Grinder's Grumblings

It's been another few busy days here at the theatre. I've been teching for St. John's Kilmarnock School, who are producing Carold Shield's "Departures and Arrivals" this week. They are some good kids, and from what I've seen it should be a good show. Over at The Hollow last night was our first time without scripts, and everyone did pretty well with that. Sure, there were some hiccups, but no disasters, and that's always a good thing. Still, we have a long ways to go on this production, and the next few rehearsals will really tell the tale. I'm happy to report, though, that I did see a play starting to emerge last night, and that is exactly what I was hoping for at this point. We're painting the set this weekend, and starting to pull in the props and costume people as well, so it's starting to look very much like a show on that front. By the end of the week I'll have some more to tell you about the shows that will form our weekend ...

We passed a bit of a milestone with last night's rehearsal for "The Hollow." Not counting tech week we're halfway through the rehearsal process for this show. I mentioned that fact to an actor, and she got very nervous. Only four more weeks to pull together lines, blocking and character. Personally, I'm always quite happy, as an actor or a director, the closer we get to opening night. It's the producer in me that gets progressively more stressed out as time runs out and things still aren't ready, but usually I'm much more comfortable with how things are coming on the acting front. Really, by the time you get to tech week the only way an actor can really cause Armaggeddon is if they don't know their lines, and while this is a constant fear on any production, I will go out on a limb and suggest that it won't be a problem on the The Hollow. With a cast of twelve enthusiastic men and women the parts are reasonably evenly divided, so that makes...

I had a few minutes free yesterday afternoon so I decided to take a walk around the technical areas of the Fergus Grand Theatre. I know that may sound like an odd thing to do for kicks, but there was meaning to my madness: I wanted to come up with a bit of a "to-do" list: repairs, maintenance, clean-ups, and minor purchases, things that need to be done to make shows run smoother and make life easier for the various groups that use the building. It used to be that I was in that building seven days a week, sometimes for as many as 100 hours a week, "back in the day." But now, with the daily demands of running my own company taking up so much of my time, it's a rarity if I get into the theatre more than three or four times a month, and usually only then to drop something off or for a meeting, so I never get much beyond the lobby. However, the "Grand Old Gal" is still very dear to me. It's the building where I learned to make theatre, and where I le...

It may be cold outside - okay, it is cold outside - very cold - but the wheels are already starting to turn on our summer season preparations. First and foremost, we have selected the seven shows that we will be producing this season. As long as the royalties people don't rain on the parade then we shouldn't have a problem getting any of these shows from the page to the stage. The Ennotville Library has been getting some repairs done this winter - look for new windows, draperies and other improvements this summer. We have begun to assemble the promotional materials that will form the backbone of our summer marketing campaign. We have a "Groups and Tours" kit that we will distribute to bus tour operators, senior's centres and many, many other locations and organizations in the next few weeks. Our season brochure is in the final stages of development as well, and this will be what we will use to conduct our season subscription campaign. And finally, we are putti...

If there's one thing that there's way too much of on the web it's political commentary. The 2008 US presidential election alone is making a great case for a return to stone-age grassroots political activism. So far I've avoided wading into the political arena on this blog - there's enough of that out there, and I don't want anyone to think for a second that Grinder Productions caters to the whims of one political ideology more than the other - conservative or liberal, left of right, all are welcome at this company - that's they way it has always been and the way it always will be as long as I have some say in the matter. I've even avoided the temptation to comment on the blood-sport municipal politics in Centre Wellington. There's enough hot-heads hurling f-bombs at our counselors and ill-considered letters to the editor already. However, as I was on the top of a ladder yesterday fixing some rigging at the theatre as the rain from the leaking roof ...

Not much time for a post today, as tomorrow we're into set construction for The Hollow. It's going to be a long, cold day, and by the end of it I will no doubt be stiff and sore - I haven't built a set in a while, so the muscles aren't quite where they should be right now. Despite the aches and pains, though, I do enjoy building sets for shows. It's one of the real "crafts" of technical theatre, one of many in fact, but one that I have always admired. I've been fortunate enough to work with some true master carpenters over the years - people who have taught me a lot about how a set should come together. And while I don't profess to have the same level of skill as some of these people I always try and take a little bit of their wisdom with me as I head into a build, and it has gotten me through many a rough patch. On Monday I may have more to say on how the build went, and I think that in future postings I'll talk more about the "craft...

