No Exit by Andy Vores

Three strangers are ushered into a room, only to realize that they are destined to spend the rest of their miserable eternity confined together in close quarters. Based on Jean-Paul Satre’s 1944 existentialist play, NO EXIT offers a simple yet diabolical vision of the afterlife, in which the tools of torture are rooted not in physical pain, but in the frailty of human vanity, spite, jealousy, and self-delusion. In its West Coast premiere, Andy Vores’s chamber opera brings musical inventiveness and dark humor to Satre’s text, and breathes fiendish life into its assertion that “Hell is other people”.

COMPOSER | Andy Vores

DIRECTOR | Robert Castro

DESIGNER | Victoria Petrovich

MUSIC DIRECTOR | Brendan Nguyen

JOSEPH GARCIN | Miguel Zazueta, tenor

INEZ SERRANO | Leslie Ann Leytham, mezzo-soprano

ESTELLE RIGAULT | Mariana Flores-Bucio, soprano

VALET | Jonathan Nussman, baritone

ANDY VORES was born Wales and raised in England. He studied at Lancaster University with Edward Cowie. From 1982 working as Composer-in-Residence at The City University, London. In 1986 he was a Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood. He has lived in Boston since 1990.

1999 to 2001 he was Composer-in-Residence to the BankBoston Celebrity Series, and 2002 to 2005 Composer-in-Residence to the New England Philharmonic. From 2001 until 2016 he taught at The Boston Conservatory where he was Chair of Composition, Theory, and Music History.

Commissions include Freshwater (The Boston University Opera Institute), Wetherby Nocturne for Kathleen Supové (The Barlow Endowment), Quartet No.3 for The Borromeo String Quartet (Chamber Music America), World Wheel for The Cantata Singers, Umberhulk for Boston Musica Viva, and Uncertainty Is Beautiful for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Awards include a Koussevitsky Fellowship, the Kucyna International Composition Competition, the Scottish National Orchestra Ian Whyte Award, the Tanglewood Prize for Composition, the Omaha Symphony Guild New Music Contest, and the Huddersfield Festival.

Recent performances include No Exit by Florida Grand Opera, Fabrication 15: Amplification (Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music), Spencer the Rover (Chorus Pro Musica), Drive (The New England Philharmonic) Grand Monadnock Measures (Monadnock Music Festival), and Chrononhotonthologos (Guerilla Opera).

ROBERT CASTRO is a theater director who directs classics, new works and opera across the U.S. and internationally. Credits include: The Public Theater/NYSF, New York Theatre Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, Center Theatre Group/LA, Santa Fe Opera, Wiener Festwochen (Austria), Bolshoi Opera (Russia), Teatro Real (Spain). Served as Associate Artist: Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group, Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at ART/Harvard University, and El Teatro Campesino. Awards include: NEA/TCG Fellowship for Directors, TCG/Doris Duke New Generations Grant, Sherwood Award, Hellman Fellows Program. Member: New York Theatre Workshop and Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. Faculty: UCSD Dept. of Theatre & Dance.

VICTORIA PETROVICH is a theatrical production designer working in scenic, costume and projection design for live performance. She has collaborated with Luís Valdez, Bill Irwin, Ben Krywosz, Anne Bogart, David Schweizer, Tim Dang, Jose Luís Valenzuela, Robert Castro, Karen Saillant, Yolande Snaith, Delicia Turner-Sonnenberg, Culture Clash, Patricia Rincón, Danza Viral, and more.

Her designs have been produced internationally at the Singapore Repertory Theatre, International Opera Theater in Cittá della Pieve, Italy, Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and Festival Im•Pulso/UNAM, Mexico City. Regional work has been produced at The Roundabout Theatre, Music-Theater-Group’s St. Clements Church NYC, The Mark Taper Forum, The Santa Monica Museum, The Hammer Museum, Minneapolis Children’s Theater, Minnesota Opera, Los Angeles Opera (2 tours), Nautilus Music-Theatre, The Alley Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, East West Players, the Denver Center, LATC, San Diego REPertory Theatre, Lewis Family Theater, Moxie Theater, and Diversionary Theatre.

Awards include the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards/Dramalogue Award for Outstanding Set design for the productions of Passion (East West Players), The Women (San Diego REPertory) and Lips Together, Teeth Apart (South Coast Repertory), and the Craig Noel San Diego Critics’ Award for Outstanding Projection Design for A Weekend with Pablo Picasso (San Diego REPertory). Victoria has also designed multi-site telematic performances in multiple collaborations with composer/bassist Mark Dresser and composer/trombonist Michael Dessen.

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