STEVEN SAPP ’89 AND MILDRED RUIZ-SAPP ’92
UNIVERSES IS A STAGE In February 2020, the multicultural performance ensemble Universes premiered AmericUS, a play about the state of contemporary America, to enthusiastic reviews at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. They were in conversations to take it on tour when the pandemic hit. “We watched two years of work literally get canceled, lost,” says Universes cofounder Steven Sapp ’89. “We had to turn down so many gigs,” adds fellow cofounder Mildred Ruiz-Sapp ’92. “But we couldn’t travel the company and be responsible for people’s lives.” They returned to Ashland, Oregon, where they and other Universes members—including Ruiz-Sapp’s brother William “Ninja” Ruiz ’03—have been playwrights in residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival since 2013. Universes is a collective of multidisciplinary writers and performers of color who fuse theater,
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ON AND OFF CAMPUS
poetry, dance, jazz, hip-hop, politics, blues, and Spanish boleros. The company was founded in the Bronx in 1995, but its origins lay earlier and farther north: Bard College in 1988. Sapp grew up in the Forest Housing Project in the Bronx and arrived at Bard via the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) and his high school guidance counselor, who gave him a brochure that read “Bard, a Place to Think.” “He said, ‘Trust me, go here,’” says Sapp. “For me, thinking about being a writer, it clicked.” At Bard, Sapp was further encouraged by Alex McKnight ’79, associate director of HEOP, whom Sapp describes as a “father figure/crazy uncle” to him. Three years later, Sapp’s Senior Project adviser, Elizabeth Frank (now Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature), suggested he create a play based on Edmund Perry, a 17-year-old Black honor student enrolled
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to attend Stanford University, who was shot to death after allegedly mugging a plainclothes police officer. Sapp was struck by the similarities between their lives. “Coming from the inner city, I felt the push and the pull my entire time at Bard. I wanted Bard students to know what students of color go through,” he says. During registration for Sapp’s final semester, McKnight introduced him to his future wife, first year Mildred Ruiz, on her first day at Bard. It was the beginning of a lifelong personal and artistic collaboration. Ruiz, from the Jacob Riis Houses on New York’s Lower East Side, intended to become a fashion illustrator, but her guidance counselor showed her the same Bard brochure. “I kept telling him, ‘I’ll think about it.’ But he said, ‘Here, this is the one. You keep saying you’re going to think about it, so go think about it there,’” she recalls.
