OLIVIA BROWNLEE
Brownlee hails half from the horse town of Shadow Hills, CA; and half from a 10,000 sq ft barn in Eastern Washington State that to this day hosts a cowboy chuckwagon supper show owned and operated by her unique parents. She holds two degrees in Theatre Arts & Education, two independently-released albums, and after a 6.5-year stint in Boston has at last returned to her home of Los Angeles to develop and hone the elusive tools of business-management, performance career, and cultural diplomacy. So far Brownlee has piloted her Music as a Language workshop in Washington, Idaho, and Massachusetts--as well as such non-English-speaking countries as Austria and Laos--scoffing at language barriers and championing cross-cultural connectivity.
MUSIC AS A LANGUAGE WORKSHOP:
Olivia Brownlee, facilitator, teaches music as one of many means of non-verbal communication through eye-contact, body language, facial expression, rhythm, tone, dynamics, melody, individual expression, and group creativity. In her workshops she doesn't speak, having found that words over-complicate and impede instruction-giving, engagement, entertainment, and learning. Instead, working with participants' curiosity and sense of discovery, Brownlee invites and immerses even the shyest onlooker to partake in a musical feast.
For participants, the workshop may seem at first like a series of follow-the-leader, call-and-response games, an apparently improvised session of vocalization, hamboning, bricolage, and cardio that challenges one's observational skills and ability to mimic. But the curriculum, while indeed spontaneously tailored and adjusted to fit the gathered group, is strongly informed and held together by Brownlee's extensive musical training and background, as well as her Master of Arts in Theatre Education from Emerson College. And at the end of what felt almost like a playdate at the neighbor's house you might look at a piece of sheet music and not feel quite so lost.
Employing many techniques from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, Brownlee nods to Jerzy Grotowski's beehives and throws in a delightful dash of Milton Erickson's trance-work, sneaks in the artistic intelligence of conductor Aaron Copland, the expansive congregational impulses of banjo-activist Pete Seeger, embodies the exploratory spirit of Jaques Cousteau, and finishes with Socrates' pug-nosed smile, all the while with a "Suess-like," gibberish-filled, somehow-deeply-comforting rhythm.
This workshop is for all ages, languages, and backgrounds.
MUSIC AS A LANGUAGE WORKSHOP:
Olivia Brownlee, facilitator, teaches music as one of many means of non-verbal communication through eye-contact, body language, facial expression, rhythm, tone, dynamics, melody, individual expression, and group creativity. In her workshops she doesn't speak, having found that words over-complicate and impede instruction-giving, engagement, entertainment, and learning. Instead, working with participants' curiosity and sense of discovery, Brownlee invites and immerses even the shyest onlooker to partake in a musical feast.
For participants, the workshop may seem at first like a series of follow-the-leader, call-and-response games, an apparently improvised session of vocalization, hamboning, bricolage, and cardio that challenges one's observational skills and ability to mimic. But the curriculum, while indeed spontaneously tailored and adjusted to fit the gathered group, is strongly informed and held together by Brownlee's extensive musical training and background, as well as her Master of Arts in Theatre Education from Emerson College. And at the end of what felt almost like a playdate at the neighbor's house you might look at a piece of sheet music and not feel quite so lost.
Employing many techniques from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, Brownlee nods to Jerzy Grotowski's beehives and throws in a delightful dash of Milton Erickson's trance-work, sneaks in the artistic intelligence of conductor Aaron Copland, the expansive congregational impulses of banjo-activist Pete Seeger, embodies the exploratory spirit of Jaques Cousteau, and finishes with Socrates' pug-nosed smile, all the while with a "Suess-like," gibberish-filled, somehow-deeply-comforting rhythm.
This workshop is for all ages, languages, and backgrounds.
