Julie is a Brooklyn-based actor, director, writer, and producer with a focus on the development of new work for the theater. She has also been a teaching artist in New York City since 2003. For the past 7 years Julie’s teaching artist focus has been theater work with seniors/older adults, as well as inter-generational theater arts programs that bring together seniors and students from the same community to create plays based on their life stories. Julie conceived and directed SENIORS AND THE CITY - original theater works based on the life-stories of Manhattan seniors, as part of two years of New York City's SPARC residency (Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide.) She is an Artistic Associate of Roots&Branches Theater, where she recently directed ACTING OUT! with members of the Stanley Isaacs Senior Center and leads inter-generational theater arts programs in senior centers and NORCs (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities) across the five boroughs. She is also Program Manager at Elders Share the Arts, where she administers creative aging and intergenerational programs all around the city, as well as lead trainings for teaching artists and professionals in the field of aging, and presented on behalf of the organization to the UN’s NGO Committee on Aging. Julie holds a BFA from The Theater School of DePaul University in Chicago. www.juliekline.com

I believe that absolutely anyone can successfully perform on stage, and can both enjoy the benefits of practicing the performing arts and also enliven and inspire audiences through their personal expression and creativity. My practice with seniors in the performing arts is infused with a belief that exploring the crafts of acting, play-writing, story-telling and ensemble theater-creation can revitalize seniors both mentally and physically, and that telling their own stories on-stage allows them to reconnect with each other and their community, escaping the isolation that so often plagues that phase of life. So often thought to be merely "silent" members of society, I find that when seniors are placed on stage, it deeply empowers them. As a result, we in the audience look at the elderly - and at ourselves as we all inevitably age - in a new and profound way. My end goal is creation of a final performance - where both the performing seniors and the audience are energized by their participation in a high quality artistic event.