Meet Frankie Mulinix | Teacher, Artistic Director and performer specializing in voice, movement, and performance

We had the good fortune of connecting with Frankie Mulinix and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Frankie provides culturally-competent voice, movement, and performance training to performers and business professionals. Her specialties include working with transgender and non-binary clients, individuals managing anxiety and trauma, and in dramatizing intimate scenes.

Hi Frankie, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
It depends on how far back you want me to go! While the combined roles of Teacher and Artistic Director bring out the best in me, Vibrance: Centre for Voice and Movement and Burning Bones Physical Theatre also represent the best ways I have to bring my skills, passion, and experience to serve my community. This is a cosmic joke because I had been encouraged to teach and start my own theatre company more than ten years prior to me doing so. Before moving to Atlanta, I lived and worked in Australia and Canada as an actor, dancer, emcee, producer, dramaturge, writer, and occupational therapist. I had completed several teacher qualifications in voice and acting but initially had resisted teaching. Then I started working as an occupational therapist with children with cerebral palsy. As part of that job, I co-designed a pilot project teaching modified circus and performance skills, which integrated my experience as a performer with my newer therapy expertise and I found a glimpse of how I could bring my two worlds together in ways that are meaningful.

I subsequently moved back to Vancouver and realized that I wanted to use voice, movement, and performance skills to empower clients of all ages in the same way I had been empowered through my work with my first voice and acting teacher, Lee Bolton. I was offered a job teaching voice and speech skills to clients from 5 years to 80 years of age and this job was me at my best. I got to work closely with my employer and learned a lot about running this type of business. I also began to develop a clear sense of my own pedagogy and what further skills I needed to gain in order to serve my clients better.

My marriage required me to relocate to Atlanta. I thought Atlanta would be a similar market compared to Vancouver in that both are major film and television hubs. In addition, there is always school- and adult-aged clients who do not want a career in artistic performance but desire to develop skills in voice, public speaking, and confidence. I began training in speech and performance at the age of nine and it is the single skill that has opened the most doors across several occupations, whether I was taking on the city to advocate for a veteran client, emceeing a performance night, negotiating with a school on behalf of a teenaged client with cerebral palsy and their family, performing a role, or leading a hospital’s chronic pain education group. As a butoh dancer and certified teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® with specialized mental health training, I knew that I had skills that many folx in Atlanta would benefit from. By setting up my own business, Vibrance: Centre for Voice and Movement, I wanted to ensure that I could enact my own pedagogy and curriculum based on solid evidence-based knowledge, an ethical teaching practice, and a passion for meeting individuals where they are and respecting their autonomy. For example, voice pedagogy when I was young was often based on assumptions about which accents were desirable and were not always gender-affirming. As an intimacy choreographer and coordinator, I know have skills that I wish I’d had as a young actor trying to be “easy to work with” while navigating very dangerous rehearsal situations.
Following a few personal tragedies, I decided life was too short and created my theatre company, Burning Bones Physical Theatre, as a branch of Vibrance. Butoh, Organic Intelligence, and Fitzmaurice Voicework® are all based on working with the nervous system and I am interested in how a performer’s nervous system impacts their scene partners’ and the audience’s nervous systems. There is also a particular type of visceral and visual style that I feel compelled to offer while centering actors’ autonomy and agency in theatre-making.

Essentially, my business is founded on equipping folx with skills and ways of creating that I wish I’d possessed much, much earlier in my life.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Being a performer is not been easy at all! There have been times when I have chosen to step away from performing to assess whether I could just leave it behind. Each time, I have gained a new perspective on what it was that drove me away, while affirming that creating and collaborating is nonnegotiable in my life. As a shy and introverted person, I have long been attracted to things that scared me. It began as public speaking and acting, then became physical performance and butoh. After I decided to “quit” performing completely and began my master’s in Occupational Therapy, I started training and performing in burlesque.

