Marisa Costa was bit by ‘The Bug’ at birth, and began her lifelong performing career as a dancer, and vaulter in circuses and competitions all over California. As a child actor she landed local PSA’s, commercials, industrials, and graced a package for a toy line.  She grew up on the Big Island of Hawai’i playing leading roles in all of the school plays and musicals, graduating with the Performing Arts Achievement Award.  She moved to New York, spent 3 years in the BFA Program at Marymount Manhattan College, added a Minor in Directing, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Performance, and continued on to get a Masters in Theatre (Hunter College), and trained at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol on Scholarship where she received a Certificate in Professional Acting.

Marisa has appeared as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (BOVTS), Nina and Masha in The Seagull (BOVTS), Helen in After the Dance (BOVTS), and Valeria in The Rover (Bristol Old Vic).  She has earned critical success for her role as Louisa in the short Damn Your Eyes (Target Pictures), slated to be turned into a feature film.  Her most recent film Fray won the Grand Jury Prize at The Dances with Films Fest in LA, and Best Narrative Feature at The Arizona International Film Festival.  Other theatre credits include Street Scene (Mrs. Maurrant) at the Danny Kaye Playhouse-NYC, Fishing (Sarah) at the Macaulay Center-NYC, Ionesco’s The Lesson (Pupil) at the HG Theatre workshop, Angels in America (Harper Pitt) at the UC Berkeley Summer Festival, Othello (Cassio) and a radio-play version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (TAI Group Project), a staged-reading of Straw House by Glenn English at Primary Stages-NYC, and has performed with the LA Calba Theatre Troupe (of Barcelona).  She has trained with the Pacific Performance Project (former resident company of UW, Seattle), Fay Simpson (of Impact Theatre/Yale), Penny Templeton (Penny Templeton Studio), and Allen Schore (The TAI Group) and has worked with renowned West End vocal-director Jacquie Crago on a production of Canterbury Tales as The Miller’s Wife, and with Susan Osman of the BBC.

Marisa also is completing her certification as a Ballroom Dance Instructor and has future plans to enter the competitive circuit for Argentine Tango.