Megan Monaghan Rivas came to UNCSA after five years as artistic director of Connecticut Repertory Theatre and professor and department head of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. Previously, she served as Interim Head of the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was appointed associate professor of dramaturgy in 2013 and earned tenure in 2018.
Rivas' professional work includes leading literary departments at South Coast Repertory Theatre, the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta and Frontera @ Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, Texas. She also oversaw the artistic programming for playwrights at the Lark Play Development Center in New York City and The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. Her freelance work includes the New Harmony Project, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Geffen Playhouse, Quantum Theatre, Aurora Theatre, the Salt Lake Acting Company, TheatreSquared, Actors Express Theatre and Horizon Theatre.
Rivas is the author of an original gender-bending adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ "Three Musketeers," and a separate original play riffing on Dumas’ characters set among women workers in the French Resistance entitled "Three Musketeers: 1941." She's been honored with the Elliott Hayes Prize in Dramaturgy.