Héctor Alvarez (Writer, Director, Performer) is an interdisciplinary artist from Spain working in performance, theater, film, and opera. His work has been praised as “visually gorgeous and fulsome, so rich and sensitive in detail” (The Chicago Reader) and has been presented in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Madrid, Hong Kong, and Mexico City. He is a Princess Grace Award Winner, Drama League Directing Fellow, Watson Fellow, and was artist in residence at the Antonio Gala Foundation (Spain). In 2025 he was awarded Opera America’s Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Award. Recent directing credits include the operas Umbra by Elliot Menard and Here Be Sirens by Kate Soper; the plays Charges (The Supplicants), My Foot My Tutor, Antigonick, Roberto Zucco and The Water Station; and We’re Gonna Die, a film re-imagining of Young Jean Lee’s existential cabaret about mortality. The film was created in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and was named one of 2020’s Top Cultural Picks by WDCB’s The Arts Section.

Evan Hill (Dramaturg) is a dramaturg, researcher, educator, and theater-maker. He is the resident dramaturg of Chicago’s Theatre Y, with whom he has conceived and created several new works, such as The Camino Project, Laughing Song, and In Good Company. He has served as associate editor of Yale’s journal Theater. Evan holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama, where he is completing his DFA.  His research brings theories of social innovation and creative cognition to examine experimental comic practices and avant-garde humor from the late 19th century to the present. He has taught at Yale, Boston University, University of Northern Iowa and Rollins College.

Melissa Lorraine (Producer and Artistic Director) was born in France and graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.F.A. in acting, after which she joined Studio K in Budapest, Hungary. She premiered the English version of András Visky’s Juliet in 2006 (with over 300 performances worldwide). András then told her he could write her six more plays, and that she should start a company, and so, together with Director Christopher Markle (who died in 2008), she co-founded Theatre Y in Chicago to import Visky’s Barrack Dramaturgy (which frames the ritual of theater as one in which we willfully incarcerate ourselves with a group of strangers around a problem, and no one is allowed to leave until we arrive at a new place together.) Theatre Y has produced exactly six more Visky plays, including I KILLED MY MOTHER (for which Lorraine received a Best Actress Award in Chicago and a rave from Ben Brantley in the New York Times). Collaborating with Georges Bigot at Theatre Y for one year (2015-16), Lorraine developed an Ensemble of actors, according to the traditions of the Theatre du Soleil, and leading “from behind”, creating a common language and a way to pursue excellence without torture. In 2017 Lorraine survived a violent crime and needed movement therapy for trauma rehabilitation. In 2018 she brought this practice into Illinois prisons. Lorraine became a prison abolitionist almost immediately and works with an ‘Inside Ensemble’ of men serving life sentences across the State who have rehabilitated themselves, obtained multiple degrees inside, and who work tirelessly to re-humanize our punitive justice system. She has produced and performed or directed over 50 works of theater at Theatre Y over the last 20 years. Her production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros earned two Jeff Awards in 2024.

Christian Mitchell (Stage Manager) is a theatre and performance artist in Chicago. Over the course of completing their Master of Fine Arts degree in Berlin, Germany, Christian has taken an interest in nonlinear, atypical forms of performance with a focus on direct audience engagement. You can find Christian on stage performing with “Keep it Stupid Stupid,” a clown variety show in Chicago, and in “Serve Art,” a duo performance competition alongside Sam Erwin.

Estefania Mena (Actress) Estefanía Mena is a multidisciplinary artist born in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, and based in Chicago. Her work spans acting, playwriting, music, and community-centered artistic practice, exploring themes of identity, migration, memory, and belonging. She has developed her career through theater productions, festivals, and audiovisual projects in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala. As a creator, she is passionate about building bridges between cultures through stories that celebrate the complexity of the human experience and the diversity of Latino communities. Her works and artistic projects have been presented at theaters, film festivals, and international arts gatherings.

Attilio Rigotti  (Video and Sound Designer, Performer) is a Chilean actor, director, technology artist, and video game designer based in New York City. A co-founder of the company GLITCH, Rigotti’s work explores new forms of storytelling that seamlessly combine physical and digital mediums. His innovative design and direction have been featured on and off-Broadway, earning recognition from The New York Times, Vulture, and American Theatre Magazine. He is a NYTW 2050 Artist Fellow, a Colt Couer Resident Artist, and has been awarded the NY City Artists Corps Grant, the Wasserman Scholar Award, and the CYSTEM Award.

Steven Stoll (Set Designer)  is an accomplished Chicago-based set designer, multifarious craftsman, visual artist, musician, and sound engineer. In his professional career, Steven has designed and built every type of imagined environment ranging in context from commercial to fine art to retail to theatrical. Recently, he collaborated with Theatre Y to design and build the sets for their productions of Rhinoceros and Charges (The Supplicants).