles in addition to its Broadway run. It was a magic carpet ride where I went from temping and having literally zero dollars to getting paid to do theater and being a part of Baz’s team. That experience opened the doors for me to be accepted into a really good graduate directing program. Although, in hindsight, maybe that wasn’t so much luck as it was benefitting from other people giving me an opportunity.
Contact information:
- Website: jruizdirector.com
- Instagram: jruizdirector
Image Credits
Tasha Gorel (headshot)
