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201196 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.201196 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved 2025 213 pages Doctoral Dissertation Academic theses en Sanderson, Clayton Ford Underiner, Tamara Huerta, Jorge Martinson, Karen Jean Hunt, Kristin Arizona State University Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2025 Field of study: Theatre In this dissertation, I chart the ways in which playwrights of Mexican descent living in The United States (or what would become The United States) have used satire to unmask people for who they are and bring attention to wrongdoing in the hope of initiating social change. My work here is primarily a literary analysis of many different plays, but it also contains elements of oral history and other means of placing each playwright and their work in a historical context. The best known plays of this genre were created during the Chicano movement of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, but I argue that satire has been employed by theatremakers of Mexican descent both well before and after this period of time. Most crucially, while acknowledging the Chicano movement as the era during which Mexican-American/Chicano theatrical satire reached its peak popularity and was most frequently produced, I will reveal how the spirit and aesthetic of Chicanidad is very much alive in a wide variety of plays from the 1990s through the present, even as an increasingly fewer number of Mexican-American playwrights identify as Chicano/a/e. Theater Latin American Studies Chicano Mexican-American Playwrights Satire Theater Theatre Unmasking the Lie: Mexican-American Playwrights and the Power of Satire