Melissa Mandia was in kindergarten when her parents put her in t-ball. “Nobody ever taught me how to play!” the Massachusetts native remembers, telling the story of her first game. Without any understanding of the rules, she got up to bat, hit the ball, heard everyone telling her to run, and ran to third base. “The whole team was laughing at me and I was so embarrassed that I ran through third, to the outfield, all the way to my dad’s car, and we never went back,” she says, laughing at her 5-year-old self.
After that, her parents signed her up for ballet classes. Ballet turned into piano, and jazz, and tap, and voice, and eventually musical theater where Melissa finds herself now, as a senior embarking on her final main stage performance at Marist. In MCCTA’s production of Cabaret, Melissa will play, alongside 7 others, a KitKat girl. “I’m really excited. I’ll be on stage with my best friends. It’s going to be a lot of fun…it’s always a lot of fun,” she says anticipating the upcoming musical.
But of the past four years of countless auditions and relentless rehearsals, her favorite role was A Chorus Line’s Diana. “She was so spunky and rough and tough, but also very passionate and earnestly dedicated to what she loves,” Melissa says of the character in which she closely related to, “I found pieces of myself in her.”
It was 4am when she got the call that the role was hers. Abroad in Florence, she was woken up in the middle of the night by her friends’ facetiming. They were ecstatic, screaming: “you got Diana, you got Diana!” but Melissa, who defines herself as “not really a theater kid” hadn’t researched the individual characters before auditioning months beforehand. “Who’s Diana?” she asked. “She sings Nothing, the song, Nothing!” they yelled gleefully. “I don’t know that song,” Melissa replied, her voice sleepy and confused. “She sings What I Did For Love!” they shrieked.
And a lightbulb went on. “I was like OH! because that was the only song in the show that I knew and I was really happy I got it,” she says of the moment she realized how big of a part Diana would be. She stayed up the rest of that night watching bootleg videos of A Chorus Line in bed, giddy with excitement.
Though she recognizes the values theater has instilled in her, and the confidence it has given her, Melissa understands the importance of a holistic education. “It’s really important, even though we all love theater and it’s our passion, to explore other avenues that Marist has and not get too wrapped up in just one club,” she explains, “that’s why I chose Marist. I could get a theater scholarship and perform and be a part of MCCTA and be a theater minor, but I wouldn’t be limited to just that.” Melissa, the Media Studies (TV and Film Production) major, Theater and American Studies minor, prides herself in her ability to maintain a variety of interests and hobbies in addition to her involvement in all things theater.
She hopes to take what she’s learned as an actress into her future life as she pursues a career in casting. “I’ve been auditioning for 20 years and I think it will be interesting to use my perspective of auditioning myself, on the other side of the table,” Melissa says. No matter what she ends up doing, Melissa’s love for theater will always be present. If casting doesn’t work out, playing Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton – her dream role – will do too.