Elisa Carlson

Elisa teaches voice, speech and acting classes at UNG and is a Resident Director with the Gainesville Theatre Alliance.  Her 200+ Voice, Dialect and Text coaching credits include productions at The Mint and New Dramatists theatres (Off-Broadway) and at major regional theatres including the Guthrie Theater (MN), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theater (WI), The Children's Theater (MN), Alley Theatre (TX), The Rep (DE) and the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta). 

Elisa coached all historic voices and dialects for Ava DuVernay's Best Picture Academy Award nominee Selma and Damien Chazelle's acclaimed First Man. She also coached leading actors in the features Baby Driver, Burden, Southside with You, The Good Lie, Coat of Many Colors and the HBO series Stranger Things.  She was text consultant for Campbell Scott’s highly regarded film of Hamlet and had a featured role in the film. 

Professional acting credits include the Guthrie, The Shakespeare Theater (DC), Alliance, Georgia Shakespeare, Marietta's Theatre-in-the-Square (Suzi Bass nomination for Best Actress), Theatrical Outfit (Suzi Bass nomination for Best Ensemble) and narration of 20 titles for Audible, Inc.  Most recently she appeared as "Woman" in Aris Theatre's Woman and Scarecrow at 7 Stages. 

Elisa won a Reiser Atlanta Artists Grant from the Alliance Theatre at the Woodruff, where she directed the first readings and workshop staging of Carlock & Kurlander's Moxie.  Other directing credits include Theatrical Outfit, The Refuge Theatre, Shakespeare on the Cape, Working Title Playwrights, Theater Emory and the Guthrie Theater’s BFA Actor Training Program. At UNG/GTA she has directed Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Antigone,The Importance of Being Earnest, Fuente Ovejuna and Men on Boats. She taught voice and speech on the Theater Studies faculty at Emory University and taught in the Alliance Theatre and Actor's Express professional acting intern programs from 1995-2001, and from 2002-2010 taught voice, speech and period styles in the Guthrie's BFA Program at the University of Minnesota. She joined the UNG faculty in 2010.

• BFA, Acting, Florida State University, 1984
• MFA, Acting, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (program re-located at University of Delaware), 1987