Mari Crawford (like calamari) is an actress, writer, and comedian based in NYC. She is the winner of the New Talent Craig Stephenson Memorial Award at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, the Bounce Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, and the award for Best Autobiographical One-Woman Show at the 2024 United Solo Off-Broadway Festival for Bipolar Badass. See more about the show here. As an actress she is the recipient of the Don Parker Award for Excellence in Theater Performance from Bard College and a nominee for Best Ensemble by the Broadway World Awards for her portrayal as Emily in Fort Salem’s production of Our Town, which was awarded Best Play.

Most recently, Mari studied clowning at the renowned Ecole Philippe Gaulier under the direction of Michiko Gaulier in Etampes, France. She last performed at the Dundee Fringe in Dundee, Scotland and is set to perform her one-woman show Bipolar Badass Off-Broadway in Spring 2026, date TBD.

She is a certified peer counselor for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder for which she has continuous treatment. Mari is passionate about de-stigmatizing Serious Mental Illness (SMI) and a fierce advocate for the importance of medical treatment for mental illness.

She has partnered with organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness-NYC, the Association for Community Living, and the University of Atypical in Belfast, Ireland, a disabled-led arts charity that takes an empowerment based approach towards supporting disabled people's involvement in the arts.

Mari starred as Emily Webb in Our Town at the Fort Salem Theater. She has been featured on BBC World Wide, NPR, and WNYC. She was a staff writer for Sammy Obeid’s KO Comedy and has performed stand-up at several clubs in NYC, being featured in line-ups including Tiffany Haddish and Ilana Glazer. Mari was featured in The Last OG on TBS, making her SAG-AFTRA Eligible and has been in several commercials and independent films, as well as some voiceover work. Please reach out on the contact page for bookings.

She is an alumna of the New York State Summer School for the Arts School of Theatre, the British American Drama Academy, and Bard College where she received the Don Parker Award for Excellence in Theater Performance for her work highlighting mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex.