Marina Cusí is an award-winning performer, producer, and playwright based in the UK, working internationally across stage and screen.
She is the founder and current Artistic Director of Mad, Who? theatre company, through which she creates multilingual theatre that explores human rights issues through a feminist lens. Her work with the company has made her a finalist at the prestigious OFFIES Awards in 2024 and 2025.Cusí is currently working as the Lakeside Theatre's Assistant Theatre Manager, as a freelance Producer for various UK-based productions, and as the ‘FesTelOFF Coordinator’ at the Festival of Spanish Theatre in London.
KAYFABE
Lakeside Theatre, 2026Josephine Long as Megan CrushMarina Cusí Sanchez as Sofia GuardiàWritten by Alice K. Stephens, directed by Isobel Sheard, original score by Joe Eason, lighting by Shannon Houghton, produced by Alice K. Stephens, Joe Eason, Marina Cusí Sanchez and Hanna May Jones.
Sofia Guardià is the greatest wrestler in the world. Tomorrow, she defends her championship title at the nation’s biggest stadium. Only one woman stands in her way: Megan Crush – the heel, the bad guy, her challenger.Playing on the literal meaning of Kayfabe (to maintain the portrayal of a wrestler’s persona and character) and transphobic social narratives which suggest that gender dysphoric people wear the mask of illusion, Kayfabe asks the question, should the illusion remain when the rights of trans-woman are on the line?Written as a response to the Supreme Court Ruling on the definition of sex, one year later Alice K. Stephens brings her rage and sharp sense of humour back to the stage through the world of wrestling entertainment.
Pictures by Elizabeth Hopland
SUB TITLES OVER
UK & international tour, 2024-2026- Finalist at the OFFIES Awards 2025 in the OFFFest category.- Winner of the GJD Reviews Award at the Colchester Fringe Festival 2024Written and performed by Marina Cusí.Directed by Megan Farquahar, produced by Mad, Who?, lighting by Shannon Houghton, movement by Jaume Sangra.
A sharp, thought-provoking drama exploring censorship, identity and what happens when language itself becomes a battleground. This award-winning one-woman-show explores how translation and subtitles can be used to manipulate monolingual communities through the media.Performed in Catalan with English subtitles, Sub Titles Over blends dark humour with political urgency as it follows the day of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. Through layered storytelling and bold theatrical choices, the play examines who gets to speak, who is heard, and who decides the limits of expression.
Pictures by Abby Wright, Nefeli Kentoni, and Andrea Scaringella
WITCHUNT
A Pinch of VAULT Festival; The Glitch, 2023Written by Marina Cusí.Performed by Marina Cusí, Megan Farquhar and Onahy Trincheri.
WITCHUNT explores two parallel but intertwined stories: that of a kiss from a (now former) Spanish Football Association president to a female player during the 2023 Women's World Cup, and that of a group of drama school students exposing multiple cases of sexual harassment and predatory behaviour by their teachers, sparking the ‘Jo També’, Catalonia's own iteration of the ‘Me Too’ movement.
Pictures by Jake Bush
THE 'S' IS SILENT
UK tour, 2022-2023- OFFIES Awards 2024 finalist on their Best Online Production Category- Winner of the FesTeLoFF 2022 Audience AwardWritten and directed by Marina Cusí.Performed by Marina Cusí, Isobel Sheard, Delaney Conway, Dan Seorici, and James Little.
A group of friends finds clues about life during Spain’s recent fascist past as they help Marina dig through her late grandmother’s belongings. However, rummaging through generational trauma isn’t easy. If knowing about our past is the only way of not repeating the same errors in the future, how can we learn from a history that has been silenced?
Pictures by Nefeli Kentoni, Joe Holmes, and Angeles Rodenas
A FIRE IN MY HEAD
Art Exchange gallery, 2022Curated by Jessica Twyman, with Marina Cusí, Sophie K. and Jestin Bartlett.
This exhibition brings together stories from the life of the University of Essex, as defined by its students.Through numerous protests students supported the important issues of the day, including women’s rights, sexual politics and anti-racism campaigns. Sociologist Emile Durkheim coined a term for these highly charged events, calling them “moments of collective effervescence” when new ideas are born. There were damming headlines in the press, but it was also a time of communal growth and creativity at Essex.The University’s archives dwindle as the digital age begins, so we’ve tried to fill in the gaps by listening to students. Feminist, LGBTQ+ and Black communities tell us about their experiences, select archive material and have lent us some of their own.
