Marissa Chibás is a writer, director, and actor who creates multi-platform work that traverse film and live audience experiences, reclaims the mythic, and bridges cultural divides. As the daughter of a Cuban revolutionary and runner up Miss Cuba, these two formidable personalities inspired in her the idea that real life is stranger than anything we can imagine. Marissa is a Sundance screenwriting Fellow for her screenplay, 72, which was an Athena Awards finalist in 2023 and a #1 Amazon new release author for her book Mythic Imagination and the Actor. Her film, A Cuban Documemory, won best documentary at the 2021 Cuban American International Film Festival. Her short film, Finding Shelter, won best documentary short at the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Her narrative short, Zohra, was nominated for best comedy and best actress awards at the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Her films have been presented at Anthology Film Archive, Pasadena Film Festival, NFMLA, Toronto International Women Festival, and Fabrica de Arte in Havana, among others. Her solo show, Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary, has toured the U.S., Europe, and Mexico.
Marissa is Director of Duende CalArts, an initiative of the CalArts Center for New Performance. For Duende, she conceived and wrote Shelter, which premiered in April 2016 at Lincoln Park, was presented at the Kennedy Center and is published by NoPassport Press. Some Duende CalArts projects include; Octavio Solis’s Scene with Cranes (world premiere at REDCAT 2022); El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramos, with artists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (performed at CalArts in Spring 2020 and Mexico City as part of UNAM International Theater Festival); Vicki Grise’s rasgos asiáticos (Spring 2020); El Acercamiento, a three year (2016-18) collaboration between faculty and students at CalArts and faculty and students of Havana’s ISA and San Alejandro art schools (presented in Los Angeles, Havana, and Miami); Shelter (presented at CARECEN LA, Lincoln Park, The Kennedy Center, TCG 2016 Conference in Washington D.C.); LA Founding Families (presented at CalArts and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Pico House and the Chinese American Museum); Timboctu (presented at REDCAT in Los Angeles and Teatro Experimental in Guadalajara Mexico); Piedra de Sol/Sun Stone, based on the epic poem by Octavio Paz (presentations at CalArts and the Getty Villa).
Marissa has acted in over 50 productions on and off Broadway, including the American premiere of The Keening by Umberto Dorado at the ART in Boston; the world premiere of Two Sisters and a Piano by Nilo Cruz with Bobbie Cannavale at the McCarter; the premiere of Eric Overmeyer’s Dark Rapture with Frances McDormand and David Strathern at New York Stage and Film; The Mark Taper Forum productions of The House of Bernarda Alba with Chita Rivera and Sandra Oh; and Eduardo Machado’s The Floating Island Plays and Robert Wilson’s Danton’s Death at the Alley Theater. On Broadway, she performed in Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Brighton Beach Memoirs. Marissa co-adapted the award winning CNP/Poor Dog Group production of Brewsie and Willie that was presented at the 2011 RADAR Festival and played Edgar in CNP’s inaugural production of King Lear at the Brewery in Downtown Los Angeles. She wrote and performed in The Second Woman in 2016 at the Bootleg Theater in LA. She performed the role of Lourdes in the CNP world premiere of Octavio Solis’s Scene with Cranes at REDCAT in 2022.
She very recently completed her short proof of concept, 72, and is in the process of applying to festivals. She is directing a production of Jose Rivera’s Cloud Tectonics at Inner City Arts in Fall 2023 with Bobby Soto, Clayton Cardenas, and Andrea Londo. She received a TCG Fox Fellowship in Distinguished Achievement in 2016.