PRESS: Ryan Jamaal Swain writes about “Pose” in Backstage

Alum Ryan Jamaal Swain (MIO ’14) writes for Backstage’s “Notes from the Field” about acting, dance, and working on Pose on FX:

There are only a few times where I can say that I saw glimpses of the person I am and could be. Among them are the times my grandparents played Donny Hathaway’s “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know” or “For All We Know” and asked me to identify the instruments; I remember weeping because I never heard music like his. Another is my time at Howard University studying in the Department of Theatre Arts, along with my final showing at this theater training program in Oxfordshire, Oxford, where I literally felt my soul jump out of my being as I was presenting a scene from “The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union.” (Yeah, it’s a hell of a name.) The others I am in desperate pursuit of remembering, looking pensively into space asking, “When did I find the things that made me…me? Have I found them?” And then I look at the bigger picture and think about my time spent acting and dancing, and I realize just how fortunate I have been in that artistic pursuit.

You can read the full piece on Backstage’s site.

Header Photo: Pari Dukovic/FX