realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation & presentation
PERFORMING
Gorelov performs in New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker. December, 1992.
Ever since I was a young girl, I knew I wanted to perform. I loved being on stage. I loved the energy from the audience, and the way the lights made me come alive. Throughout my childhood, I danced with the New York City Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera House and learned the value of rehearsal, hard work, and dedication to my craft.
The training that I had at these world-renowned establishments provided me with an incredible foundation for a life in the arts. I am grateful for these experiences and credit my mother for driving me to and from NYC (from NJ) each and every afternoon until I was 14 years old.
For many years after these ballet experiences, I continued to learn, study, and practice my craft. I transitioned to acting (after a serious knee injury) and discovered theatre was my true calling. I now have a strong background and training in acting, directing, Shakespeare, and stage combat. I studied with the British American Drama Academy in London and have a BA in acting and drama from Tufts University. Some favorite stage roles included Marquise de Merteuil from Dangerous Liasions, the Angel in Angels in America, and Squeaky Fromme im Assassins. I have performed in several off-Broadway productions, many independent films, and a few national commercials (such as Papa John’s Pizza and Rock the Vote). In 2005, I had the title role in a feature film, Pop Star, PI, which won an award in the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival and co-starred Batman's Adam West, with music by Davy Jones. (see trailer and pictures).
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In 2007, I came down with an illness that lead me to believe my acting career would be over. I put all my energy into finding a way to continue my passion for the arts in a different form. A friend told me about the MA program in Ed Theatre in NYU in 2008, and the rest, as they say, is history. I became a student, a teacher, a director, and then a student again. And although I carried great fondness and respect for my days as an actor, I assumed those days were behind me. I was drawn to directing, to researching, to teaching, and to writing. Acting would always be part of who I was, but in the past tense. Although I studied acting at NYU in the MA program and performed scenes in Sarita by Maria Irene Fornes, and Isabella in Measure for Measure, it wasn't until I took Joe Salvatore's Ethnoactor class in 2018 that my passion was reignited! It felt as if I had discovered a way to combine the best facets of the arts-- acting, directing, writing, and research into one. Hence my love for Verbatim Performance was born.
Selected Performance Credits:
Pop Star, PI, Sharkey Productions, New York City
Hopscotch, The Red Room, New York City
Vote 4 Something, MTV Productions
Law & Order SVU, NBC
Rescue Me, Sony Pictures Television
The Apprentice, Season 3, NBC
Big in ’04, VH1 Productions
Philip Block’s Emmy Fashions, PAX Network
The Nutcracker Movie, Warner Bros
The Real Dick, The Sensitive Burglar, My One Wish, Independent Film
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Balch Arena Theatre
Assassins, Balch Arena Theatre
Rumors, Balch Arena Theatre
The Wizard of Oz, Balch Arena Theatre
Angels in America, Balch Arena Theatre
The Bakkhai of Euripides, Balch Arena Theatre
Much Ado About Nothing, The Oval House, Londo
VERBATIM PERFORMANCE
In 2018, I took Joe Salvatore's Ethnoactor class and learned some interesting skills regarding acting. I learned the importance of observation and truly listening. I learned as Anna Deaveare Smith says, "If you say a word often enough it becomes you."
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One of our tasks was to choose a real life artifact and learn it verbatim, word for word, utterance for utterance. Since he encouraged us to choose a person whom we could play across identity (race, gender, political affiliation, age, etc.) I decided to investigate and perform the cult leader, David Koresh. I had a holistic idea of David Koresh as a leader and understood the basic facts about the Waco incident, but I didn’t know who he was as a person under the bizarre, cult-leader surface. This particular artifact is intriguing to study because it was a video message taped by Koresh himself to send to the FBI while the Mount Carmel Center was under attack. This religious center of the Branch Davidians was under siege for 51 days, and in that time the members were not allowed to leave the compound. It is obvious in this video that Koresh is injured—he is leaning against the wall, bleeding from his side, and seems to be in pain. He wants the FBI to withdraw but is staying firm about his plans to defend himself and his family and use his firearms that he has been stock piling.
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David Koresh was such an interesting and mysterious human, and I didn’t know what I would find out after extensive investigation. That's the beauty of Verbatim performance-- it has the power to disrupt our perceptions by turning what we know on its head. Like Brecht’s Epic Theatre, the goal of ethnotheatre is to make the ordinary appear peculiar, the familiar seem striking, and the immediate feel unexpected to pull the audience out of their perceptual comfort zones. My discoveries here are two-fold. First, David Koresh was a powerful leader. He was charismatic and magnetic. People followed him even into the depths of despair and hunger and fear. He was handsome and authentic. He truly believed he was God and was so confident in his message, he was able to convince his followers to abandon everything and follow him blindly.
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Secondly, changing the character to a female, Dana, shed some light on his love for his family and gave me the tools to drop into him as a person. If we had more time, I would have been curious to play a bit more with the sexuality aspect of Koresh as a woman. What would it be like to have 70+ followers be drawn to your message and desire you sexually? What type of power would that elicit? It’s ok for a man to sleep with many women (especially if he’s God), but if a woman does it, is she respected and honored or treated as a slut? I’m curious how this would have played out and am interested in re-imagining some of his sermons as a woman, including feminine sexual energy. Investigating and portraying David Koresh was an eye opening and exciting first experience into the world of verbatim theatre. This project was particularly noteworthy because it opened my mind to the benefits of Verbatim Theatre and how and why it will become the central idea in my future work.
