UTRGV, Theatre, Alvaro Saar Rios, Distinguished Artist Series, Edinburg, Performing Arts, Rio Grande Valley
Staff Report
Edinburg TX - The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will present a Distinguished Artist Series evening of short plays by Texas playwright Alvaro Saar Rios on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m. at the UTRGV Performing Arts Complex, 1201 W. University Drive in Edinburg.
The evening will feature three works. Rios will perform his one-person piece “The History of Mexican in 10 Minutes.” UTRGV Theatre students will perform a two-person staged reading of “Your Ofrenda Sucks!” Rios will also read excerpts from an untitled new one-person work currently in development.
UTRGV students attend free with a valid student ID.
About Alvaro Saar Rios
Alvaro Saar Rios is a “Texican” playwright who grew up Latino in Texas in the 1970s and ’80s. He holds an Associate of Arts in Communications from Houston Community College, a Bachelor of Arts in English-Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for the Stage and Screen from Northwestern University. Before pursuing theatre, he served three years in the U.S. Army, where he drove M1A1 tanks.
Rios has written 33 plays, three musicals and an opera, and is considered one of the most produced Latino playwrights for young audiences in the United States. His award-winning play Luchadora! has been produced more than 80 times across the country. Other works include On The Wings of a Mariposa, Carmela Full of Wishes, Piggsville — a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set in old Milwaukee — and a stage adaptation of Pam Muñoz Ryan’s novel Esperanza Rising, which premiered at the Marcus Performing Arts Center in May 2025.
In 2004, Rios and his wife, Michelle Lopez-Rios, co-founded The Royal Mexican Players, a company that has created scripted and devised plays and developed workshops for schools, colleges and conferences. He has been an associate professor of playwriting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts since 2010, where he founded the New Dramaworks new play development series and the New Dramaworks Short Play Festival. He is also Playwright-in-Residence at Milwaukee’s First Stage and a member of Goodman Theatre’s Dramatists Exchange.
Source - UTRGV