Marissa is a multidisciplinary designer based in New York City. With roots grounded in design for stage and live performance, Marissa mixes the mediums of stage and film to provide a visual dialogue in support of the actors and director’s vision. Each process includes deep exploration into materials that create an environment, this in turn allows for a rumination of truth and authenticity stunningly unique to each collaboration.
“Being Adam Driver (John Malkovich)” is a surreal and innovative film that explores themes of identity, power, control, and the human desire for transcendence. The story follows a struggling puppeteer named Craig who discovers a portal into the mind of actor Adam Driver. As Craig and his colleagues exploit the portal for personal gain, they become entangled in a complex web of relationships and power struggles.
At its core, “Being John Malkovich” is a commentary on the nature of identity and the ways in which individuals seek to control and manipulate others. The film explores the concept of personal agency and the ways in which external forces can shape and influence our lives.
My production, I focused on Craig and Lotte’s apartment, The Fabricated Eden. The lively Menagerie that overstimulates Craig, and forces him to escape to this garage. Craig’s garage is his own Black Box Theatre, where he creates and strokes his fantasies with the puppets he breaths live into.
Charlie Kaufman
Ryan Marsh
“Enloquecer” (which roughly translates to “drive crazy” or “lose thy mind” in a reggaeteon-ish Spanish) dives us into a strongly subjective tale led by the obsessive and ambitious vision of Ela, the director of a low-budget-mythological- Ancient-Greece-inspired music video.
After losing her lead actor at the last minute, a music video director goes to extreme measures to get her new talent to perform, pushing her team and the whole production to the brink of madness.
On the hottest days of the summer, the set dressings share the fragility of the protagonist while the mental spiraling of obsession is supported with music pulsing through out the film.
Hector Prats
ETM
Michael Cong
Yoko Kohmoto, Kaelo Iyizoba
For my first year thesis project, I wrote a story rooted within my personal history. Set to the score of Rite of Spring, in rural China at the height of the One Child Policy, a family of three with twins must decide which child to sacrifice.
For the next forty minutes, individualism vs community confront their tension through dance, barred by a water dam upstage of them.
A water dam, a man made object wit its only intension of controlling nature, to me is a striking parallel to what the Chinese government implemented on their citizens.
Do you sacrifice one to save five?
Igor Stravinsky
Marissa Todd
Hudson Theatre