Elisa Gonzales

B.F.A. Emerson College
M.F.A. Arizona State University

Elisa Gonzales is a professional voice and dialect coach, actor, writer, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Theater. As a voice, text, and dialect coach, Elisa has coached productions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, the Phoenix Theatre Company, WAM Theatre, the Hangar Theatre Company, Silverthorne Theatre Company, as well as universities and colleges across the country. As a performer, she has worked at the New York International Fringe Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Café, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, the La Jolla Playhouse, and many others. Elisa is a certified teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork and a certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®. She has published peer-reviewed articles in The Voice and Speech Review, and regularly presents her scholarship at national and international conferences. Her creative activity and research focus on accent/dialect coaching and performance, and embodied storytelling, with a specific focus on stories that live at the intersection of Latinx/Chicana identity, history, voice, and memory. Her essay, “El Silencio: A Chicana Perspective on Contemporary Latinx Theatre and Performance as Testimonio” was published in 2024 in The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance. Elisa’s original play with music, Olvidados: A Mexican American Corrido, was a 2022 Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill National Music Theatre Conference, and was workshopped at UMass as part of the 2021-2022 season. Elisa holds a BFA in Acting from Emerson College and an MFA in Theatre Performance from Arizona State University. She is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, VASTA (Voice and Speech Trainers Association), the Dramatists Guild, ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education), and NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture).