Julie S. Halpern

director-writer

Julie has been an actor, classical singer, director and arts journalist for over 20 years. "Shining Days" is her second full-length play. Her first play "Singing in My Sleep" seen in various locales, is also historical fiction, based on the turbulent life of Golden Age operatic  superstar- Amelita Galli-Curci.

Julie's stage credits include roles at Jewish Rep, Genesius Guild, Deptford Players, Court Theatre (Chicago) , Hermione in "The Winters' Tale" and Andromache in Euripides' "Trojan Women" for Love Street. She has been seen and heard in numerous corporate videos, voiceovers, film dubbing, all the NY-based daytime dramas and Rescue Me.

Recent directing credits include the Sam French festival, Turtle Shell Theatre-8 Minute Madness, "Signor Deluso", and "La Divina" for Opera Company of Brooklyn (performance available on Albany Records),  "The Winters' Tale" and Euripides' "Trojan Women" for Love Street.

Julie is proud to be a member of AEA, AFTRA and the Dramatists Guild

The Golden Dawn, an elite, occult society which flourished in Victorian London, included in it’s membership many of the finest artists and literary figures of the period:

W.B. Yeats, poet, playwright, senator, and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre; Florence Farr Emery, celebrated actress known for creating many of G.B. Shaw’s most enduring heroines and premiering Ibsen’s plays in London; Maud Gonne McBride, fiery Irish activist, artist, and beloved of Yeats; Annie Horniman, painter, costume designer, and one of the first female theatrical managers in Europe; MacGregor Mathers, considered the father of the modern metaphysical movement, and his enigmatic artist wife Moina.

Glamorous, charismatic and talented, all believed that their study of metaphysics and psychic phenomena enhanced their talents.

"The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn) was a magical order during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development. It has been one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism. Concepts of magic and ritual at the center of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca[1][2] and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn system was based on hierarchy and initiation like the Masonic Lodges, however women were admitted on an equal basis with men. The "Golden Dawn" was the first of three Orders, although all three are often collectively referred to as the "Golden Dawn".

Golden Age

By the mid 1890s, the Golden Dawn was well established in Great Britain, with membership rising to over a hundred and including every class of Victorian society.[5] In its heyday, many celebrities belonged to the Golden Dawn, such as actress Florence Farr and Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, Irish writer William Butler Yeats, Welsh author Arthur Machen, English author Evelyn Underhill, and English writer Aleister Crowley."**

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Samuel Liddell (or Liddel) "MacGregor" Mathers, born as Samuel Liddell (January 8 or 11, 1854 – November 5 or 20, 1918), was one of the most influential figures in modern Occultism. He is primarily known as one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ceremonial magic order of which offshoots still exist today**
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Moina Mathers, born as Mina Bergson was an artist and occultist at the turn of the 20th century. She was the sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, the first man of Jewish descent to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.[1] She is, however, more known for her marriage to the English occultist, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the founders of the organization Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and, after his death in 1918, for being the head of a successor organization, called the Rosicrucian Order of the Alpha et Omega. **
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Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman (3 October 1860 – 6 August 1937) was an English theatre patron and manager. She established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founded the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encouraged the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what became known as the Manchester School of dramatists.

. She anonymously supported her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Avenue Theatre, London. This included a new play by Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire, and the première of George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man. In 1903 Yeats persuaded her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish Literary Theatre. Here she discovered her skill as a theatre administrator. She bought a property and developed it into the Abbey Theatre, which opened in December 1904. Although she moved back to live in England she continued to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile in Manchester she had purchased and renovated the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and developed it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain. **
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Florence Beatrice Emery Farr
was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, leader of a secret occult order, and one time mistress of playwright George Bernard Shaw.[1] She was a friend and collaborator with Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, poet Ezra Pound, playwright Oscar Wilde, artists Aubrey Beardsley and Pamela Colman Smith, Masonic scholar Arthur Edward Waite, theatrical producer Annie Horniman, and many other literati of London's Fin de siècle era, and even by their standards she was "the bohemian's bohemian".[2] Though not as well-known as some of her contemporaries and successors, Farr was a "First Wave" Feminist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; she publicly advocated for suffrage, workplace equality, and equal protection under the law for women, writing a book and many articles in intellectual journals on the rights of "the modern woman". **
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Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. She was also active in Home Rule activities.
n 1897, along with Yeats and Arthur Griffith, she organized protests against Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. On Easter 1900, she founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), a revolutionary women's society, to provide a home for Irish nationalist women who, like herself, were considered unwelcome in male-dominated nationalist societies.
Often Considered, Yeats's "muse".

Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking." He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen Ní Houlihan for her. His poem He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven ends with a reference to her:**
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William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation;" and he was the first Irishman so honored.[1] Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize;[2] such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929):**
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