FLAG UP OUR RIGHTS!
Art Exchange, 2022Facilitated/curated by Marina Cusí in collaboration with Jessica Twyman.In collaboration with Iris Gunnarsdottir & Tom Armstrong, with funding from Art Exchange and the UoE Students’ Union.
An exhibition that creates a platform for the collective work of the University of Essex's women's community made for International Women's Day 2022.In the winter and spring of 2022, women from across campus started to come together at banner-making workshops led by Women's Officer Marina Cusi. During these workshops, women talked about their ideas and experiences, developing their thoughts into designs and slogans that were produced on a series of handmade banners. They spent hours working together on the banners, so that everything was in place for a sisterhood march across the Colchester campus on 8 March 2022, International Women's Day. The same banners were hung from the windows in Square 3 in celebration of our community and Women's Week.This exhibition immortalises the bold and rebellious spirit of University of Essex students - and their will to independently organise themselves to fight for women’s rights and those of their peers.
vida
2021, fashion filmProduced by Artes Medea and Marina Pineda, directed by Ana Gutiérrez.
Performers: Marina Cusí, Saúl Higueras, Júlia Valls, Paula Rísquez, Miriam Llobet and Laura Pacios.
Multidisciplinary fashion film where a collective of artists from different artistic disciplines join their talents and efforts to create a piece that explores a concept through poetry, fashion design, dance, performance, visual arts and music.
Reclaiming HERstory
Lakeside Theatre, 2020Written and produced by Marina Cusí.Performed by Marina Cusí, Amy Stephenson-Yankuba, Aleksandra Witkowska, Delaney Jordan, Tal Rejwan, Maxine Hendy, Amy Cardwell, Konstantina Karamintzou, Joana Goldschmidt, Chloe Walker, Polina Kabzon, Miroslava Hladká, Harshada Raut, Jessica Twyman.In collaboration with the Lakeside Theatre, Art Exchange Gallery and Albert Sloman Library.
'Reclaiming HERstory is a durational performative piece, an art installation in celebration of International Women's Day.This piece was inspired by the realisation of the lack of female role-models in our formal education and the lack of representation of women in history books.'Reclaiming HERstory' explores the untold and silenced stories of women throughout history.
Plucked
Lakeside Theatre, 2019Written and directed by Marina Cusí.Produced by Amy Stephenson-Yankuba in collaboration with the Lakeside Theatre.With Sabrina Binte, Ruby Barry, Imogen Hann and Amy Stephenson-Yankuba.
‘Plucked’ is a theatrical piece born in response to the multiple reports of sexual harassment on the University of Essex’s campus. This play was created from the testimony of 26 women, all of them students of different ages, cultures and departments who answered the question «What does it mean to be a woman at the University of Essex?». Plucked is an amalgamation of different stories, experiences, doubts and complaints that hundreds of students shared with us through both the performance itself and the pieces of art that build up our scenography.
Pictures by Tom Tull
Conduit
Folkestone Quarterhouse, 2019Written by Josh Merritt.With Marina Cusí, Maggie Lightfoot and Kyle Tyler.
One character, 3 performers, 5 personalities fighting for the spotlight. This 20-minute thriller, based on real psychiatric cases, notes and studies, explores the inner conflicts of a dissociative identity disorder's patient.
Pictures by Peter Wolf
Marina Cusí Sanchez is an award-winning Catalan multidisciplinary artist and theatre-maker based in the UK, whose work focuses on multicultural and multilingual captioned theatre and human rights advocacy through an intersectional feminist lens. Through community-based practices and multimedia storytelling, Cusí explores theatre’s potential for social revolution.After graduating from Barcelona’s Col·legi del Teatre drama school with honors back in 2017, working as an actor and dancer in Spain for four years, and founding a theatre festival in the city of Girona (El CACAU Theatre Festival), Cusí moved to the UK to further develop her craft.She graduated with a degree in Drama and Literature from the University of Essex in 2022. This same year she founded Mad, Who? Theatre Company, through which she produces her original work.She currently works as the company's Artistic Director, and writes, produces, and performs in their shows, which have garnered multiple awards and won them a spot as finalists for the prestigious OFFIES Awards for two consecutive years, in 2024 and 2025.She also works as a freelance Producer, Movement Director and Intimacy Coordinator for other theatrical projects, as a Script Reader for the Woven Voices Prize for Playwriting, as the FesTeLOFF Coordinator for the Festival of Spanish Theatre in London and as the Assistant Theatre Manager at the Lakeside Theatre.
