The room is split down the middle only by a color scheme; on the right there is a blue and black Dr. Who poster, a paneled drawing of the four seasons using only stark black and white trees, a blue landscape photo, a bed sheet of penguins, a blue and purple beta fish. On the left, pink curtains, an orange and yellow bedspread, a yellow Harry Potter poster, a desk with red cereal bowls.
Marissa Martin stands at 5’11”, and the contrast to her roommate who just hits five foot is a comical sight. It’s just one more thing that surprises you about a girl who is ready to get her life started- now.
“I want to graduate tomorrow,” Marissa insists, locking onto her audience with huge, piercing blue-grey eyes that never lose their excitement. “I’d rather start trying now. I have the passion right now to pick myself back up when I fail. I don’t care how many times I get hurt. It’s what keeps you alive.”
Marissa is currently stage-managing a conservatory production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” a job not offered to many sophomore drama studies majors. Under the play’s director, a conservatory professor who has previously won an OBIE award, she blocks the play, takes notes on the actors and offers perspective. This process has taught Marissa about both sides of this business we call show.
“I’ve learned a lot about both acting and directing,” says Marissa. “And now I know what the actors are looking for when they ask for my feedback.” This will prove to be a helpful tool as Marissa attempts to get the most out of her time at Purchase by dabbling in all walks of a thespian lifestyle. She has learned about directing through her introductory classes, which she loves. She has acted in plays both for senior projects and independent works. She stage-manages, which is the job currently taking up all her free time, sort of like an assistant to the director. And she does costume designing for other shows, which seems to be of particular interest of hers.
In her costuming, she not only outfits the actors and actresses, but devotes the little free time she has to her avid sewing habit, making costumes herself. She is now prepping her costume for Comic-Con, the world’s largest international annual comic book convention in New York City.
“She loves making clothes in general,” says her boyfriend Joshua Hernandez, 22, of the Bronx, a Purchase alum’ himself. “Convention costumes are clothes that you’ll never make anywhere else and are a hard core challenge, which Marissa will take a challenge head on.
“For Marissa,” says Hernandez, “It’s less about the character and more about the making of the costume and that journey, which I respect a lot more.” This Halloween, the two plan to be Rapunzel and Flynn from the Disney movie “Tangled,” both costumes already well underway, hanging in Marissa’s dorm room closet.
Marissa and Joshua met when she auditioned as a freshman for his senior project, ultimately earning the leading female role before hitting it off with the director, whom she has been seeing now for almost a year.
Hernandez has also experienced all the Purchase drama studies department has to offer, and thinks that even as a sophomore, Marissa may be outgrowing the program.
“I don’t know how much more college can offer her at this point,” says Hernandez. “She doesn’t want to become stagnant and complacent in college, she wants to get out into the world and work”
Right now, as nothing seems to be able to slow her down, Marissa is on a path and will not be deterred. “I want to see the world, not just let it pass me by,” Marissa muses. “I like seeing the world in a different point of view than everyone else does. I wanna live it, I wanna breath it, I wanna feel everything.”