Hal Sundt sat down sophomore track star Marissa Clardy for this week's edition of Sundt's Scribes. While the NCAC Indoor Sprints/Hurdles Runner of the Year certainly performs well on the track, Sundt takes a look inside Clardy's other performance domain – the Theatre.

Marissa Clardy sits on the opposite end from where I sit, in a small classroom on the third floor of the King Building of Oberlin College. We are both in the same English class, and the little that I know about her is based on this 50-minute class that we share three times per week. For the last two months I have fooled myself into thinking that I know her true personality, who she really is.

Occasionally during class she gets caught playing with her curly hair, which simultaneously looks like she is hesitantly raising her hand to make a point or ask a question.

“Help me Marissa,” the professor usually asks. “Did you have something to say?”

“No,” she will reply with a small giggle before bringing her shoulders in closer to her body and twirling her hair into tighter and tighter curls.

While in class she often leans forward with both elbows on the table and her back extended at about a sixty-degree angle. She fiddles with her hands, then frantically jots down a few notes when the professor says something particularly inspiring. She has a soft smile and exudes a classical beauty like Hepburn. She seems like the type of girl you would want to sit next to in your high school Geometry class so that you could ask her for help: quiet, approachable and really, really smart.

But the Marissa Clardy who is so quiet and dainty in that English class is not really her, but one of many characters that she plays in a life that is growing fonder and fonder not only of English or Track (where she is one of the fastest women in the NCAA), but of a discipline much more suited for someone so versatile: Theater.

In addition to pursuing an English major, Clardy has already taken four Theater classes at Oberlin and, while hesitant to commit, she is pretty sure she will major in Theater as well.

“I love it but it's so scary. It's a really scary major to be in,” Clardy says with a loud laugh.

As we begin to talk about her theater courses I realize that she has been fooling me all along with her quiet act. Clardy transforms into an energetic, even boisterous, ball of energy. She chooses certain words to speak louder and stretch out for emphasis (“Whenever you're up there and you're on the stage you're really nervous”). When she gets particularly excited, like when she explains to me the “Jar of Honey” concept that she learned in one of her classes, she responds through a combination of physical gestures: her eyes widen as she shakes her head, cracks a smile and then looks away.

“[Professor Heather Anderson Boll] has this thing she calls the jar of honey,” Clardy begins. “Because when she was in school at Yale [during a play], a jar of honey tipped over and fell onto the floor and that was not supposed to happen, but then they went into a natural state and reacted as their character would have reacted. And it's the moment where maybe something goes wrong on stage, something that's not supposed to happen happens. But if you're really, really into the moment and tied into the scene then that can become one of the best moments because it's something unexpected. Then you really have to become your character and you really have to think as they would think and react as they would react.”

Oberlin College's Theater and Dance Department is located in Warner Gymnasium. Inside Warner the building looks, sounds, feels and smells like it is alive. Sitting in a chair on the first floor, I am blanketed by the humidity and the faint smell of sweat. With each step the old wooden floor creaks and the metal hinges of the doors squeak. It's like being in a different world. I can feel the energy of the building. I can feel the building breathing.

It is this space that coaxes the energetic Marissa Clardy out of the reserved Marissa Clardy.

“I am a naturally more quiet person,” Clardy explains. “It helps me get out of my shell a little bit and not be as reserved and forces me to be a little more adventurous.”

“Theater is all about sharing energy with each other. If you can't share your energy with your partner or if you can't communicate with your partner, then you're not in motion. You're not able to bring the words on the page to life. I feel like that entire energy just permeates the entire building.”

However, don't be fooled. It is not like this transition from quiet student to passionate actress has been seamless.

“It's terrifying but exhilarating at the same time,” Clardy says. “Just because I have difficulty with it doesn't mean that I shouldn't do it. If I did that every time I came across something difficult I'd never get anywhere.”

Whether it is a fear of losing a race, flunking a test, or bombing a performance on stage, fear resides in the unknown and the uncomfortable. It can be crippling. I'm sure Clardy gets just as scared as the rest of us, but perhaps where she is different is that she uses her fear as fuel. She openly shares how nervous she gets in Theater, but continues to put herself in those positions because it makes her stronger. The longer she resides in the realm of the uncomfortable, the more comfortable the realm becomes.

She knows that the jar of honey will spill, and that is why she will succeed.