Megan Monaghan Rivas has been named the new head of the Dramatic Arts department at the University of Connecticut’s School of Fine Arts as well as the artistic director of the school’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre.
Monaghan Rivas officially began in the positions on Monday.
She succeeds playwright/director Michael Bradford, who held the titles from 2016 until 2020, when he became UConn’s vice provost for faculty, staff and student development. Edward Weingart has served as interim department head of Dramatic Arts for the past year.
The jobs of running the Dramatic Arts program and overseeing the Connecticut Repertory Theatre are traditionally held by the same person, as the theater is part of the training program for student actors. The Geffen School of Drama at Yale and its Yale Repertory Theatre follow a similar model.
Connecticut Repertory Theatre has not held in-person performances since the COVID-19 shutdown in March of last year. For its 2020-21 season, the theater presented a series of virtual performances, including several one-act plays by Tennessee Williams.
Prior to UConn, Monaghan Rivas was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for seven years, where her titles included interim head of the school of the School of Drama and associate professor of Dramaturgy. She has also taught at the University of Iowa, Indiana State University and several schools in Missouri, including the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University, St. Louis University and the University of Missouri – St. Louis.
Outside of academia, Monaghan Rivas has worked with Connecticut’s Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (for its National Playwrights Conference), Indiana’s New Harmony Project, the Women in Theatre Festival at New York’s Project Y Theatre, Actors Express Theatre and the Alliance Theatre (both in Georgia), Shakespeare Festival St. Louis and California’s South Coast Repertory Theatre, among others.
In a 2019 interview with Adam Szymkowicz’s “I Interview Playwrights” blog, Monaghan Rivas said, “I love theater that lifts off from realism and flies,” and specifically mentions Yale School of Drama graduate Marcus Gardley as writer whose plays “are a great example of this — they are grounded in profound truth, but live fearlessly in mythic and poetic dimensions.”
Her own best-known play may be “Three Musketeers: 1941,” an updated adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic set in occupied Paris during World War II and featuring women in the lead musketeer roles.
In a statement, School of Fine Arts Dean Anne D’Alleva says, “We are thrilled to have Megan join the School of Fine Arts. Her depth of experience in both the professional realm and in higher education are ideal for the School of Fine Arts as we celebrate our 60th anniversary and move to the future.”
Monaghan Rivas continues a welcome trend of women being named leaders of major Connecticut theaters. In recent years, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Musicals, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas have all hired female artistic directors or executive directors. Hartford Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre and Long Wharf Theatre all now have female managing directors.
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
