Singer/Actress & Voice Teacher Lisa Golda
  • Performance
  • Jan26

    On to the next exciting project: music directing Godspell at University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan! Can’t wait to get started with auditions next week, February 2-3. I will be working with director Simon Provan, fellow actor and theatre professor at UW-Sheboygan. The show will run one weekend only, March 29-April 1!

  • Aug15

    Things have been busy on both the personal and studio fronts. Student Caitlin Barclay, who recently won a 10k music scholarship from the Kohler Foundation, will be sponsored by Carthage College, where she will major in vocal performance, for just about the rest of her college expenses! Student Ben Johnson, who is a high school freshman this year, was invited to join the Sheboygan Symphony Chorus. Rachel O’Keefe was asked to star as Lucy in Kohler High School’s upcoming production of  You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.  Many of my students performed with professionalism and panache at my studio recital in mid-August; check me out on Facebook and look at the link featuring student Genevieve Gannon, who will be attending St. Norbert’s College this fall, in her performance of “Ah! Je veux vivre” from the opera Romeo et Juliette.In July, I attended the Sound Connections convention for Unity musicians in Kansas City, MO and met many wonderful “posi” colleagues. I’m looking forwarding to rejoining Chicago Opera Theatre for my fourth year as a teaching artist in Chicago, and to reprising my role as Mama Bear in Goldilocks and the Three Bears with Chicago Opera Playhouse at the Rumble Arts Center near Humboldt Park this September. I’ll also be making my debut with Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee in The Exonerated, playing Sandra and Sue, and vocal directing Reefer Madness at Carte Blanche Studios in Milwaukee! Busy as usual. . .

  • May31

    I am a teaching artist for Chicago Opera Theatre, in residence in two inner-city Chicago schools year-round with my fellow TA and COT Education Director Linden Christ. We recently presented this year’s final performance of the kids’ opera “School Rules!” at Clinton Elementary School. 4th and 5th grade kids wrote the music and lyrics and created props with the help of composer Adam Busch and artist Sonja Henderson, as well as the late great Mary Scruggs of Second City Theatre. Here is a link to a short Chicago TV news story on Clinton’s performance!  http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=186506&terms=Opera

  • May23

     I’m pleased to announce that I will be making my debut with Next Act Theatre this fall in “The Exonerated”, their dramatic season opener in their new Third Ward space! Based on true stories of people wrongly convicted to, and later freed from, death row, this show confronts the human and spiritual price we pay as the only first world society that still imposes capital punishment. I will be playing Sandra/Sue, wives of two freed death row inmates.

    In other news, student Caitlin Barclay was awarded a $10,000 merit scholarship to pursue her studies in voice at Carthage College by the Kohler Foundation. She was one of five Sheboygan high school senior finalists competing for $60,000 in scholarships sponsored by the Kohler Foundation:
    http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20110428/SHE04/104280356/Top-high-school-musicians-will-perform-Sunday-Kohler-Arts-Center-Senior-Honor-Recital

  • May8


    2010-2011 OPERA for ALL:
    Teaching to the Test, or Creative Initiative?

    I’ll never forget the unexpected response I and my teaching partner, Chicago Opera Theatre Education Director Linden Christ, received last year after inviting Opera for All elementary school students to participate in a creative project intended to enhance their understanding of an opera plot.

    We instructed students to make a collage of a scene from the opera, and showed them an example. We presented them with the materials creative dreams are made of: colorful construction paper, glitter, sticky “jewels”, patterned backgrounds, 64 Crayolas, magazines to cut . . .items my inner child found tantalizing, but which these kids found perplexing. “What do we do?” they said, confusion and very real anxiety evident in their faces and voices. “Is this right?” they asked, holding up forlorn, virtually naked pieces of paper or results that were exact copies of the example we provided.

     The kids didn’t know how, were afraid to, create.
    Read More | Comments

  • Mar26

    Liysa Callsen’s new one-woman show, “codadiva”, opens tonight at 7 pm at the Vox Box. The Vox Box is located at the Marian Center for Non-Profits, 3211 S. Lake St. Suite 423. Tickets are $10. Cash bar.  To purchase tickets in advance, visit the Facebook event. Liysa’s solo exploration of the isolation and insights arising from experiences growing up hearing in a deaf household will speak to everyone.  To read a preview article by Damien Jaques of onmilwaukee.com, click here: http://onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/codacourage.html

  • Jan20

    I’m currently playing Mama Bear for Chicago Opera Playhouse in a touring children’s production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This past week, we performed for Ames Elementary School at the conclusion of a week-long residency conducted by COP founder Linden Christ. Check out this link for cute pics! http://rblandmark.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=7010&TM=67613.36

  • Jan12

    Thanks to Boris and Doris of the Shepherd-Express for dropping in to see who was in attendance at the Vox Box’s sold-out STATUS Soiree on New Year’s Eve! Catch their column covering the soiree and other smashing events of that evening here: http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-13545-boris-and-doris-on-the-town.html    A feature on the Vox Box by long-time Milwaukee theatre critic Damien Jaques is due out in February!

    I’m appearing with Chicago Opera Playhouse this month as Mama Bear in their touring production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears! I am also looking forward to working with students in my spring Vocal Excellence Class at the Northshore Academy of the Arts in Grafton, WI.

    Welcome to new students Brinn Crocker, Caitlin Barclay (who recently starred as Aida in her high school production of Aida), Michelle Zuehlke, and Molly Hetzner. Congratulations to Erin Walton, Vox Box student, featured in the STATUS soiree, who is playing  the Narrator in an upcoming production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with St. Matthias and who will be appearing in Soulstice Theatre’s spring musical American Enterprise. Congrats also to student Marielle Schuchardt, recently seen as Mimi in RENT at UW-Manitowoc, currently featured as a member of “the Council” in UW-Sheboygan/TYA’s production of Hairspray.

    Stay tuned for announcements regarding the next Vox Box “Sweethearts” Soiree, coming up in February!

  • Aug30

    Check out great photos of my recent performance as Florence Vassy in Soulstice Theatre’s production of Chess by clicking on Gallery at the top of this site, then Chess. Courtesy of Mark Frohna, FroPhoto. They are absolutely beautiful! Having fantastically talented leading men didn’t hurt. Appearing with me in many of these pics is Patrick Fennelly as Freddie Trumper (cream suit) and Brian Myers as Anatoly Sergievsky (dark suit).     

    Coming soon. . .an exciting announcement!