UTRGV'S Latino Theatre Initiatives is shown here at the New Orleans InFringe Fest in November 2017, where they presented ‘Crawling with Monsters Now.’ (Archive Photo Courtesy of Latino Theatre Initiatives)
Friday, April 27, 2018
By Marci Caltabiano-Ponce
UTRGV’s Latino Theatre Initiatives (LTI) and the Department of Theatre are producing a video version of “Crawling with Monsters,” an award-winning documentary theatre project.
The play deals with violence in Reynosa and northeastern Mexico, and has been seen at theatre festivals and on college campuses across the country. In 2011, it won the Overall Excellence Award at the New York International Fringe Festival, and was listed in Back Stage East as one of the memorable theatre performances of the year in New York.
The video production, under the auspices of UTRGV’s LTI student organization and the Department of Theatre, is funded in part by a $6,000 grant from by the RLC Foundation of Denver, Colorado. The award was announced by fund custodian David Cohen, a graduate student in the MFA in Creative Writing program at UTRGV and part-time instructor in the Communication Department.
Previously, “Crawling with Monsters” has received external grants from various sources, foremost among them the RLC Foundation.
“Funding provides critical support for the intensive editing required in post-production,” said Dr. Eric Wiley, UTRGV theatre professor and the LTI faculty advisor. “We are grateful for the RLC Foundation’s support at a time when violence in the region is at record levels.”
For more information about the project, contact Wiley at eric.wiley@utrgv.edu.
ABOUT UTRGV
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund – a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.
UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.