Esra Gaffin (Leyla)
Esra Gaffin has performed in productions of The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov Now Festival), The Greeks (Imua! Theatre and Film Company), The Monogamist (Coyote Theater Co.) and As You Like It (Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.). Favorite roles include Inez in Sartre’s No Exit, Betty in David Ives’ Sure Thing and the Young Pupil in Ionesco’s The Lesson (dir. Erwin Maas). She is proud to have originated the role of Ruth Berlau in Chalk Circles, a new play by Will McAdams about Bertolt Brecht’s tragic muse.
Esra created, produced, co-wrote and performed in 12 Fiery Women (Ohio Theater), an ongoing project about the universality of the female experience against the backdrop of America’s feminist and sexual revolutions. She appears in Captivated (selected ‘Best of Festival’ by NYC Downtown Short Film Festival) and David Mamet’s State and Main and is developing her own screenplay The Ride. She works in the commercial and voiceover industry with several of her ‘voices’ heard in the award-winning video game System Shock II and Thief II: The Metal Age. Esra is also a member of Visible Theatre, dedicated to cultivating the actor’s authentic voice through process and performance, and was lucky to be a part of Visible’s ongoing True Story Project series with a piece she wrote for TSP: SEX. Training: Boston University School for the Arts.
Check her out in her other webseries Help Wanted, an Imua! Films web series at http://vimeo.com/channels/helpwanted/ and at www.esragaffin.com.
View Help Wanted, an Imua! production:
HELP WANTED (ep. 5: DRY CLEANER) from Imua! Theatre & Film Company on Vimeo.


