Artist Biography
Katherine Grocela is majoring in Performing Arts with a minor in Dance at Endicott College. Born and raised in the Boston area, Katherine spent her early years dancing with the Boston Ballet School and the Charles River Ballet Academy. She spent her summers performing on the Regis College stage with Weston Drama Workshop. Her love for the arts influenced her to pursue the crafts at Endicott where she has been a part of the Endicott Chorus, Mainstage Theater, and Dance Ensemble during her four years at Endicott. She furthered her education during her internships at Boston Ballet and Walt Disney World. Her most recent performances include Mainstage’s Sweeney Todd, as a featured dancer, her Senior Thesis presentation titled Musical Theater and AI – Is Artificial Intelligence the End of Performing Arts?, and Endicott Chorus’ Pops Concert. Katherine believes humor is one of the most effective human concepts to share ideas and bring people together. Making people smile and immersing the audience in another world is her mission when performing.
For her thesis, she was inspired and influenced by Mel Brooks’ amazing ability to take the worst possible situations, and make them insignificant through humor. Whether it was mocking Nazi soldiers when he served in World War II, or making a musical about the Spanish Inquisition, his humor remains effective in reducing the worst parts of our world to make us better as human beings.
Thesis Abstract
By drawing on this humor and physicality, Katherine sets the mood in which she wants her audience to feel – by drawing people into a new and unfamiliar but better world, she can make them smile, and give them hope at the same time. Katherine loves Golden Age-style musical theater, with campy upbeat musical styles that focus on intricate themes.
As an artist she works hard to develop a message that allows her audience to think critically and develop their own questions, while still respecting them and making them laugh. To further and deepen this connection, she embraces movement through dance to tell more effective stories by adding choreographic movement and voice. While performing, she loves seeing audience members’ faces, hearing their laughter, and experiencing being in the moment within a performance.