This was American wrestling – Nick Bockwinkel, Dusty Rhodes, the Guerrero brothers – but Rios remembers one figure more than others. “Mr. Wrestling II,” who was then mentoring a wrestler known as Magnum T.A. “He wore a mask,” Rios says of Mr. Wrestling II. “I was enthralled by it.”
Mr. Wrestling II and the others were part of the American wrestling scene in the ’70s and ’80s, but that mask was Rios’ entry into the world of Mexican lucha libre, a style of wrestling that originated south of the border.
Now in Milwaukee, Rios is reliving that love of wrestling, and he’s deep in the world of lucha libre, the backdrop for his new play, Luchadora!, which premieres at First Stage this month.
On a February morning at his dining room table, he shows me wrestling masks, reproduced wrestling newsletters from the 1980s and ’90s, and a stack of DVDs of old wrestling TV broadcasts. He never got a chance to see a lucha libre event live, but he remembers his friends talking about the legendary Mexican wrestler Mil Máscaras (translation: man of a thousand masks), who would come to Houston to wrestle. The idea for Luchadora! germinated in a meeting between Rios and First Stage’s Jeff Frank, who had asked Rios to contribute to the theater’s Wisconsin Cycle, a series of six world-premiere plays about the people and cultures of the state. Rios had long been fascinated with the Chinese story of Hua Mulan, a centuries-old legend in which a girl disguises herself as a boy to take her aging father’s place in the army.
In Luchadora!, the father is a warrior of a different kind, a masked wrestler who is getting too old for the ring, yet has no son to whom he can hand down his mask and his legacy, as is the tradition in lucha libre. His daughter, Lupita, secretly trains so that she can wrestle her father máscara contra máscara (mask against mask), win his mask, and assume his identity and career.
“I’ve always been interested in roles for strong women,” Rios explains. “My parents worked a lot, my older sister and stepsisters helped raise me. I’ve always been influenced by strong females, and I know it’s something you don’t see on stage a lot.” Lucha libre was the perfect backdrop for Rios’ own version of the Mulan story, creating a “pants role” – a woman masquerading as a man – a device that dates back to Shakespeare and beyond.
“American wrestling is about power and these big bulky guys,” Rios says. “But lucha libre is more about putting on a show. These are guys who do these crazy flips, bouncing around the ring and flying. Some of these guys are really small. Since women come in all shapes and sizes, you cannot tell me there has never been a female wrestler who has made a career disguised as a man.”
Lucha libre, moreover, is right in tune with one of Rios’ primary interests as a playwright – the unique intersection of Mexican and American cultures he witnesses in his home state of Texas. As Rios explains, Salvador Lutteroth Gonzalez, the father of Mexican wrestling, got the idea for lucha libre when he saw a masked wrestler in Texas. “He took the idea and made it his own,” Rios says. “I love that this is a tradition with roots in Texas, but still influenced by Mexican culture.”
Luchadora! is the first professional mainstage production of Rios’ work in Milwaukee, with most of the action set here and in Texas. For Rios, it’s a play that’s rooted in both past and present, taking him back to those Houston Saturdays with his grandmother. “I always wondered why she loved wrestling so much,” he says. “Maybe there was a lucha libre mask in her past, as well.”
Inside The Mind
Alvaro Rios’ path to Milwaukee theater started with $200 and a little luck.
➞ Alvaro Rios grew up in Houston and came late to the theater world. After high school, he joined the Army and spent three years training as a tank commander in nearby Fort Hood, Texas. From there, he went to community college, concentrating on English and creative writing, where his introduction to the stage was a transformative trial by fire.
A group planning to perform a play for young audiences lost the rights to a script, and offered Rios $200 to write a new play. “That was like gold,” Rios recalls, “so I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’” At the first reading, he was hooked: “Listening to the cast read my words, that’s when I was bit by the playwriting bug.” When a professional company decided to stage his play, they insisted he direct it. And when the lead actor dropped out days before opening, Rios ended up acting as well, playing a talking dog.
Transferring to the University of Houston, Rios studied with two legendary American playwrights – Edward Albee and Lanford Wilson – and continued to write comedy sketches and read them with friends. Eventually, the sketches became The Crazy Mexican Show, and the friends became the Royal Mexican Players. “We kind of formed this family,” Rios says. “There wasn’t a lot of Latino theater in Houston, and we wanted to remedy that. And we wanted to create opportunities for ourselves.” One of the group’s members was Michelle Lopez, and on closing night of one of their shows, Rios proposed to her. Within the year, she was offered a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and in 2010, Rios joined the faculty as well. A recycling play for the Zoological Society and directing his wife’s one-woman show with the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre are on the horizon – all signs that the couple is here to stay.
[mark]Luchadora![/mark] (May 17). (April 10-26). Todd Wehr Theater. Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. 929 N Water St., 414-267-2961, firststage.org.
Paul Kosidowski appears on WUWM’s “Lake Effect” April 9 at 10 a.m.
‘Lady Libre’ appears in the April, 2015, issue of Milwaukee Magazine.
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