Artist of the Issue: Charlotte Cocozza

Cocozza started her path into theater at a young age, taking inspiration from her family. Cocozza had “[grown] up listening to all different kinds of music as a kid and that’s where my love of art really began. My brother and cousins all played piano and sang, which inspired me to start taking piano and vocal lessons.” She grew up attending gatherings where her family would sing and play songs, choreograph “terribly embarrassing” dance routines, and write and perform comedy skits. As soon as she was old enough, Cocozza entered the theater day-camp in her town, where she performed for her first real audience. She “completely fell in love with the feeling of being on stage, and [has] been doing it ever since.”

Cocozza favors performance art, specifically theater. What she finds intriguing about performance art “is that it’s malleable and is constantly changing. No two performances are the same.” She also loves doing “scene study and character work” and finds that “making a character [her] own and putting [her] own spin on the role to be fun and rewarding.” However, she finds that studying a specific art form lets her appreciate other ones. Hopkins has provided Cocozza with a plethora of opportunities to be on stage and try her hand at different genres of plays. “From Shakespearean tragedies to murder mysteries,” she said, “I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a diverse range of shows, which has taught me so much about not only acting craft, but also collaborating with castmates.” Cocozza continues to be involved in the Hopkins Drama Association (HDA). Cocozza has drawn from different sources to improve her own acting. One such source is Acting I: in Fall, 2023, the class re-kindled her interest in acting and increased her confidence in performances. She recounted how she spent hours watching her favorite actors talk about “their process and experience making movies” as another source of inspiration and adds that it is fascinating to her the different ways “actors devote themselves to a role” and that it has inspired her “to think more about the ways I take on a character.”