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More About Us
Ensemble Children's Theatre was founded in 2023 by Elisabeth Speckman, who serves as the main instructor for all of our current offerings.
Elisabeth has 14+ years of experience teaching youth drama and writing with programs throughout the Indianapolis area.
She is certified in adult and pediatric CPR/First Aid/AED by the American Red Cross. She is certified in anaphylaxis and epinephrine auto-injectors by the American Red Cross. She is a mother to two and an aunt to many!
For a full bio, see below.
Elisabeth (she/her) is a playwright, actor, and director from Indianapolis. She received her BA in Theatre and English-Creative Writing from Denison University and her MFA from Butler University. She has served as both a visiting instructor and adjunct at Butler in first-year studies, intro to creative writing, academic writing, media studies, and screenwriting, as well as teaching Acting II at IUPUI.
Her acting training includes the Yale Summer Conservatory for Actors, Second City Training Center Chicago, and the Michael Chekhov School. She has appeared in numerous productions in the Indianapolis area with Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre, IndyFringe, Bard Fest, Carmel Community Players, Spotlight Players, and Amalgamated Stage Productions, and won the 2015 Best Major Supporting Actress Award from the Encore Association. She has taught and directed theatre for over ten years, working with The Artists Studio, Fishers UMC, CYT Indy, Southbank Theatre Company, and Roots' School of Theatre, where she currently teaches and directs.
As a playwright, her work has been produced throughout the United States and internationally. She has developed work with the Yale Writers’ Conference (now Yale Writers’ Workshop), the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive, 29th Street Playwrights Collective, The Bechdel Group, The Skeleton Rep(resents), The Barrow Group, and more.
She has studied comedy and sketch writing with Upright Citizens Brigade, Bad Medicine Comedy, and The Second City. She is an O’Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist and a two-time Henley Rose Award finalist.
She adapted her play, Brothers on a Hotel Bed, and sold it to an independent LA filmmaker, who premiered the film at the Marina del Rey Film Festival. Her other screenplays have been a quarter-finalist for Short Comedy (Australasian Screenplay Competition) and nominated as Best Short Comedic Screenplay (Houston Comedy Film Festival). She teaches writing workshops for the Indiana Writers Center, is the education chair for the Indianapolis Playwrights Circle, and is a 2022-2023 national mentor for MadLab Theatre’s (Columbus, OH) Young Writers program.
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