Coaching
For the past 30 years, I have pursued my passions for professional acting, teaching, writing, solo performance and private coaching. I am deeply inspired by the creative interplay between my professional acting work and my private coaching. I truly practice what I preach.
I work privately, one on one, with coaching student actors and writers both in person at my Philadelphia Acting Studio in historic Center City Philadelphia and ONLINE via ZOOM, SKYPE, FACETIME and the like across the USA and abroad. Since the Covid pandemic hit the world, online coaching has become a significant segment of my private coaching business. I was at the forefront of developing both in-person and ZOOM private coaching processes decades ago, so I was ready to meet the demands of working solely online when the pandemic hit. Now, I coach actors in creating their own self-tape auditions for conservatories and professional auditions. The internet has made it possible for me to form strong and meaningful relationships with aspiring theater artists and writers from all over the world right from my acting studio in Philadelphia. I work with many coaching students who coach exclusively ONLINE because they live too far away to coach in person. Other students mix in-person sessions with ONLINE sessions. ONLINE coaching has revolutionized my business; it saves my coaching students an enormous amount of time and money on travel. And it works just as well as in-person coaching.
In preparation for ONLINE sessions, I can instantly send and receive scripts, scenes and audition material via email and text messages. All that a prospective ONLINE student needs to do is set up a free ONLINE account (SKYPE, ZOOM, FACETIME, etc.), make an appointment with me via email, and “call” me online at the appointed time. The rest of my ONLINE coaching process proceeds similarly to in-person coaching for pre-college, college, grad school, and apprentice applicants; professional acting clients (see other links); and professional writers. ZOOM is the platform I use most often.
BFA, BA, MFA, Conservatory Coaching
I specialize in preparing gifted acting students to successfully audition for pre-college, college, graduate school, conservatory, apprenticeships, internships and professional theater, film and television projects. I also coach actors throughout the rehearsal process for theatrical productions and television/film shoots. A writer and solo performer myself, I coach writers to prepare for reading their own material in public readings. Poetry, fiction, nonfiction, fiction and experimental genres.
I work in generous 90-minute coaching sessions at my studio in Historic Center City Philadelphia and via ZOOM worldwide. I also offer initial 60-minute initial consultations to prospective students and their caregivers to ask me questions about my methodology to see if they think I am a good fit. I value a close collaboration with every single coaching student I take on. I also offer partial scholarships to students based on severe financial need. Do not be afraid to ask.
I am committed to creating a supportive and highly personalized creative process tailored to each of my student’s individual identities, strengths, challenges, and goals. I am committed to improving my students’ theatrical storytelling skills– technically, emotionally, vocally, psychologically, physically and dramaturgically. My work with aspiring actors and singers begins with a firm commitment to helping my students analyze, understand, honor and fulfill the storytelling needs of specific dramatic texts while expanding their mastery of various acting techniques. MOST IMPORTANTLY, I teach my students to relish the joy and excitement of performing at auditions instead of being overcome with stress and the fear of judgment
When the coaching process begins, I assist my students in choosing and preparing contrasting comic, dramatic, classical, and contemporary audition monologues. Depending on the requirements for various BA BFA MFA and Conservatory programs, students are strongly encouraged to prepare between 3 and 6 audition pieces. As a parent, I also advise her high school students about how best to support their children through the stressful audition process and deal with their anxieties. I adore plays! I keep a library of over 2,000 classical and contemporary scripts in order to help my students find unique, dramatically exciting material that they can deeply identify with; that meets the requirements for the various programs, is age-appropriate; and last, but not least, NOT overused. I keep abreast of all the most recent and exciting new plays and scripts.
Together, my students and I begin the coaching process for creating monologues by reading aloud together from scripts that have been hand-picked for that particular student. This introduces young actors to exciting plays with age-appropriate roles and also helps students develop “cold reading” techniques. I pattern the entire coaching process on the most creatively fulfilling rehearsal processes I have been a part of as a professional actor. This approach values a supportive creative process over ‘product.’ Audition pieces and roles are never “finished.” There is always more work to do, more discoveries to make. In that way, I help my students to battle successfully with perfectionism, self-doubt and battling their own “inner critics.” As I do constantly as a professional theater artist.
When a particular role or scene begins to resonate deeply with a particular student, I guide that student further into the role, rereading the scenes several times, stopping to give meticulous and supportive direction about choosing character actions, objectives, and motivations; personalizing the character and scene; and talking about the playwright’s vision, elements of plot, scene structure, given circumstances and the like. With Shakespeare and other challenging classical texts written in verse and heightened language, I use my vast professional experience as a classical actor to guide students in understanding and playing classical verse scenes. At the end of these preliminary reading sessions, students take home scripts they find intriguing and so they can study and explore them further before the next session. Lisbeth also asks students to search for other material between sessions at bookstores, online and at the library.
