Stage Presence Coaching in Chicago
Private Performance Direction for Women Who Are Ready to Be Read Clearly
You can feel powerful and still disappear onstage.
You can know the choreography.
Have the costume.
Hit every count.
Smile at the right places.
And somehow the audience still doesn’t quite know where to look.
That is the problem I solve.
Stage presence is not a personality trait.
It is not being louder.
It is not being sexier.
It is not “having confidence.”
Stage presence is the ability to make a clear choice, communicate that choice through your body, and direct an audience’s attention long enough for something to happen between you and the room.
That can be learned.
I know because I have spent nearly two decades studying it from almost every possible angle: as a performer, director, producer, teacher, coach and the person standing in the back of the room thinking:
There. That’s the moment. Do that again.
If you have something in you that isn’t quite making it across the footlights yet, I can help you find out why.
Have a performance, act or idea already in progress? Show me what you’re creating.
You Probably Do Not Need More Confidence
This may be the first thing I tell you.
A lot of women come into performance spaces assuming the missing ingredient is confidence.
Sometimes it is.
But very often the performer is already brave.
She’s already showing up.
She’s already making something.
What she is missing is specificity.
She hasn’t decided exactly what she wants from the audience.
Or what changes during the act.
Or why she crosses the stage.
Or why this reveal happens here instead of eight counts later.
Or what she is thinking when the music stops.
The audience senses those unanswered questions even if they could never articulate them.
So instead of telling you to “own the stage,” I will usually ask something much more annoying and much more useful:
What are you actually doing to them?
What Stage Presence Actually Is
I think of performance as the direction of attention.
At any given moment, the audience is deciding:
Where should I look?
What matters?
What does she want?
What am I supposed to feel?
What might happen next?
A strong performer answers those questions without explaining them.
She uses timing.
Stillness.
Focus.
Breath.
Gesture.
Musicality.
Eye contact.
Scale.
Rhythm.
Character.
Tension.
Release.
And perhaps most importantly:
decision.
The audience doesn’t need you to do more.
They need to understand the thing you are already doing.
This Is Not “Walk More Confidently” Coaching
I am not interested in pasting a generalized idea of femininity or charisma onto you.
I want to know what is compelling about you.
Some performers are dangerous when they’re perfectly still.
Some are funny.
Some are elegant.
Some are strange.
Some can make an audience fall in love with them.
Some are deliciously withholding.
Some need enormous movement.
Some become magnetic the moment we remove half the choreography.
Good direction does not make everyone look the same.
It makes the performer more legible.
That is a very different goal.
The Moment I Realized I’d Been Directing All Along
For years, people primarily knew me as Red Hot Annie.
The burlesque performer.
And that is absolutely true.
Burlesque changed my life.
But it took me a surprisingly long time to see the larger pattern in my own work.
I had come from theater before Red Hot Annie existed.
Then I began performing burlesque.
Then producing.
Then teaching.
Then building Vaudezilla shows.
Then directing performers.
Then creating characters, environments, private experiences and entire theatrical worlds.
Eventually I realized:
I had been directing all along.
Burlesque taught me how to direct attention.
Producing taught me how to direct a room.
Teaching taught me how to recognize what another performer was trying to become.
And thousands of hours spent watching live performance taught me something you cannot learn entirely from a textbook:
I can usually see where the electricity disappears.
And I can usually see how to get it back.
My work as a performer, teacher and producer has been documented by sources including ABC7 Chicago / Localish, Northwestern University’s Medill Reports and publications chronicling the growth of Vaudezilla and Chicago’s modern burlesque scene.
But the real education happened in rooms.
Watching.
Trying.
Failing.
Adjusting.
Watching again.
What We Can Work On Together
Stage presence coaching can be very small and very surgical.
You might have a three-minute act that works except for fifteen seconds.
Bring me the fifteen seconds.
Or we can start with nothing but a song and the feeling you want someone to have when it ends.
Depending on your project, we may work on:
- entrances and exits
- character
- pacing
- musicality
- eye focus
- gesture
- stillness
- transitions
- audience connection
- emotional clarity
- intention
- choreography cleanup
- reveals
- prop work
- costume logic
- act structure
- comedy timing
- sensuality without vagueness
- making movement readable in a large room
- audition preparation
- performance video critique
- turning an idea into an actual act
- finding the thing that makes your performance unmistakably yours
And occasionally:
what to cut.
Cutting is underrated.
If Your Act Is Technically Correct but Somehow Flat
This is one of my favorite problems.
Because usually the performer is closer than she thinks.
Often, there are simply too many things happening with equal importance.
Every movement is performed at the same volume.
Every count is filled.
Every expression tells us approximately the same thing.
Nothing surprises us because nothing changes.
So we create hierarchy.
This matters.
Then this doesn’t.
Now wait.
Now let them come to you.
Now give them the thing.
Now leave before they are finished looking.
That is direction.
If You Freeze When People Actually Look at You
That is also workable.
Stage presence does not require becoming fearless.
You need a structure strong enough to hold you when your nervous system suddenly realizes:
Oh. Everyone is looking at me.
We can build that structure.
Where do your eyes go?
What does your body do first?
What is your first job?
What is the audience’s first job?
What happens if someone yells something?
What happens when applause lasts longer than expected?
What happens if there is no applause exactly where you expected it?
When you have answers, the room stops feeling quite so random.
