Hop For Pop
Press Kit
Storytelling Stand-up · Solo Show
Marina Di Marzo
Her first performance was as the live baby Jesus in her parents’ church nativity, aged four months. Her current one compares her primary-school romances to her dating life in her twenties, illustrated in MS Paint.
Based
New York City
Works in
Storytelling stand-up · Solo show · Improv · Theatre
Known for
Love in the Time of Fifth Grade
Trained
Upright Citizens Brigade, New York
Interview
53 min · Hop For Pop · 2026
“Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. I would say it delivers.”
Marina Di Marzo — Hop For Pop
Ready-to-use copy
Biography
243 words — lift as-is, no rewriting required
Marina Di Marzo is a New York storyteller and stand-up whose parents emigrated to the United States from Italy — deeply Catholic, which is how she came to be the first live baby Jesus in her family church’s nativity at four months old. Her first real role was the Munchkin Mayor in a summer-camp Wizard of Oz, a part she believed to be more important than Dorothy.
She did theatre through college and moved to New York intending to be a serious actor. When no MFA programme took her, she decided against waiting a year to audition again and instead took classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, then started producing her own work — nearly ten years ago now. Her first real laugh had come earlier, as an understudy improvising lines in an ensemble play: a man mentions visiting the Netherlands, and she says ooh, clogs. The directors gave her ad-libs to the actor who had the part. Then came two years of bombing with an improv team, in basements and on stages made of hay.
Her Edinburgh show, Love in the Time of Fifth Grade, sets her passionate romances from under the age of ten against her dating horror stories from her early twenties. The primary-school boys appear as MS Paint drawings, because blacked-out school photos made them all look like they had gone to federal prison. It ends on a Disney-inspired pop song and a skirt she hand-bejewelled with 5,000 stars.
The part other press kits leave out
What you should know before you book her
Marina Di Marzo is a theatre-trained storyteller working in stand-up, and her show is built with a designer’s attention — illustration, music, costume — around material that is funnier the more vulnerable it gets.
A storytelling show, not a club set
Autobiographical, structured and illustrated. The comedy comes from the comparison between ten-year-old certainty and twenty-something disaster.
The visuals are part of the joke
The MS Paint drawings are a deliberate aesthetic — what she was actually drawing on a family computer with no internet — and they solve a real problem about depicting real people.
She improvises well
Her first laugh was an ad-lib that the directors then handed to someone else. UCB-trained, with two years of improv bombing behind her that she credits with teaching her to survive a room.
She makes the show with her hands
A skilled sewer taught by her father at twelve, with costume-shop experience. The closing skirt took a month and 5,000 hand-set stars — which is also how she manages pre-show nerves.
Vulnerability is the favourite part
She says the most exposed sections of the show are the ones she most enjoys performing, which is the right instinct for this kind of work.
Afternoon-friendly
Her Edinburgh slot was 2:30pm and she was glad of it: a sober audience suits the material. Good for daytime and festival programming.
For press · cleared for use with attribution
Quotable
01
“My first performance was four months after I was born. I was the first live baby Jesus at my parents’ church’s nativity. Nobody can claim that.”02
“I was the Munchkin Mayor, which I believed to be a role more important than Dorothy.”03
“I thought I was going to be a serious actor. Me and Meryl Streep were one and the same, obviously.”04
“Maybe it’s better to use my time to take classes and make my own stuff and see what happens.”05
“He said he’d been to the Netherlands, and I went: ooh, clogs.”06
“They took some of my ad-libs and gave them to the person who was actually playing the part. And I was like — yeah, take that.”07
“When I come back to that first laugh that really hit me inside, I always come back to them clogs.”08
“For two years, I bombed.”09
“When we would practise together we were like: guys, we’re so funny. And then we’d go out and perform and it was as if we forgot what we were doing, what the rules are, why we were there.”10
“They were all in basements. They were all on stages that were made from hay.”11
“It’s all my passionate love stories from under the age of ten, and then I compare them to my dating horror stories from my early twenties.”12
“Some people put a black bar over their eyes. And I was like, this really makes it seem like they all went to federal prison.”13
“Sharon Stone is kind of a guiding light. I’m like: what would Sharon do?”14
“What is there not to love about a man who freaks out about raw food on national television?”15
“When I’m really anxious about something, having a task with my hands where I’m not thinking or scrolling helps take a lot of that anxious energy out of my body.”16
“You may not have liked this at all, but at least you can stand and dance on your way out.”
Attribution: Marina Di Marzo, speaking to Hop For Pop, 2026.
Career
Selected credits
Solo work
- Love in the Time of Fifth Grade — storytelling stand-up with MS Paint illustrations and an original closing song; Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Comedy & theatre
- Upright Citizens Brigade, New York — graduate
- Improv team performer; self-produced comedy for nearly ten years
- Theatre in college; ensemble and interactive museum performance
Also
Sewer and former costume-shop worker. Hand-made the show’s closing costume, documented in a diary series on social media.
This kit was produced by Hop For Pop. The interview and quotes are drawn from Hop For Pop × Marina Di Marzo, recorded 2026. Marina Di Marzo and their representatives are free to use any part of this document — the biography, the quotes — for booking, press and promotion, with credit to Hop For Pop for the interview material.
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