Marissa Joyce Stamps is a Black, Haitian-American NYC-born and based writer, director, choreographer, performer, and educator who creates vortexes that center, celebrate and amplify Black folks through an Afrosurrealist lens, often in dialogue with kinetics and landscape dramaturgy.

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She was the winner of the 2023 Princess Grace Playwriting Award/New Dramatists Residency. She is a member of EST/Youngblood, The Lucille Lortel’s 2024-2025 Alcove, Roundabout’s Directors Group (Cohort 6) The New George’s Jam, and TAG at The Tank; she was a member of Clubbed Thumb's 2023-2024 Early-Career Writers Group, a Finalist for The National Black Theatre's 2023 I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, and a Mercury Store Fall 2023 Lead Artist. 

 

As a playwright, select plays include: Being Up in Here… (Exponential Festival 2024, Brick Aux 2022), Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis (2024 O'Neill Finalist, National Black Theatre Special Project 2024, Bushwick Starr SRS 2023), Rollback (2025 O'Neill Finalist, Clubbed Thumb 2024 ECWG), You Can Tell from the Twisted Juniper (2022 O'Neill Finalist; Chautauqua Theater Company's 2021 New Play Workshop; The Workshop Theater's 2020 Intensive), Blue Fire Burns the Hottest (Exponential Festival 2022; Orchard Project’s 2021 Performance Lab), and deadbodydeadbodydeadbody (Ars Nova ANT Fest 2022).

 

As a director, Marissa has directed and assistant directed the development of new work of playwrights and of herself through productions and workshops with The National Black Theatre, The Vineyard, BAM, New Dramatists, Brown University, Exponential Festival, Mercury Store, Conch Shell Productions, The Brick, SFX Festival, Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective, NYU/Tisch, and more.

 

She has also collaborated with The Public Theater, 24 Hour Plays, Moxie Arts, Fire This Time Festival, 48 Hours... in Harlem, Dixon Place, Irondale, The Anthropologists, New Ohio Theatre, Keen Company, Wild Project, BUFU, and more.

 

Marissa is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. She currently serves as Literary Manager at The Workshop Theater, and has taught and guest lectured in higher ed. She graduated with her MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College, studying under haruna lee, Dennis A. Allen II, and Elana Greenfield. She also earned her BFA in Drama and BA in Journalism from NYU. marissajoycestamps.com @marissajoycestamps

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Marissa also really likes dark chocolate, hiking, bodies of water, rollercoasters, spaghetti westerns, and watching the sunset at Rockaway Beach. She will own a cacao farm one day.