UTRGV Student Activities will begin its 19th season of the Distinguished Speaker Series with Academy Award-winning actress and activist Marlee Matlin at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Texas Southmost College Performing Arts Center in Brownsville.
Matlin, who won an Oscar for Actress in a Leading Role in 1987 for “Children of a Lesser God,” is the most prominent deaf actress of a generation and advocated for casting deaf actors in the 2021 film “CODA,” according to her Forbes profile.
She appeared for seven seasons in the 2000 NBC award-winning drama “The West Wing,” starring Martin Sheen and Bradley Whitford.
In 2011, Matlin appeared on the NBC show “Celebrity Apprentice,” raising $1 million for the nonprofit charity, The Starkey Hearing Foundation, in one day, according to her website.
She also appeared on the Peabody Award-winning ABC family drama, “Switched at Birth,” the first TV show to feature a number of deaf actors in leading roles, the website states.
When choosing the Distinguished Speaker, there are some criteria that the Distinguished Speaker Series Committee must keep in mind, such as who would be a good fit for the students, said Cristina Rodriguez, assistant director of Student Activities.
“We thought, ‘The month of March is Women’s History Month,’” Rodriguez said. “We were also thinking of any other [observances] that are available, and then also what is relevant to our student population. We had a few [people] in mind. Marlee Matlin was one of them.”
She said this season of the series is unique because Matlin will first speak in Edinburg.
“Marlee Matlin is meeting with theater students on the Edinburg campus earlier in the day and the public lecture [will be] in the evening in Brownsville,” Rodriguez said.
The Distinguished Speaker Series is a signature program that aims to provide the university and surrounding community with world-class speakers and lecturers, according to the Student Activities webpage.
Admission is free, but seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis, Rodriguez said.
“There is no fee at all included,” she said. “We will have a UTRGV line and a community line. We do ask [students] to have their [school] ID or have the GET app to have it available. … If they don’t have either, we will ask them to go in through the community line as there’s a different process.”
The event will also be available through a livestream.
“We will publicize on the website, and we’ll go ahead and send some mass emails,” Rodriguez said. “It’ll be a website where people [are] able to register all the way up to the actual event time. So, [when] the event is happening, they can still register and have access to live viewing it.”
The livestream will include closed captioning and the live event will include an interpreter provided by UTRGV, as well as Matlin’s own interpreter.
“Those are just extra elements that allows for more audience viewers to be able to participate in it,” Rodriguez said.
Lilian Sauceda, an integrated health science freshman, believes having Matlin is a great opportunity to bring awareness to American Sign Language and the Deaf community.
“Having the speaker come in and give, like, brief … information about it would be pretty cool because it could teach people about disabilities other than, like, the ones that are mostly commonly known,” Sauceda said.
Justin Vasquez, a theater senior, said Matlin would help give a different perspective to theater majors and help widen their horizons.
“I think the event is going to give people within my major, it really gives perspective on, like, how theater works or performance works with someone with a disability and, maybe, what we could do, like, adapt and be more accessible,” Vasquez said.
Rodriguez said students may suggest speakers for the series by accessing a form through the Student Activities’ Distinguished Speaker Series webpage or using the link utrgv.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b33FxwvmUI6xv7M.
