Melissa Barrera González attributes her interest in theater to the encouragement of her parents and to the words of her grandmother Lola de Llano, who as a young woman in Lampazos, Nuevo Leon acted in plays.
“She gets it from me,” De Llano announced when Barrera performed in the Laredo Little Theater’s (LLT) 1979 production of Funny Girl, costumed at times in the dresses and hats of her grandmother.
“I treasure those words that she spoke in her beautiful thick accent, and the photos we have of her in theatrical poses,” Barrera González said.
“My first appearance in an LLT play came about when Sammy Johnson, who was in production for Carnival, asked my mother if I could do cartwheels,” she recalled.
“From the age of eight I was exposed to all types of dance and music in ballet, jazz, and flamenco classes with Altagracia Azios García,” she said.
Barrera González shared her mother’s love of music and theater. “We would watch the Tonys every year. One of my best memories was when my parents took me to a dinner theater performance of My Fair Lady in San Antonio.”
She spoke fondly of Juliard-educated Hortense Offerle, her music teacher at Ryan Elementary. “I was a regular in the audience for performances of the Laredo Civic Music Association (LCMA) with my friend Nina Neel, whose mother Ann was involved with the association and encouraged us to attend their programs,” she said.
In 1978 her Nixon High School classmates talked her into auditioning to sing the song for senior prom night. She recalled that others who auditioned had taken voice lessons, and some showed up with a pianist. “I sang Barry Manilow’s Looks Like We Made It a capella in my untrained voice and got the part. That was a great memory,” she said, adding, “I knew I could sing, but I also knew I wanted to sing and act.”
That opportunity presented itself while she was at UT-Austin, when she auditioned to become part of a Student Union troupe that performed musicals and reviews. She sang Cabaret a capella without sheet music. “I got the part. It was an enriching experience. I didn’t know then that I was in the company of greatness. One member of the troupe became the artistic director of the Zach Theater Company in Austin and another the artistic director of the American Ballet Company at the Kennedy Center and later the artistic director of the Hong Kong Ballet,” she noted.
In the mid-80s Barrera González moved to Dallas, completed a degree in business at UT-Dallas, and became part of an immersive musical theater group through the Performing Artists Musical Theater Conservatory, which was modeled after the American Music and Dramatic Academy. She recalled, “I loved every minute of it, but it wasn’t in the cards for me to do this as a living at the time. It would have meant leaving my life to be a gypsy, and that was never for me.”
Barrera González moved to San Antonio, and in 1999 she auditioned for and was cast in the lead role as Miss Mona in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Thereafter she was a frequent performer in San Antonio theater in productions that included A Chorus Line, Damn Yankees, Chicago, Cabaret, The Sound of Music, In the Heights, Young Frankenstein, The Addams Family, Annie, On Your Feet, My Fair Lady, Anything Goes, Hairspray, and Steel Magnolias.
In 2007 she was cast in Menopause the Musical, which was staged by Broadway producers who had exclusive rights to the show for an extended period of time in San Antonio. “They established a sit-down company of local actors. The play had an eight-month run, seven shows a week, every show sold out,” she said.
From 2010 to 2014 she performed in Laredo Theater Guild International performances, notably in 2010 as Baroness Elsa Schareder in The Sound of Music, in 2011 as Miss Hannigan in Annie, in 2012 as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella, in 2013 as Velma Von Tussle in Hairspray, and in 2014 as Evalita in Daddy’s Dyin’, Who’s Got the Will?
“For that, I owe special thanks to my friend Joe Arciniega for the opportunities to return to my hometown and do some great high-quality shows,” she said.
Last January she performed Canciones Del Corazón at Teatro Audaz in San Antonio. “I jumped at the chance to audition for it because it meant being able to sing in Spanish. The music evoked many good memories of growing up in Laredo,” she said.
Barrera González continues in theater with performances in San Antonio and also as a supporter of the theater arts, having served 10-year tenures on the boards of the Wonder Theater (formerly the Woodlawn Theater) and the Alamo Theater Arts Council.
She and her husband, Edgardo Cruz González III, support programs that promote arts education for children, such as the Wonder Theatre Academy that has educational programs and classes and produces full length musicals for children ages 5 to 18.
