Life After Goucher

When Liza Frank returned to New York City in 2000, after graduating with a theatre degree from Goucher, she immediately began pursuing her acting career. Now, Frank lives the life of an aspiring actress. By day she is a native New Yorker, bustling through the city to her job as a project assistant at the FDNY Counseling Services Unit. By night, she is rushing off to performances, auditions and acting classes.

Frank came to Goucher from the prestigious LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York, with a passion for drama. She found many opportunities to experience theatre during her time at Goucher, from directing and performing in various plays, to going abroad to study theatre at the University of Exeter in England during her junior year. From these experiences, Frank says she gained the confidence and skills she needed to return to the big city.

“Goucher gave me so many opportunities to do everything I wanted creatively, and gave me a good solid liberal arts education,” says Frank. “I learned how to think intellectually and am now able to bring these skills with me to every opportunity.”

While Frank isn’t a full time actress yet, her resume is steadily expanding with a range of acting gigs, from Shakespeare in the park, to parts in projects by some of New York’s prominent writers. Her credits include acclaimed writer Anne Nelson’s work, The Guys, a play written days after September 11, about the author’s heart-wrenching experience while writing the eulogies of eight dead firefighters.

Frank and fellow Goucher alum Jason Leahey performed the play at Columbia University, as well as at Friends Hospital in New York City. Proceeds from the production helped subsidize the costs of various programs for fire fighters with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. As a native New Yorker and FDNY employee, Frank found the experience cathartic.

“It was a great opportunity, and a healing process for me,” says Frank. “It also was a rare honor to get to work with such a gifted writer. It inspired me to want to use my craft as a way of helping make sense of the world around me.”

Frank continues to pursue a full time acting career in New York City, gig by gig. She also belongs to the Actors Alliance, a competitive studio in New York that gives aspiring actors opportunities to meet top agents and casting directors from all over the city.