About Mari

Hi! I’m Mari (she/they) and I am a theater artist currently living in Brooklyn on occupied Lenape land. Primarily an actor, I am also a writer, director, teacher and community herbalist and organizer.

I grew up in the Bay Area and am a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont and an alumnus of the British American Drama Academy in London. My love of acting began when I played Narisa in A Merchant of Venice with the Marin Shakespeare Company at the age of 6, and then went on to do many youth Shakespearian productions (including Romeo & Juliet at age 9… opposite my brother, lol). Since then, I have performed in plays new & old across the country. I have always loved telling stories (for my day job I teach 3 year olds chess via storytelling), and I have a particular passion for new play development and devised, ensemble-based work.

My artistic practice is rooted in honest collaboration and radical empathy. I do not believe that art on its own can change the world. But as we work towards collective liberation and the destruction of all systems of oppression in our societies, I believe that artists and the stories we create play an essential role in helping us imagine what comes next.

Those are the stories that I love to tell.

Nothing brings me more joy than being in a room with diverse artists working together to tell original stories with a strong sense of urgency and immediacy - stories that need to be told now. As a multi-identited human living with fluctuating dis/ability, I am also interested in stories that explore the many hyphens of our existence, especially ones that do not fit neatly into a box or a category.

I am interested in art that touches on the universal through an exploration of the specific: art that taps into what connects us all by communicating stories that haven’t been told before, by celebrating voices of the global majority and others that have been marginalized, and by inviting us to think, question everything, and empathize.