American Players Theater Presents Sueño Through September 26th: A Deep Look into the Depths of Humanity
Above: Nathan M. Ramsey, Triney Sandoval & the company of Sueño, 2026. Photo by Dan Norman Below: Nathan Ramsey
by Jonathan Gramling
While Nathan Ramsey, who plays Segismundo in the American Players Theater’s rendition of Sueño through September 26th was exposed to the performing arts at an early age, but didn’t realize it was his calling until much later in life.
“I was in fourth grade,” Ramsey said. “I did a play called Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon. And it was only because I saw my older brother do a play prior to that. And then I took a long break from acting until I got out of the military. I was more into the music world, writing music and gigging around New York City.”
When Ramsey went back to school, the school was casting for the play Waiting for Lefty by Cliff Odets and Ramsey was intrigued.
“My school was in the Bronx and I didn’t realize that the play takes place in the late 1930s in the Bronx as well,” Ramsey said. “I ended up getting cast in that play. And during that process, I really fell in love with rehearsing and building a world with an ensemble under the direction of someone who’s kind of at the helm giving us a way to go. And I was like, ‘I really love this. I enjoy this.’ I hadn’t been in a play for years. I started taking classes in New York City. That led to me going to grad school in the Midwest. I went to the University of Illinois – Champaign-Urbana.”
While Ramsey and his wife live in New York City, Ramsey has been following the work wherever it leads him.
“I’ve done a couple of things off Broadway,” Ramsey said. “I’ve just been bopping around for the last few years. Carey, from APT, and I met in 2019 when I was working at Montana Shakespeare in the Parks. She came out and we got to audition for her. She got to see me in a couple of shows. And they had been trying to get me to come out here, but it never lined up schedule-wise. And then years later, here I am. This is my first season at APT.”
Ramsey plays one of the lead characters, Prince Segismundo, in Sueño, which is based on Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream, an old Spanish play from the 1600s that was adapted by José Rivera.
“Essentially it is about a king who is told by astrologers that his son will be a tyrant and will ruin his kingdom and bring death and destruction,” Ramsey said. “And so in an effort to kind of evade that fate, he has his son sent to a cave to live. And 25 years later, he feels bad about what he did and he decides to pull his son from the cave and try to reinstate him as a prince and say, ‘Hey, that was just a dream.’ You’re actually the Prince of Spain.’ We’ll find out how it goes. But he ends up back in the cave trying to wrestle with this idea of this animalistic nature in him, but also feeling like he’s not where he belongs. He feels out-of-place in the world because he’s in shackles and he just doesn’t understand why he’s not free.”
This unique situation allows the director and cast to explore a lot of the many sides and angles of the human condition.
“The play deals with a lot of themes of fate versus free will, also nature versus nurture,” Ramsey said. “It has father-son themes and our relationship with God and people’s relationships with the stars. It definitely covers a lot of bases. But I think the big overarching theme is human choice versus fate. Are we destined to something or do we have a choice, pitting those two up against each other.”
It is the king who is the protagonist in the play and sets everyone else in motion.
“It definitely speaks to the king’s belief in the stars and things like that,” Ramsey said. “It’s interesting too that 25 years later, he’s like, ‘Well, maybe the stars were wrong.’ And there is the theme that the stars will point the to direction, but they don’t determine the steps. He’s wrestling with that and they have an encounter after 25 years. He hasn’t seen his son. The prince has never seen his father. He also doesn’t understand what the concept of a father is because he’s grown up in this cave, raised by a masked man. He’s never seen his face. So there is a lot of deprivation that my character Segismundo has to overcome and learning how to tame this wild beast that is inside of him. And there is so much potential in him and he just doesn’t understand. It’s quite an interesting play, a fascinating play.”
One theme that Ramsey found particularly interesting was the idea of choice and choosing one’s own direction in life.
“Another theme that does come up is grace and forgiveness,” Ramsey said. “Is anyone ever beyond grace or forgiveness? I think that we see that in the choices that these characters make, from Segismundo to the king. Rosaura, who is on a quest for revenge, also has a choice. Even though these terrible things have been done to them, they still have choices in terms of how they are now going to respond instead of react. It’s a really interesting play. It’s Shakespearean in so many ways, but it also feels so contemporary. This particular adaptation that José Rivera did is done in such a beautiful way. The Spanish that it was translated from is very old Spanish, so it’s not the Spanish that we hear today. But apparently, he’s done a really great job in maintaining the core elements of that piece and translating it into modern-day language that we can understand. There are a couple of Old Spanish lines peppered throughout. But for the most part, the whole play is in English. There are parts that feel so poetic and beautiful and parts that feel like, ‘Man, people talk like this today.’ It’s pretty fascinating in the same way that Shakespeare does the very same thing.”
While Sueño brings up a lot of heavy themes, it is also quite entertaining.
“It’s a comedy with some tragic elements,” Ramsey said. “But it is a comedy at its core. I would say that there isn’t necessarily a pretty bow put on things. These characters are written so beautifully and are wonderfully human that there is a sense of, ‘Okay, the play has ended, but their lives continue on.’ And they are going to continue to wrestle with these questions of fate, free will, choice, forgiveness, grace, nature versus nurture, all of these things will continue to come up for all of these characters. I wouldn’t say they go off happy into the sunset. There is a sun on the set. But all of the elements of this play coming together from the costumes to the set design to the sound and lights, it’s really going to be quite an amazing production. It’s one of those plays where every now and then, I will work on a show and go, ‘Man, I wish I could watch this and see what the audience is seeing.’”
It is the humanity of the characters that draws Ramsey to them.
“I always come back to Shakespeare,” Ramsey said with a chuckle. “I don’t know why. I’m a nice guy in real life. But I’m drawn to the flawed characters. I think these characters who are deemed bad people are really coming from a place in my mind asking, ‘Why are they this way?’ It’s all in the text. Even though this character does some terrible things, in their mind, they are justified or they are seeking restitution or they are seeking revenge. There is something about that that is challenging, but also really just draws me to it.”
And Ramsey feels that the audience will be drawn to the themes of the play, that they will shine a light on their own lives, which is what good theater is all about.
“I should hope that people who make the choice to come out here will be left with some of life’s biggest questions,” Ramsey emphasized. “What do we do when when we are presented with a choice? Some of the other questions that have come up are, ‘What is life? What is living?’ I think the themes of potential and purpose come up. My hope is that people who will come out will be presented with these questions. They are questions, I feel, are questions that come up for folks now and then. But this play puts them right in front of your face in a very visceral and beautiful, poetic way that I think will leave folks captivated and also wanting to see it again to pick up on things they might have missed the first time.”
Sueño runs about two hours with two brief intermissions. According to Ramsey, the acts run smoothly and quickly as the audience is drawn into the play. Sueño is food for thought for a lifetime. Come and get your share while the getting is good.
