Carissa Yau /丘茵茵 (they/them/theirs) is a first year PATP student from Skokie, Illinois. They graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2022 with a BA in Music, with emphases in Voice and Choral Music Education. Previously, they've worked with Illinois Theatre and CASCaDe (interdisciplinary devised works combining theatre, physics, and music), Lyric Theatre Illinois, and with various community theatre companies in Central Illinois, namely The Station Theatre in Urbana, also serving on the board. Carissa is interested in work that examines the intersection and interplay of various identities when contradictions seem to arise in their coexisting within a society, culture, and/or individual.