I have loved performing in front of an audience since I was very young. My first solo contemporary dance was when I was in Kindergarten at the school’s annual talent show. It didn’t occur to me that no one else my age was performing! I don’t think the organizers knew what to do with me and I had to be escorted from my classroom to the auditorium to perform.

I don’t feel that enough artists talk about their processes. The biggest thing I have learned is to become comfortable with my creative process. The older I get, the more I trust myself. Creativity is not my tool, it’s the other way around. Generally, I read a lot and am inspired by ideas around what constitutes our “enlightened” society (who is it made for?), the contradictions or “messy” places in our psyches. I seem to have a very creative brain where I see connections between things that others do not. I also have synesthesia, which means when one sense is activated, another is activated as well. Numbers have colours and personalities, certain sounds are textures and sensations. Usually when I begin creating, I simply feel compelled by something larger than myself and the only way to release it is to channel it. The process is very intuitive as I begin by listening to my subconscious. I usually feel most compelled by images and sounds, then I turn it into movement and text. Then meaning begins to come through, allowing me to refine and figure out where I have something more to develop or learn. A lot of discomfort and resistance shows up in my body every time I prepare to share my wor with the public and I have learned to put space around those experiences and to appreciate them as part of the internal rollercoaster. Often a certain “flavour” of discomfort is exactly a sign that I am on the right track and working at my edges.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m a triathlete, so if my friend is spending the week with me, they should be prepared to go on a nice long bike ride on the Silver Comet or for a run in Sweetwater State Park. If there is enough water, a swim at Red Top Mountain State Park would be in order, and a nice walk up Kennesaw Mountain. We would have to spend the week trying vegan restaurants such as Cafe Sunflower or grab some great sushi – maybe grab takeout for a picnic at Piedmont Park. I would also be sure to see what shows are on at 7 Stages, see if Kit Modus is performing, or look up what festivals are going on (shout out to the Spring for Spring festival), as well as what burlesque shows are on (such as Syrens of the South or Glitter Goddess Productions). Full disclosure, I have not visited the High Museum of Art yet and it’s high on my list so showing a friend around would give me the perfect excuse. There is so much happening in and around Atlanta at any time, so it’s often a question of ensuring you are hearing what is going on – and getting a good day planner!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Lee Bolton – my first voice and performance teacher and mentor who changed my life.

Jase Wingate – creative collaborator without whom Burning Bones could not exist.

Ben Mulinix – my partner and supporter whose practical skills complement my creative ones, whether he is running front of house, building flats, working with me to enable Burning Bones to pay its bills when Brown Paper Tickets didn’t pay us and keeping Vibrance going during Covid.

Cynthia Barrett – an actor and voice teacher in Atlanta who I adore. She has long been a tremendous supporter and mentor.

Catherine Fitzmaurice, Cynthia Bassham, Micha Espinosa, Adi Cabral, Heidi Dippold, Jeremy Sartore, Julie Foh, Su-Feh Lee, Trems 16, and the rest of the KTS and Fitzmaurice Voicework® teacher community who changed my life, made me an immeasurably better teacher, and continue to make me better.

Benjamin Mathes and his book You, The Career for giving me a kick in the butt when I need one and always saying exactly what I need to hear.

Website: https://frankiemulinix.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vibrance

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frances-mulinix-5470aa41/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VibranceCentre

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn02lSFE14n7c0kUTmPjWIQ

Other: https://www.instagram.com/burningbonesphysicaltheatre/ https://www.facebook.com/burningbonestheatre

Image Credits
Personal photo image credit is Craig Baurley. Stills on the previous page: the picture of long tutus: Frankie Mulinix and Jase Wingate – still from Wandering Uterus rehearsal The image with a silhouette dancer: Jordyn King and Caroline Avery Granger – still from Too Far for Comfort The image of two men with arms raised: Darren O’Brien and Omar Mughal – image from One for the Road, image by Jason Vail the image of several people standing: image taken during a voice, movement and performance class taught by Frankie Mulinix (all students signed a photo release)