If You Already Feel Powerful but It Isn’t Translating
This page originally grew out of a phrase about women who finally feel powerful.
I still understand the impulse behind that phrase.
There is an extraordinary moment when a woman realizes she no longer wants permission to take up space.
But there is another stage after that.
You know you’re powerful.
Now:
Can they see it?
Can you communicate it without forcing?
Can you hold the room without rushing?
Can you stop proving?
Can you make less movement carry more meaning?
Can you let the audience come toward you?
That is where performance becomes interesting.
Burlesque Performers: This Is Especially for You
Burlesque creates a peculiar challenge.
The performer often has multiple jobs happening simultaneously.
Dance.
Character.
Comedy.
Costume manipulation.
Prop handling.
Musicality.
Striptease.
Audience connection.
Sometimes aerial or circus technique on top of all of that.
It becomes very easy to perform the tasks of the act while losing the actual act.
I’ve performed burlesque hundreds of times, taught generations of Chicago students and directed performers at wildly different stages of development.
So when I coach a burlesque act, I am not only looking at choreography.
I’m looking at the entire conversation between performer and audience.
Already have an act that needs another set of eyes? Send it to me.
You Do Not Need to Be a Burlesque Performer
The same principles apply anywhere someone is being watched.
I have worked with performers, actors, dancers and people developing characters or preparing material for live audiences.
The medium changes.
Attention does not.
If you’re preparing something that depends on how you enter a room, hold focus, communicate an idea or become believable in front of other people, there may be something here for us to work on.
Tell me what you’re preparing.
I’ll tell you whether I’m the right person to help.
Tell Annie what you’re preparing.
Private Performance Coaching Options
You do not necessarily need months of lessons.
Choose the amount of intervention the work actually needs.
Act Audit
$150
Bring me an existing act or performance video.
We’ll identify what is already working, where attention drops, what is confusing and what I would change first.
Best when you need experienced eyes more than another choreography class.
From Spark to Stage
$395
You have the beginning of something.
A song.
A visual.
A costume.
A character.
A ridiculous idea you cannot stop thinking about.
We’ll turn it into something you can actually perform.
Performance Video Intensive
From $395
Send me the performance.
We look at what the audience actually sees rather than what the performer intended them to see.
This is especially useful for performers preparing auditions, submissions, competitions, showcases or a piece they want to take seriously.
Have Annie review your performance.
Act Rebuild
$495
For the act that exists but is not yet doing what you know it could do.
We keep what is alive.
We interrogate everything else.
Structure, character, choreography, timing, visual logic, costume, reveals and audience relationship can all be reconsidered.
The goal is not simply a cleaner act.
It is a clearer one.
Booking-Ready
$495
For performers who are not only asking:
Is this good?
But:
Can I actually sell this?
We’ll look at the piece through both artistic and producer eyes: stage readability, professionalism, practical booking considerations, footage, positioning and whether the act communicates quickly enough for someone deciding whether to hire you.
I’ve spent years on both sides of that decision.
What Happens in a Session?
You show me the work.
Not the perfect version.
The real version.
Then I watch.
I may stop you.
I may make you do twelve seconds again.
I may ask a strange question.
I may move one hand.
I may remove eight counts.
I may tell you that the thing you are worried about is actually fine and the real problem is something happening twenty seconds earlier.
We test.
You perform again.
We see what changed.
I am not trying to replace your instincts with mine.
I am trying to help you make your instincts visible.
Who This Is For
This work tends to be most useful when you are:
developing a new act,
stuck inside an old one,
preparing to perform publicly,
moving beyond beginner-level choreography,
trying to understand why a technically solid piece is not connecting,
preparing an audition or submission,
building a stage persona,
trying something more ambitious than you have attempted before,
or realizing that you are ready for actual artistic direction rather than another class.
If you’re truly at the beginning and simply want to discover burlesque, you may not need private coaching yet.
Start with my Chicago beginner burlesque classes instead.
That is a much better use of your money.
The Thing I Want You to Leave With
Not:
“I performed exactly the way Annie would.”
Absolutely not.
I want the audience to understand you more clearly.
Your timing.
Your humor.
Your strangeness.
Your glamour.
Your restraint.
Your danger.
Your tenderness.
Your absurdity.
Whatever the actual thing is.
Technique matters.
But eventually, good performance stops being about executing the correct moves.
It becomes an act of making choices in public.
And then staying present long enough to let the audience receive them.
That is stage presence.
Show Me What You’re Creating
You do not need to know which coaching option you need before contacting me.
Send me:
what you’re working on,
where you are in the process,
what isn’t working yet,
and, if you have it, a rehearsal or performance video.
I’ll tell you where I think the highest-leverage intervention is.
Sometimes that means a full rebuild.
Sometimes it means one session.
Sometimes it means I tell you:
Don’t touch the act. It’s working.
That is useful information too.
Show Annie what you’re creating →
About Red Hot Annie
Red Hot Annie is a Chicago performer, creative director, producer, burlesque educator and performance coach.
After beginning in theater, she became part of Chicago’s modern burlesque revival and co-founded Vaudezilla in 2008. Her work has since expanded across performance, teaching, performer development, event production, immersive experience design and creative direction.
Her approach to performance begins with one central question:
What should the audience be looking at, feeling or understanding right now?
Everything else follows from there.
Learn more about Annie’s story →
Explore Annie’s creative direction work →