TEAM
Our team is a collective of artists from diverse backgrounds — including opera, theater and film — all MFA graduates of CalArts Theater School.
HÉCTOR ÁLVAREZ
DIRECTOR
Héctor Alvarez is an interdisciplinary artist 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 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.
SALMAH BEYDOUN
SCENIC DESIGNER
Salmah Beydoun is a scenic artist, architect, and motion graphics designer based in Mexico City and LA. Her work spans theater, choreography, and installation, with a focus on crafting spaces that foster collaboration and provoke visual dialogues. In parallel to her performance design-focused practice, she thrives as a motion graphics and 3D artist for multidisciplinary media. Her designs have been showcased at RedCat (Los Angeles), Studio Teatr (Warsaw), Mandeville Gallery (San Diego), Centro Cultural del Bosque (Mexico City), and the Grotowski Institute (Wroclaw). Salmah holds an Architecture degree from UNAM and an MFA in Scenic Design from CalArts. Since 2015, she has assisted in numerous stage productions, including Così Fan Tutte, Carmen, and Le Nozze di Figaro. She is co-founder of Berenjena, a Mexican theater and publishing collective. Her honors include the 2019 Princess Grace Award, the OPERA America 2025 Tobin Prize, and 2nd place at World Stage Design 2022.
CLAIRE CHRZAN
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Claire Chrzan is a Los Angeles based lighting designer originally from Chicago. Her work has been seen at The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Court Theatre, Manual Cinema, Writers Theatre, Northlight, A Red Orchid, RedCat, The Joffrey Ballet's Joffrey Academy, The Utah Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theatre in New York, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Conservatoire National Superieur in Paris, and Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon. In addition to designing for live performance, Claire is a lighting designer at the architectural lighting firm Banks Landl, where she designs for a range of projects including hospitality, residential, themed entertainment, and more. Claire holds a MFA in Experience Design from California Institute of the Arts and a BA in theatrical design from Columbia College Chicago.
ASHLEY SNYDER
COSTUME DESIGNER
Ashley Kae Snyder is Interested in gender expression through dress, character development in tiny details and collaborating to create surrealistic worlds. Recent credits include: Florist (short film), Euripides’ Herekles (theatre), I Miss the Mom I Once Knew (stop-motion), and Unveiling the Veil (immersive horror-theatre).
Ashley holds an MFA in Experience and Production Design specializing in Costumes from California Institute of the Arts and a B.S. in Media Studies with an emphasis in Digital Film from Utah Tech University.
