Adamo Ruggiero is the Next Generation

From 2002 until 2008, twenty-two-year old Adamo Ruggiero played gay teen Marco Del Rossi on the long running teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. Viewers followed Marco as he struggled to come out to his friends, fell victim to a gay bashing, found love for the first time and simply struggled to find his way in the world as an openly gay man. Behind the scenes, Ruggiero dealt with his own personal coming out story, which mirrored his on screen counterpart’s life in many ways.

Recently, AfterElton.com talked to Ruggiero not only about his decision to come out of the closet, but how it affected his career, his feelings about his years at Degrassi, his thoughts about the struggles of young gay men today, his first feature film and much more.

But we started off by talking about his starring role in Dog Sees God, a stage play about the lives of the grown up versions of the classic Peanuts characters. The play is currently running at the Six Degrees Venue in Toronto, Ontario until April 18^th.

The cast of Dog Sees God

AfterElton.com: You’re starring in Dog Sees God where you play Van. Is this your first stage work?
Adamo Ruggiero: I did a lot of community theater growing up like many young actors do. And I went to an arts high school. I was a drama major, so essentially I kind of, maybe from 11 till 18 did stage work and then haven’t done it really since.

AE: How is it different from doing television or movies?
AR: Oh, man. It’s like a completely different ballgame. I think what’s psyching me up more right now is the fact of the whole live aspect. You get really comfortable when you’re doing television, especially when you’re doing television with the same people for so long and you have the freedom to stop and start and memorize a page and a half as opposed to a hundred pages. … To a live experience – 100 pages, right there, right then with immediate reaction and that’s the most exhilarating part. I think theater has a little bit more in-the-moment exhilaration, much more than film does.

Ruggiero plays Van, a straight character, who is the grown up version of
Linus Van Pelt, while Ben Lewis plays Beethoven, the play's gay character

AE: Were you familiar with the Peanuts characters before this?
AR: I never really watched the Charlie Brown cartoons, but I always watched the movies, so I always saw like the Halloween special I remember as a kid, and like the Christmas Special and all those different things. I was definitely familiar with the characters. Not with the comics. But with like the basics of the characters.