Performance
The Water Station
A Japanese, slow tempo, silent play about the plight of refugees.
We’re Gonna Die
A film re-imagining of Young Jean Lee’s cabaret about life’s awfulness and its sweet comforts.
La Pura Idea Excita
A promenade style love tale inside the rooms and garden of a 19th century home in Mexico City.
Self-Accusation
A modern oratorio inside a storefront window with the city of Chicago as its backdrop.
Malaga
A multicam melodrama in the apartment of a troubled marriage.
The Ghoul Exhibition
A one-man American epic about guns.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Jane Austen inspired “Dream”.
The Bacchae
An indoor/outdoor ritual with actors from seven different countries.
The Water Station
by OTA SHOGO
Directed by Héctor alvarez
California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles 2022
The Water Station by Ota Shogo uses silence and slowness to craft a meditation on the disenfranchised. Created in 1981, but inspired by Shogo’s experience as a refugee at the end of World War II, this wordless, slow-tempo piece confronts the audience with a flow of survivors fleeing an unnamed cataclysm. Despite the bleakness, each character’s encounter with a fine thread of water liberates something in them: grief, memory, repressed desire, hope. Shocked by the agonizing slowness of George Floyd’s death, I wanted to create a version of Shogo’s piece for our current moment, one where slowness becomes a magnifying glass with which to examine brutality and the interplay between silence and trauma.
La Pura Idea Excita
by David Gaitan
Directed by Héctor alvarez
Assistant directed by karen crush
teatro lúcido, CDMX 2019
Self-Accusation
by Peter Handke
Directed by Héctor alvarez and melissa lorraine
theatre y, Chicago 2019
"The amount of mystery, spontaneity, and jaw dropping yet sincere means of spectacle cannot be overstated. A master class in storytelling […] There is nothing else like this being performed in Chicago right now." —Chicago Theatre Triathlon
"It’s not entertainment: it's visual poetry […] Theatre Y is taking on challenging work and applying soul and elbow grease to create truth. A worthy statement of this moment in time.” —Chicago Stage Standard
"The performance of the millennium" —Chicago Reader
Malaga (Or The Inner Ear)
by LUKAS BÄrfuss
Directed by Héctor alvarez and melissa lorraine
theatre y, Chicago 2018
The Ghoul Exhibition
CREATED by Héctor alvarez
the new school, New York 2016
UT Austin, Texas 2017
the tank, New York 2017
rhinofsest, Chicago 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare
directed by jess mcleod
assistant directed by héctor alvarez
chicago shakespeare theater, Chicago 2018
The Bacchae
by EURIPIDES
CO-directed with SITI Program participants under the mentorship of anne bogart
skidmore college, Saratoga Springs 2018
