Marissa Chibas is a performer, writer, and educational administrator who has worked in a wide variety of theatrical forms for over two decades. As an actor Marissa was last seen in the Center for New Performance at CalArts and INTAR production of her solo performance piece Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary at the REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles and the Daryl Roth Theater in NYC. She played Pilar in the West Coast premiere of Sonia Flew at The Laguna Playhouse. She recently starred in the American premiere of The Keening , a one woman play by Columbian playwright Umberto Dorado at the American Repertory Theater in Boston. At the Mark Taper Forum she performed in The Floating Island Plays by Eduardo Machado and The House of Bernarda Alba directed by Lisa Peterson. Marissa played Edgar in the Center For New Perfromanc at CalArts’ inaugural production of King Lear, directed by Travis Preston, at the Brewery in Downtown Los Angeles and at the Frictions festival 03 in Dijon, France. Her American premieres include: The Predator’s Ball at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Democracy in America at the Yale Rep, and Two sisters and a Piano at the McCarter. On Broadway, Marissa played opposite Sam Waterston in Abe Lincoln in Illinois directed by Gerry Gutierrez and was Nora in Brighton Beach Memoirs directed by Gene Saks. Her New York premieres include Eric Overmeyer’s Dark Rapture at New York Stage and Film, A.R. Gurney’s Another Antigone and Overtime at Playwright’s Horizons and Manhattan Theater Club respectively, Total Eclipse at Westside Arts Theater, Major Crimes at the Actors Studio’s Raw Space, South with Target Margin Theater at HERE, and Hurricane at Classic Stage Company. Her resident theater credits include Danton’s Death directed by Robert Wilson at the Alley Theater in Houston. In addition to the credits listed above Marissa has worked extensively in the resident theater such as; Arena Stage, The Old Globe, Baltimore Center Stage, the Actors Theater of Louisville, and at the Coconut Grove Theater where she starred in Seascape written and directed by Edward Albee. Marissa has been seen on television in Law and Order and FEDS. On film she appeared in Lewis Klahr’s The Speed of Turqoise, Getting Away with Murder with Dan Ackroyd, and Henry Fool directed by Hal Hartley.

Marissa participated in the Sundance Theater Labs of 1997, 1998 and 2004. Among her roles there she played Eva Luna in the bi-lingual version of the Stories of Eva Luna directed and choreographed by Della Davidson. She has participated in the Latino Playwrights Festival at South Coast Rep, and the Playwrights Lab at The Mark Taper Forum. Marissa is a member of the Actors Studio.

Marissa was an active participant as a director and actor with the 52nd Street Project, an organization devoted to uniting professional artists with inner city kids in the New York area in order to create theater. Other educational experience includes teaching acting at the Harvard Summer Program, and at NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School for 5 years. Marissa has performed and worked with Junior and High School students in both the Manhattan Theater Club’s and Manhattan Class Company’s youth initiatives. She has served on panels at the Mark Taper Forum and at CalArts and served on the 2007 MAP Fund panel. Marissa is on the board of Trans Arts, Blank the Dog Theater, and the Loz Feliz Charter School for the Arts where she helped create the Theater Arts curriculum.

Marissa is Head of the Acting Program at California Institute of the Arts, undergraduate and graduate programs. At CalArts she adapted and directed The Writer on her Work based on the compilation of essays by women writers edited by Janet Sternburg. In addition she directed the following projects; The Cherry Orchard, The Three Sisters, The Subject Tonight is Love, The Walls Have Ears (by Alarcon), and Orestes among others. Marissa initiated two Community Arts Partnership (CAP)/Theater School projects with Glenna Avila. One project is led by MFA Actors at the Arroyo Seco Jr. High School in Santa Clarita. This semester long workshop focuses on building self-esteem and introducing the young participants to Theater Games and body centered approaches to imaginative thinking. The second workshop is year long with Franklin High School. It is led by MFA actors and is modeled on the 52nd St. Project of New York City. The young participants are introduced to Theater Games and writing exercises. By the end of the year the students have written 5 minute plays that are then performed by CalArts’ actors as part of the New Works Festival. In addition to the CAP initiatives Marissa launched the following interdisciplinary projects at CalArts: Flixus, a Theater School/Film School project that unites students from both schools in creating films under faculty mentorship, Acting For Singers, a Theater School/Music School project that unites actors and singers in one classroom and focuses on developing skills of the highest level for Music Theater, and her yearly collaboration with music school faculty Vinny Golia in which actors and musicians explore material from Film Noir together. Marissa has mentored many original projects including Her Stories which was presented both at CalArts and in Los Angeles, Deborah Asimwe’s Unintitled (a solo piece about the author’s experience of growing up as a rebellious adventure seeker in Uganda, and The Closest Farthest Away, a project in collaboration with Cuban artists to be presented at CalArts in the Spring that will tour thereafter.