Melody Marshall is a theatre artist, writer, and teaching artist based in South Jersey and Philadelphia. She considers every story she tells to be a ghost story and believes that storytelling is an essential part of life. Melody also has a healthy fear of birds, and believes the Tony Awards should have a category for best properties design.

But it’s never that easy to sum up a person in one paragraph, is it?

Melody has been an artist her whole life, nothing else has ever made sense. With a name like hers, music has been her core from birth. She’s been playing violin for more than half of her life but in high school, theatre found her. Wanting to learn about sound engineering so she could work in the music industry, she ended up at a local theatre company that instead put her in scenic painting and stage crew and she fell in love.

From there she committed to Rider University for her BA in Arts Administration and Technical Theatre. At Rider she worked on 9 mainstage productions in different areas such as stage management, sound operation and design, props, and more. She was the Props Supervisor for for three years and from 2016 to 2018 she was the President of the Arts Management Association. Melody was also a member of the Leadership Development Program, Alpha Psi Omega, and Phi Sigma Sigma sorority. In 2018 she studied abroad in London, England where she interned with Albany theatre in Deptford, London and received a certificate in Global Creative Arts as well as an award for Outstanding Academic Achievement for her short docufilm Why Do We Still Do Shakespeare. This film became part of her senior capstone at Rider in 2019. Before her final semester at Rider, Melody was a Diversity in Arts Leadership Intern (DIAL) at Crossroads Theatre Company which she credits as being just as life changing an experience as her study abroad program. In 2022 she returned to DIAL as a keynote speaker.

Professionally, Melody has worked in administration in areas of ticketing, marketing, and development for organizations including Bristol Riverside Theatre, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Delaware Shakespeare, The New Jersey Renaissance Faire, and more. She has worked technically as crew, sound operation, set and properties design and more for organizations including EgoPo Classic Theatre, Passage Theatre, Rider University, Lyceum Hall Center for the Arts and others. Melody works as a teaching artist all over the state of New Jersey and parts of PA. In 2023 she was a member of the Arts Professional Learning Institute through Young Audience New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. She is a proud educator and arts educator advocate.

Mostly, though, Melody loves her work as a props designer. She has a lot of love for the little things that make us human and which ultimately take a show from feeling like a performance to an honest representation of the human experience. Her favorite shows tend to involve characters who grapple with identity and the outside factors that impact who they are on the inside. In 2026 she was award Emerging Artist of the Year by Passage Theatre Company; it is an honor she does not take lightly as it represents the growth she has experienced in her work and which she strives for every day.

Melody has her MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from Arcadia University in Glenside, PA where she is currently an adjunct in the English department.

When not doing any of these things she is planning her annual Lord of the Rings watch party, reading her next favorite book, or exploring the depths of New Jersey.