Happy Valentine's Day from Grinder Productions! One of my girlfriend's favourite songs is Brooks and Dunn's Red Dirt Road . A wonderful story about coming of age in the bible-belt and beyond. It's a very uplifting tune, about the power of one's roots, but also about how you can use the strength and comfort of those roots to take you anywhere and acheive your dreams. The entire Red Dirt Road album is autobiographical in nature, ( here's a great bit of bio on B&D and this album ) and while it's steeped in the language and experiences of the American South it's easy to draw parallels between the experiences of two singers growing up and our little theatre company coming of age. In the case of the Ennotville Library it does sit on a more-or-less Red Dirt Road (it is where the blacktop ends), and it has been there that many of Grinder's most telling moments as a company have transpired. Slowly but surely a core of people are gathering, people for whom...

You have to have a thick skin to last very long in the theatre business. You can take a lot of flak, be it justified or not, and many a young technician has run screaming for the cushy confines of a lifetime in the cubicle after having their self esteem ripped up, trampled on, ground up and fed to the theatre's cat for dinner by the angry men and women who are still all too often the ones in charge of a production. Fortunately, though, if you can survive this experience (or are lucky enough, as I was, to have a reasonably pleasant introduction to theatre) you can begin to take the monsters with a grain of salt, and learn to live with their behaviour. Still, that thick skin comes in handy. But it can also be a barrier. Besides being able to deflect criticism, a thick skin also makes it harder to accept praise, especially when in the past that praise has been criticism in disguise. Now a little praise is, of course, essential to ensuring long-term well-being. It's not somet...

Pierre Trudeau once made this now famous (and oft-bastardized) quote about Canadian life as next door neighbour (sic) to the USA: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” The reason I mention this trivial, ironic sidebar to Canadian history is that it could just as easily be applied to our situation here at Grinder Productions, or even more generally to the entire theatre community in Centre Wellington. We are the ones sleeping with the elephant - and that elephant is Drayton Entertainment. For any of you who have been living under a rock for the past ten years Drayton Entertainment is one of the biggest success stories in Canadian Theatre. The company started off in the tiny village of Drayton and has now grown to six venues in 4 communities, with an annual attendance averaging 220,000 patrons. Just this past week it was announced th...

It's been said that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans, and the same is certainly true when it comes to a life in theatre. While it's not that anything monumental happened last week that caused me to go a whole seven days without a posting (though I was busy with the usual multitude of mundane tasks for which this blog serves as a welcome distraction), it's just that life, or something like it, got in the way of all. Now perhaps it's a good thing; I've learned over the years to regard with suspicion decisions that have been made in haste, as quite often those hasty decisions are followed by sharper, more considered ones, that are much more appropriate to the nature of the issues at hand. Still, my apologies for my tardiness. It's very, very cold out here in Grinder country today. Very cold. January, February and March have to be the three worst months to try and make theatre in this country. It's hard to get people out to see...

Good Tuesday morning everyone! I'd like to talk to you today about another little "side project" at Grinder Productions. As you may know, I've written a few plays over the years. Some of you may have even seen these creations, or heaven forbid, actually had to act in one! For those of you who haven't had the experience of attending one of my plays, don't despair. Thanks to the folks at lulu.com, Grinder Productions is now in the publishing business! If you go to my storefront at lulu you'll get to preview the scripts of such past Grinder shows like Home Farm , Muzzle Blast , and All My Sins Remembered , as well as my indispensible manual for producing plays, Tech Theatre 101. All are available for sale, either in print or as a download. I encourage the downloading option - it's more environmentally friendly, and, ironically, it's both cheaper for you and more lucrative for me, as lulu.com includes it's printing costs and commission in ever...

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Well here I am, back after a few more days off than I would have liked (an "extra-long" weekend, if you like - the weather here in Centre Wellington has been pretty treacherous and getting around was a bit difficult), and I've got lots of new information to share with you about the continuing re-birth of Grinder Productions. First up, the newsletter is back. Here it is for any of you who aren't yet on the e-mail list (and why aren't you? - Email me at grinder@grinderproductions.org and I'll get you on it!) I've updated the format of the newsletter, hopefully making it a bit easier to read, and as always, I've tried to make it as informative as as I possibly can. A lot of the information overlaps between the blog and the newsletter, but since you can't really put the blog on your refridgerator (at least not yet) I'm going to keep the newsletter going for the time being. I know that some of you print off the newsletter and place it on brochure r...