Let's work together one-on-one or in a small group! It is an opportunity for intimate, deeply creative and personal, growth-oriented work that is all about what the student/s want to focus on or create!

This could look like:

- Audition/Performance Prep: one or two sessions of coaching to polish an audition/performance piece, giving you confidence that you are presenting quality work!

- One-on-One Sessions to work on a particular skill, like public speaking, acting technique, relaxation and grounding techniques to help overcome anxiety or "stage fright", improvisation, etc.

- One-on-One or Group Sessions Working on a Performance Piece: a series of sessions with the aim of working on a specific performance piece, like a monologue, scene from a play, a whole play, or performing something you wrote yourself.

- Creating a Play/Performance from Scratch: a series of sessions in which we start with an intention to create something, or the seed of an idea. In an environment of play and with the help of improvisation exercises and other techniques to free our creative energies, we create something amazing together and decide if/how we want to share it, or even record it.

- Or whatever you want it to be!

Whatever we end up doing together, each session is guaranteed to be FUN, FREEING on so many levels and creatively and holistically FULFILLING. It is my intention for your kid/you to leave energized, inspired and flowing with juicy creative energy and glowing with whole-being vitality.

Fees

One-on-one sessions are generally $50/hr. 

Small group sessions may be a bit more, and can be worked out depending on the number of kids in the group and the scope of the creative idea we want to put into practice! A project or class series that will result in a play, which takes lots of out-of-class time to work on, would have a higher rate than audition prep, or simple fun acting classes that do not necessarily culminate in a performance.

*Past Solo Session Project Highlight*

Stella's One-Act Play, "Slippers", About A Clever, Cheeky Talking Cat

A devoted DraMagician, 10-yr old Stella McLaughlin recently completed an 8-week one-on-one class series with Esther in her home studio in Lyons. 

She came to her first class with an idea to do a short play about a talking cat and her naive owner.  We decided we would create this story together and perform it for a live audience when it was ready.

We met once a week for an hour. Each session started with a cup of tea and dropping in with each other, then flowing into grounding and relaxing our bodies and minds before doing some physical and vocal warmups. This would lead into imagination work, improvisation and other theater games, and the specific and challenging acting skill of working with invisible objects (as we knew there would be a lot of that in her play!). Then we would set up our scene and jump into improvising situations and conversations that helped us flesh out our story. 

Over the weeks, we honed in on the essential moments of our story and got to know our characters really well, while sharpening our acting skills, especially vocally, object handling. and improvisational freedom. 

We had initially wanted to present the play at a community open mic night, but because the open mic was postponed and the play had turned out to be a bit longer than we'd originally intended, Stella decided she wanted to perform it for a select audience in my home studio instead. She invited about a dozen family members and friends, and we performed it for them on a Tuesday afternoon. It was a very special sharing honoring Stella's creativity and growth, not to mention her huge accomplishment in creating a play flowing directly from her own creative essence! 

It was a joy to go on this journey with her and be a part of her debut production! We can't wait to see what she will do next. 

Stella's experience creating "Slippers" in her own words:

"My experience with you was, first, amazing, and MY favorite part was when we practiced the play and when we did the talking gibberish thing!! I loved our warm ups and the energy ball game! The time I spent with you was the best and it went super fast and I would rate it a 9.9!!! "Slippers" was a pretty good name and maybe I should name my cat Slippers when I’m older:)!! Thank you for all the memories and advice!! I will always remember the memories we had together. Love, Stella