At the Stella Adler School of Acting, aspiring actors completely commit themselves to mastering their artistic practice. They spend hours every day receiving conservatory training in voice, movement and text analysis, with Stella Adler’s main technique focusing on the performer using their imagination to better understand the world of the character. For three 2025 Stella Adler graduates — Valentine Alvarado, Naomi Orange, and Valentina Avila — the prestigious program gave them the knowledge they would use to form Fruit Fly Theatre Company.

Hailing from Mexico, Australia and Venezuela, the founders created Fruit Fly with the aim of providing more performing arts opportunities for immigrants and uplifting often unheard voices.

“You can always go and strive to do something that you’re passionate about,” Avila said. “You don’t have to wait around for something to show up that you like.”

Formed earlier this year, Fruit Fly is gearing up for its premiere production, “The Wish: a Manual for a Last Ditch Effort to Save Abortion in the United States Through Theatre.” Co-written in 2022 by Justice Hehir, Dena Igusti, Phanesia Pharel, Nia Akilah Robinson and Julia Specht, the play advocates for abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned. It nonlinearly tells the story of two lovers whose condom breaks, interspersing medical and legal information throughout the plot. Fruit Fly decided to add in a section at the end set in 2025 in New York City to give light to the city’s obstacles in providing reliable abortion access.

WSN spoke to Alvarado, Orange and Avila about their training at Stella Adler and why they decided to produce “The Wish.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: How has your education at Stella Adler helped your work on this production?

Alvarado: Stella Adler was really helpful for me, because I’d been told before that I was very movement-oriented and I didn’t really know how exactly to connect it with text. I also really enjoyed getting vocal technique really drilled in, because that was one of my bigger blocks as an actor; trying to connect to voice and get it out there and help serve the purpose of the stories and the characters that we get to occupy. The imagination work really has been helpful in this production, specifically because we’re meeting these characters at very specific moments. Building that background is really helpful to have them really pop and shine.

At Stella Adler, Alvarado met Orange, a performer and co-founder of Fruit Fly. Orange is both acting in and assistant directing “The Wish.”

WSN: What inspired you to start Fruit Fly?

Orange: Valentina and I were waiting for our visas for a little while, and we knew that we wanted to take things into our own hands, especially as international students. You can wait around for months or years to get cast in something that you want to be in. Being able to create a company that adheres to our own values and aesthetics, the theater that we want to see and we think needs to be seen, is so much freedom. It’s very difficult, but also rewarding to be able to do what you want to do.

WSN: Why did you select “The Wish” as Fruit Fly’s premiere production?

Orange: We’re very much of the belief that theater should be accessible. We’re trying to do that a lot with our company by creating opportunities for people to be cast in things, especially international people, and trying to make art tickets affordable and in venues that sort of keep it in the community and give back to the community. The whole point of this play is to be accessible. It makes litigation and all this fancy language understandable for everyday people. It preaches that you shouldn’t have to be some intellectual academic to know what’s going on with your own rights, and to know what’s going on politically. We wanted to do something that had meaning as something that was politically relevant today, and this play has all that.

Alongside being a member of the production company, Avila, Fruit Fly’s third co-founder, has stepped into the role of director for “The Wish.”

WSN: What’s one aspect of “The Wish” that may surprise audiences?

Avila: Abortion and reproductive rights are very heavily always focused on cisgender women, but there are more people that are affected by it. The trans community is so targeted by everyone and put under a microscope. It’s not necessarily the focus of the play, but it’s such an important thing as well to consider that it’s not just a cisgender women problem.

WSN: What do you hope audiences take away from this production?

Avila: Being from Latin America, American culture tends to be very individualistic in a way that other cultures aren’t. I really like that the play is basically asking the audience to get out of that headspace a little bit and form a sense of community. Even if you don’t know someone personally affected by something, and you’re not personally affected, we have to still act as a community and defend your neighbors and your people. It’s quite explicitly stated in the play that we should all act like for each other and be there for each other. To quote one scene, ‘I want them to love us.’

“The Wish: A Manual for a Last Ditch Effort to Save Abortion in the United States Through Theatre” is running Nov. 15-16 at Pluto’s Loft. Tickets are available online.

Contact Skylar Boilard at [email protected].