First and foremost, acting coach Lisbeth Bartlett is an absolute angel!! She has truly been sent from Heaven to be this amazing mentor, supporter and teacher to our beloved Ara and we are forever grateful to her! Ara has been working with Lisbeth for the past two years, during their junior and senior years. We found Lisbeth through a fellow parent whose daughter had successfully coached with Lisbeth for her college MT auditions. They highly recommended Lisbeth so we contacted her right away through her website. The minute we met Lisbeth in our preliminary consultation, we knew she would be the perfect mentor to coach Ara. We felt extremely comfortable with her and trusted her inspiring approach to actor training and audition preparation.

For junior year, Ara worked with Lisbeth in person at her acting studio. Ara went into the coaching process with lots of trepidation and nerves. Little by little, Lisbeth taught Ara the craft of acting. And little by little, Ara’s confidence began to soar. Coaching sessions began with Lisbeth guiding Ara in a relaxed exploration of dozens of wonderful contemporary and classical plays in order to find just the right characters and monologues that would showcase Ara’s talent, personality, ethnic identity, and uniqueness. Boy, did Lisbeth nail it!! Ara found fantastic material they loved to perform. Then, Lisbeth and Ara they went through a meticulous rehearsal process to refine and “perfect” those pieces.

At the end of Ara’s junior year, when the COVID pandemic hit, Ara had to start working with Lisbeth online via SKYPE. We were so glad that Ara had been able to work with her in person; this made the switch to SKYPE work great. They created prescreen tapes together and made a list of schools for Ara to apply to, good fits, safeties, and reach schools. Lisbeth invests her whole heart, her many years of professional acting experience, and her massive knowledge of the arts in her teaching. She made it easy for Ara to learn and grow as both an actor and as a human being. Ara became a much better actor and also grew more and more comfortable personally, in their own skin.

When it came time for auditions, Lisbeth was there every step of the way cheering and supporting Ara through this scary but exhilarating process. She urged Ara to attend an early fall UNIFIED “Zoom” college MT weekend, which occurred weeks before the regular audition season was set to begin but would allow them to audition for several MT programs at once. Ara was terribly nervous but committed to participating in the UNIFIED. We as parents were nervous too and Lisbeth gave us extra free time to coach us as parents since this was the first time we ever did this sort of thing. Lisbeth’s charismatic personality and infinite patience helped ALL of us through this process. She shared her life experiences with us as a fellow parent ushering a child through the college process.  She made us laugh, shed a few tears, and always left us smiling.

At every one of the several UNIFIED auditions Ara did, adjudicators commented that Ara had chosen wonderful material to present that was so right for them. Lisbeth spoke with Ara after every audition to get feedback on how the audition had gone and to give them tips for the next audition.

Ara was accepted to several top MT BFA programs at these UNIFIEDS, including their first-choice program, Marymount Manhattan’s BFA MT program, with a generous academic and artistic scholarship. And Ara was able to commit to Marymount Manhattan long before many other students had even begun their audition processes! WIN! WIN! They are thrilled with their decision and have the rest of senior year to relax and get ready to start college. What else can we say but, THANK YOU!!! Lisbeth has been an amazing mentor, teacher, coach, support system, resource, counsellor, friend, surrogate parent, you name it!  I know Ara will continue to work with Lisbeth and we take comfort knowing she will guide Ara to a path of professional success! WE LOVE YOU LISBETH!