Workshops
“Every show went great! The things I learned…have really served me well when facing even the most challenging audiences.”
“Thank you again for a fun and useful workshop that was also inspiring.”
“I felt you put us all at ease right off the bat and made the workshop fun with all of your antics. I learned a lot and can’t wait to try some of it out soon.”
Read about Julie’s Maine Opera Atelier, an ongoing workshop for aspiring opera singers.
Julie and her students in Rio Julie began teaching mime and stage movement in 1977 in Rome, Italy at L’Istituto Per Lo Studio dello Spettacolo (Institute for Theater Training, a.k.a. Teatro Studio). She taught in Berlin in 1978 at the Max Rheinhardt Schule and trained actors at the Schiller Theater. Since moving back to the States, she has taught at Boston University, and was Resident Guest Artist at the University of Connecticut Puppet Arts program, a post funded by the Henson Foundation. Julie has filled the Guest Artist post at Colby College three times. She is currently directing “The Fantasticks” for Colby at the Waterville Opera House.
Julie graduated from Emerson College in 1974 with a BFA in Theater, majoring in Directing. Contemporarily, she co-founded the Pocket Mime Theater in Boston. She then spent ten years in Italy teaching and performing in La Compagnia I Gesti. The company toured Europe east and west, bringing its own brand of physical theater based in Commedia Dell’ Arte, mime, acrobatics, and masks. Julie made and designed the masks in collaboration with artistic director Roy Bosier. She also earned a reputation in Rome as the Clown of Piazza Navona, named after the scenic baroque square where she performed her clown routines daily.
She returned to the States to study dance with Murry Louis and Alvin Nikolais, as well as Jazz singing with Barry Harris.
Since returning to the U.S. in 1984, Julie has directed farces, Commedia plays, puppet plays, and operettas. She has developed and directed several shows with live music, staged Commedia works for Epcott Center, Spoleto Festival, Sarasota Opera and the National Press Club of Washington. She co-wrote and toured a rock opera for children called “A Day Without Television.”
In 1987 Julie married kindred clown Avner Eisenberg. They moved to an island off the coast of Maine where they raised their son/webmaster the old fashioned way, spiced with the occasional international family outing.
In 2002, pursuing a life-long interest in Jazz, Julie earned a degree in Jazz Bass from the University of Southern Maine School of Music. She currently plays bass in the Casco Bay Tummlers klezmer Band, Zhok Therapy, and the Phyzgig Festival Stage Band (which she also directs).
Julie currently teaches professional development workshops in Eccentric Performance and Commedia Dell’ Arte at the Celebration Barn Theater in South Paris, Maine. She teaches workshops from California to Brazil in Commedia and Clowning and freelances as a director, specializing in comedy.
What’s next? Julie hopes to put her music and directing skills together to direct large operas on a very small scale.