Marissa

"My experience with NHTP began with the summer youth camp at the Music Hall in downtown Portsmouth. It was this initial experience where I found the world of theatre, and more importantly the family of NHTP.  The following year I auditioned for the Junior Repatory Program where I spent one year and then moved to the Senior Repatory Program, which I participated in through my senior year at Portsmouth High School. While in the rep program I was a part of A Midsummer’s night, Mother Courage, The Skin of Our Teeth and Stage Door. I am now a senior at Vassar College where I am an Urban Studies major, captain of the Women’s lacrosse team and president of Hip Hop 101.

Living and learning with NHTP was the first experience in my life where I was asked to critically think. In school, we were taught to go through the monotony of math problems or write history papers, but few of our teachers encouraged a deeper understand of the theories or motives behind these subjects or historical characters.  Through the critical analysis of scripts, we were expected and pushed to explore the motives, psyche and emotions of our characters. As teenagers were asked to insert ourselves in the mind of a character in an alternative world questioning their past, present and future and ultimately creating an expression of the character, which we developed through our own exploration. Through this exercise we were able to challenge ourselves and ultimately learn from the process that all of our peers were simultaneously experiencing."