25/07/15
Portfolio: Lisa Gornick
“I
get breathless thinking about pens – excited, desperate to have them nearby,”
says filmmaker and actor Lisa Gornick, who is currently performing in a live
drawing show as part of the Edinburgh Fringe. “My first language feels like
drawing. I still have this instinctive way of just feeling my way through –
making mistakes, being OK with them. Drawing is always there for me. It’s a
place to free up my head. To let my emotion, my feeling come out. To surprise
and sometimes delight myself. It helps to relax me and thrill me.”
Gornick
studied history at Edinburgh University and was a member of a student theatre
group, taking part in a fringe show each summer. After graduating, she became a
stand up comic with the Gilded Balloon, so she says it feels like a return,
working with them again for their 30th anniversary and reviving a
performance about her Russian roots.
Her performance tells the story of Grandma Ray, a Jewish,
East Ender in the 1920s. She lived as a straight, married woman but, as the
story unfolds, her inner lesbian is revealed.
“Drawing live is exciting,” says Gornick. “It’s always different.
You sense the audience with you on the page. I’m also talking through the
performance, which is a bit like juggling.”
Lisa Gornick’s two
feature films Do I Love You? and Tick
Tock Lullaby have won awards and are
distributed worldwide. She is currently in post-production for her third
feature, The Book of Gabrielle, a
cross-platform production.
Lisa Gornick’s Live Drawing Show
Balcony Room at the Gilded Balloon
Edinburgh Fringe 2015
5-31 August 2015
Show time: 13:30-14:30
To see this portfolio in full and enjoy Lisa’s drawings, please see the August 2015 print issue of DIVA magazine