Once my students have chosen audition pieces they are happy with and have carefully read and studied the entire plays from which their monologues have been chosen, they finalize the edits of those audition pieces. At that point, I take my students step by step through the process of rehearsing and staging their monologues, as well as tailoring them to meet the requirements of each audition. During rehearsal, she also teaches students various physical, vocal and emotional acting techniques that are useful to the work at hand; this work helps students create a useful and personalized pre-audition warm up and gives them a leg up on some of the techniques they might be studying in their college acting classes. My approach to rehearsal and audition preparation is eclectic and individualized, depending on each student’s needs and the particular demands of the material they are working on. She draws from a wide variety of acting, vocal, and physical techniques, such as Stanislavski, Chekhov, Meisner, Strasberg, Adler, Hagen, Lewis, Spolin, Grotowski, Barr, Berry, Shurtleff, Guskin, Barton, Laban, Commedia, Viewpoints, and many others.
I keep in close touch with coaching students throughout the entire audition process and speaks to each student after every single audition to discuss the experience. She strongly encourages students to continue to coach with her throughout the audition process in order to keep their work fresh and make detailed adjustments for the various auditions.
Once the admittance decisions are in, Lisbeth helps students decide which program, out of the programs they have been admitted to, is the best fit for them to enroll in; and to navigate various scholarship awards and financial aid. Believe it or not, this is often the most difficult part of the audition process!
I am so proud that my gifted students have been accepted to prestigious and highly competitive pre-college and college acting and musical theatre programs; graduate and conservatory programs; and professional apprenticeship programs in the world. This season, one of my most gifted and committed students was both accepted Early Decision to one of the best BFA Musical Theater programs in the world; and then, if that wasn’t enough, we worked on an audition for the lead in a highly Broadway musical national tour, directed by a legendary Broadway director, and after a few callbacks, he booked a leading role! What an embarrassment of riches! Now, he is putting his BFA admittance on hold for a year to tour the country… and then, he will go to college. Astounding and so richly deserved.
Coaching for Professional Theater, television, film and commercial auditions
I also coach professional actors for theater, movie, television, and commercial auditions, and works as as an on-set private acting coach during movie shoots. Several of my professional coaching students started working with me as teens, during the BFA BA college audition process, and have continued to work with me as professional actors. What a delight. In preparation for professional auditions, I am meticulous about reading and studying the entire scripts my students are doing audition scenes for. The requirements for professional auditions vary and may involve the preparation of monologues and several scenes, as well preparing for improvisational auditions and practicing cold reading techniques. Other auditions require the creation of audition tapes for casting directors and producers; I rehearse my students and create these tapes in Zoom sessions. Once one of my students is cast in a play, television show or film, they often choose to use me as a private coach during the entire theatrical rehearsal process or film shoot. For commercial auditions, I use my years of experience doing on-camera commercials, voice-overs and industrials to help her students learn to handle many kinds of commercial copy, work with the camera and develop vocal technique. My students have played leading roles on and off Broadway, in feature films and on prime time television.
Coaching for writers in preparation for public readings of their own work
A published writer myself, I also coach writers in preparing for public readers of their own work. Many writers tend to be uncomfortable reading in public, but I use my background as both a professional actor and writer to enable poets, novelists, memoirists and essayists to reconnect with the inspirations that led to the pieces they are reading publicly; develop vocal, physical and emotional techniques that help writers find confidence as readers; and develop physical and vocal warm-ups to help them prepare for reading in public and overcome stage fright. As an MFA student in Sarah Lawrence’s graduate Creative Writing Program, I created the Writers Performance Workshop to mentor fellow writers in preparing to read their own work in public readings; it was a remarkable success. I volunteer her services at area schools and colleges. I am also a mentor in the PEN American Prison Writers Program.
College, University and Professional teaching
As an acting teacher and guest artist, I have also taught a wide variety of group classes and semester courses, including Scene Study, Film Acting, Classical Acting, Playwright-based scene study, Improvisation, Solo Performance Composition, and Audition courses, at undergraduate, graduate and professional theater schools, including Drexel, NYU Tisch, Northwestern, Brandeis MFA, Temple MFA, UArts, Syracuse Stage, the Wilma, the Guthrie, the Alliance, and many others.
Coaching Successes
My ONLINE coaching students have been accepted to many dozens of prestigious pre-college, BFA, BA, MFA, conservatory and apprenticeship acting and musical theater programs across the USA and abroad. (see lists of acceptances on this website).
My ONLINE private coaching alums have played leading roles on and off Broadway, in feature films and on prime time TV. They have been nominated for and/or won prestigious acting awards, including the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Obie; Emmy, Golden Globe, Sundance, Independent Spirit, and many others.
