Michelle Lopez-Rios has devoted her career to helping people and communities find their voice. Perhaps that\u2019s not surprising, considering what\u2019s been silenced.<\/p>\n
Born of native Spanish-speakers from the border town of Brownsville, Texas, Lopez-Rios says her parents were from a generation \u201cbeaten for speaking Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAssimilation was really important,\u201d she says. Her parents moved Lopez-Rios and her brother to The Woodlands, a Houston suburb with good schools but few children who looked like them or shared their Mexican-American culture.<\/p>\n
After high school, Lopez-Rios enrolled in the University of Southern California, where she found other Mexican-American students and, finally, a sense of belonging. Arriving on campus, she remembers thinking, \u201cWow, there are people like me and they\u2019re talking in Spanglish!\u201d<\/p>\n
USC also offered Lopez-Rios her first exposure to Latino theater \u2014 as well as a curriculum full of white male playwrights and actors. \u201cI didn\u2019t get to see my face on stage,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Now a voice professor in UWM\u2019s Peck School of the Arts, Lopez-Rios has made it her mission to help people raise their voices \u2014 on stage and off. She will be recognized for her efforts Friday with an Outstanding Woman of Color in Education Award from the UW System. The award is an annual honor given to faculty, staff, students, or community members for their contributions to diversity and the status of women within the UW System.<\/p>\n
Uncovering everyday stories<\/strong><\/p>\n Lopez-Rios\u2019s contribution to diversity at UWM and beyond is impressive. When she arrived in Milwaukee in 2006 with her husband, Alvaro Saar Rios, also a member of the Peck theater faculty, she set out to uncover the stories of Latinos in her new hometown. The couple\u2019s grant-funded project, \u201cNuestra Voz, Nuestra Historia\/Our Voice, Our Story,\u201d engaged people who were not professional actors or storytellers in a workshop designed to help them reclaim stories from their own lives. When the pair couldn\u2019t find enough participants on campus, they recruited in Latino neighborhoods, schools and community centers.<\/p>\n \u201cOur work is based in the idea that, if it\u2019s not there, we go to it. No more excuses,\u201d Lopez-Rios says.<\/p>\n Assembling the workshop members turned out to be the easy part. The bigger challenge was cajoling them onto the stage.<\/p>\n Rios says the storytellers were nervous, wondering, \u201c\u2018Will people think my story is funny?\u2019 or, \u2018Will they care?\u2019 Michelle took away all that anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n Veronica Sotelo Mu\u00f1oz was a \u201cNuestra Voz, Nuestra Historia\u201d participant who says working with Lopez-Rios changed her life path.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing involved in [Nuestra Voz] had such a strong effect on me that I became a theater student,\u201d Sotelo Mu\u00f1oz says. \u201cI was also inspired by storytelling, performance and how theater can bring a voice to those who are often underrepresented in society.\u201d<\/p>\n Turning up the volume<\/strong><\/p>\n Underrepresented voices are what drive Lopez-Rios. As a voice teacher, she helps actors master Shakespearean English and coaches ministers, educators, and lawyers in effective communication. But it\u2019s the opportunity to work with the unheard that stirs her most deeply.<\/p>\n \u201cThe work that\u2019s really exciting to me is people who have lost their voice,\u201d she says. \u201cAbused women, immigrants who don\u2019t have status. I help them find the strength of their voice and help them express themselves so they can be a part of whatever they want to in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n In these cases, a voice has both literal and metaphorical meaning. \u201cTheir voice becomes so quiet and introverted that, physically, there is no sound,\u201d Lopez-Rios says, \u201cThey feel invisible so they sound invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n Angie Trudell Vasquez can attest to Lopez-Rios\u2019s talent for helping people turn up the volume. A Milwaukee-based poet and activist, Vasquez says Lopez-Rios transformed her sense of herself as a performer.<\/p>\n \u201cIn one session with her, she changed how I read or perform my poems in public,\u201d Vasquez says. \u201cI was reborn by the experience as an artist. She taught me that delivery is an art in and of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The transformation was obvious to her teacher, too. \u201cWhen I met Angela Vasquez, she didn\u2019t have a lot of power in her voice,\u201d Lopez-Rios says. \u201cWe worked on her power and it set her poetry on fire in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n Lopez-Rios is a role model beyond UWM\u2019s halls as one of the few Latina tenured voice professors in the membership of VASTA, the international association of voice teachers. When Lopez-Rios went up for tenure in 2012, someone noted in VASTA\u2019s online forum that there were no other tenured Latina voice professors in the United States, United Kingdom or Australia.<\/p>\n That scarcity makes Lopez-Rios\u2019 presence on campus vital for students like Sotelo Mu\u00f1oz.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first started theater in UWM, I felt like I didn\u2019t fit in,\u201d Sotelo Mu\u00f1oz says. \u201cHaving Michelle as a professor served as a role model for me and an example of what I could accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n Lopez-Rios has contributed to the diversity of academic offerings at UWM, too. She designed Theatre 324: Theatre in the Americas, to give students the \u201copportunity to intimately study the intersection of history and theater in Latin America, Caribbean, and Latina\/o culture.\u201d<\/p>\n The course highlights the voices of Latinos, both past and present. Lopez-Rios might use a script to bring to life the legacy of Mexican farmworker strikes in California or the stories of the \u201cdisappeared\u201d \u2014 victims of Argentina\u2019s violent dictatorship. Studying these plays opens windows into the complex saga of the Americas. \u201cThe students say, \u2018I can\u2019t believe I didn\u2019t know this history!\u2019\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n Many roles<\/strong><\/p>\n Lopez-Rios strives to bring Latino theater alive in other ways as well, including as a writer, an actor, and a director.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the roles feed into each other,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s this wonderful term in Spanish. It\u2019s \u2018teatrista,\u2019 and I love that because it\u2019s \u2018a theater worker.\u2019 It\u2019s not a role \u2014 actor, director \u2014 it\u2019s a \u2018theater creator.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She wrote her first play last year, \u201c500 Years,\u201d about a 500-year-old Latina reflecting on her life and the people she met in places connected by the Conquest: Spain, Mexico, Milwaukee. \u201cIt was so terrifying, and so hard, but it made me appreciate the words in a whole new way as an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n For all of Lopez-Rios\u2019s efforts to raise the voices of Latino writers, of Latina performers, of everyday people who need to be heard, it\u2019s clear that her real superpower is an ability to listen closely, with both head and heart.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely part of her nature,\u201d Rios, her husband, says. \u201cI think she is the person that people go to when it comes to certain problems. She is the one who listens. My office is right next to hers. She always has students coming to her office hours, with life problems, questions about staying in the program. She is the ear of the department.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Voice teacher Michelle Lopez-Rios empowers Latino immigrants, women and others to tell their own stories. For some students, the experience is life changing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":486,"featured_media":21815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"section":[127,131],"display_categories":[114,116],"related-coverage":[204],"uwmnews-feed":[344,164],"class_list":["post-21439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","section-arts-humanities","section-theater","display_categories-top-story-primary","display_categories-top-story-section","related-coverage-spanish","uwmnews-feed-arts-architecture","uwmnews-feed-arts"],"yoast_head":"\n