Theatre Y Proudly presents the Chicago Premiere of

The School of Memory

Created by Héctor Álvarez

in collaboration with Attilio Rigotti & Theatre Y

This July, Theatre Y presents the Chicago premiere of The School of Memory, a new multimedia theater piece written and performed by Spanish artist Héctor Alvarez in collaboration with Chilean designer and technology artist Attilio Rigotti. Eight performances across two weekends — July 9, 10, 11, 12 and July 16, 17, 18, 19.

About the Work

What do we do with the darkness we inherit?

The School of Memory is a family biography turned murder mystery, a new multimedia work where director-performer Héctor Alvarez explores his family’s complex relationship with Spanish fascism.  Weaving documentary theater with critical fabulation, Alvarez reconstructs the circumstances surrounding his great-grandfather’s death at the hands of Fascist troops during the Spanish Civil War, and excavates buried truths about family, memory, and historical violence.

Central to the piece is the live work of Attilio Rigotti, whose real-time manipulation of sound and video creates a visual language where archival footage morphs into living memory, historical documents dissolve and reconstitute themselves, and faces from the past speak directly to the present.

This technological vocabulary does more than illustrate history; it draws explicit parallels between the Spanish Civil War and the present moment. The Spanish conflict was born out of forces that feel unnervingly familiar today: extreme polarization, political violence, the rise of fascism, and the weaponization of new technologies against democracy — then film and radio, now AI and social media.

Why Now

2026 marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War — an ideal moment to enter a global conversation about memory, justice, and the enduring legacies of fascism. But the urgency of The School of Memory goes beyond the calendar.

For Alvarez, interrogating his family’s past onstage is a way of thinking about the United States’ future — a way to speak to American audiences who may know authoritarianism as an abstraction but have rarely encountered it as a lived experience: how it enters homes, divides communities, and corrupts memory. In a political moment when these questions feel newly urgent, The School of Memory offers not just a history lesson but a provocation: one family’s past as a mirror for America's present.


Performances July 9-19th, 2026: Thursday-Saturday 7 pm & Sundays 5 pm

• Weekend One: July 9, 10, 11, 12

• Weekend Two: July 16, 17, 18, 19

Location: Theatre Y - 3611 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60623. 

Admission: Free and open to the public 

PLEASE RSVP

All performances are FREE to the public thanks to members
who donate as little as $5/month ($60/year).
We welcome DONATIONS and MEMBERS

The project has received support from New York Theater Workshop,
Espacio de Culturas/NYU, Emory University, Humanity in Action,
the Martin Foundation, the Cliff Dwellers Arts Foundation
and What Will The Neighbors Say?

ARTISTS

Héctor Alvarez
(Writer, Director, Performer) is an interdisciplinary artist from Spain working in 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 Charges (The Supplicants) at Theatre Y (co-directed with Melissa Lorraine); the operas Umbra by Elliot Menard and Here Be Sirens by Kate Soper; the plays 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).

About Theatre Y:
Theatre Y is a Chicago-based international incubator that creates connections between diverse artists seeking mutual growth through collaboration. Since 2006, Theatre Y has been a point of convergence for diverse activisms and all of the uncomfortable conversations that happen as a result. Artistic director Melissa Lorraine and the Theatre Y ensemble are committed to continuously re-thinking the practice of theater as a tool of liberation and a revolutionary practice, bringing Theatre Y to venues ranging from La MaMa’s historical theater to Illinois prisons. Newly and permanently relocated to the West Side (on the border of North Lawndale and Little Village), Theatre Y, now in its 20th year of experimental productions, challenging international content, and with a member-based FREE theater model, occupies a unique place in Chicago's theater community.
More about our history and mission.

For press inquiries, interviews, or more information, please contact:

Managing Director Dan Christmann:773-395-1778 Ext. 0
Dan.Christmann@theatre-y.com
Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine: 773-395-1778 Ext. 1
melissalorraine@theatre-y.com
info@theatre-y.com /www.theatre-y.com