Biography

Maelisa is a performance designer, visual artist and researcher. She holds an MA in Costume Design for Performance with Distinction from the London College of Fashion (2024), and a BA in Drama from the University of Virginia with Distinction (2019), where she was a Miller Arts Scholar of Drama.

She has worked in productions across theatre, film, opera and dance. Her performance designs have been featured at venues including the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Film Festival, the DU Film Festival in Dublin, as well as several galleries and venues across London.

Her current work and research explores the intersection of costume design and disability discourse and theory. She is also an avid advocate for increased accessibility in technical theatre work.

In addition to her work as a performance designer, Maelisa is an experienced studio artist, writer, and fashion director/editor for publications.

Confined spatiality becomes one with the costumed body – in performed, individualizing agency.
Referencing the lived experience of chronic illness and disability, this performance interprets the opera Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák to explore the medical gaze in relation to chronic illness and its effect on personal autonomy and agency.

Mephistopheles is a short film exploring human and non-human forms, based on Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. The scenography examines the incorporation and separation of body and surrounding space.

This piece prompted dialogue about the representation and projection of the curated self in modern digital culture through the use of movement, projected digital imagery, and sound in space.