MARIA SWISHER

Here’s my origin story… 

 

I was raised in rural Missouri, the daughter of a poet/psychologist mother and a Presbyterian preacher father. Poring through Mom and Dad’s robust library as a kid, I became fascinated by the human mind and spirituality. The more I saw and read, the more I knew 1) I was born to explore the Universe, and 2) I HAD to get out of the Bible Belt. STAT! After the crushing revelation that I couldn’t be in Starfleet, acting seemed like the next best thing. After all, what better way of exploring the mind and the spirit than becoming an artist of human emotion? 

 

I cultivated my own intense and embodied acting style in theatres on both sides of the pond, studying at NYU, The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institiute. And I started putting the pieces together: the way that actors learn to experience sensation, emotion, and energy is the same thing described in Tantra. I fine-tuned my emotional and physical body working with a full-throttle Grotowski physical theatre company in London (think a slightly cultier My Dinner with Andre) alongside training with The Royal Shakespeare Company and Complicité. And I started writing plays. 

 

I went on to start my own experimental theatre company, Dirt Contained, in New York, where I infused my performances with a ritualistic and absurd sensibility. One of my greatest moments as a performer and director was when famed surrealist playwright Fernando Arrabal flew to NYC to see our production of his play Garden of Delights, compared me to Robert Wilson and remarked of my performance, "It cannot be missed."

 

When the pandemic hit New York, I let fate take the wheel and made a big leap to Los Angeles to pursue screen acting. Since then, I’ve hit the ground running, voicing Arana on the hit fantasy-adventure PS5 Game, Horizon: Zero Dawn; and playing the unhinged antagonist, Stephanie, in the uber-dark comedy Black Boy Suffering is a Mood (Best Short at Pasadena Film Fest 2023). 

 

Reminiscent Laura Dern, I play witchy spiritual types with a blend of heart and badass vulnerability. I’m ready to use my powers of mostly-good (as well as my Burning Man goggles and key-chain fire-starter) in an impending apocalypse. 

 

In my "real life" I’ve put all the pieces together and I’m now a Tantric Embodiment Coach, teaching regular folks all the body-energy-magic I’ve learned in my years as an actor. As artists, I believe that not only the stories we tell, but the way we feel, deeply and fully without fear of the darkness, has the power to change the world. 

 

Predictably, I live with lots of books, a balcony mushroom garden, and my two beloved panther-ettes, Umbra and Ishtar, in Culver City, CA.