Grinder's Grumblings

Here is the February Newsletter, everyone. Enjoy!

The first-ever "Beat the Winter Blahs Comedy and Variety Cavalcade" starts tonight and runs for four shows at the Fergus Grand Theatre. Call 519-787-1981 for tickets, or get them at the door. Come on out and support the best, brightest and newest members of the Grinder company, and chase away those winter blues!

I'm happy to report that rehearsals for our next show at the Elora Centre for the Arts, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, are now underway. With a large cast and a small space we're going to have to come up with some very creative staging for this one... If you've never had a chance to see a Shakespearean play before, or you have seen a play but been totalled baffled, then "The Dream" is the perfect cure for you. It is one of Shakespeare's most-loved, most popular plays (and for the most-produced playwright in history, that's saying something about the play's lasting-power). It's a love story, a laugh-out-loud farce and a fantastic journey to fairyland all rolled into one. When I first read the text I was very young, no more than 13 or 14 years old, yet I had no problem understanding what was going on. The language of Shakespeare's plays may look and sound a bit different than our own, but it's still English, and ...

Just wanted to let everyone know that there's a public meeting this Thursday at 6:30pm at the Centre Wellington Sportsplex in Fergus regarding the draft Parks, Recreation and Culture Master Plan for the municipality. Why should you care? Because a significant element in the Master Plan is culture in general, and the Fergus Grand Theatre in particular. The plan is based on input from the community, facilities users, township staff, and other stakeholders, and it calls for substantial investment from the municipality for "capacity building" - be it new facilities, upgrades and renovations to existing facilities or simply equipping facilities and groups with the tools they need to make what they do easier, cheaper, and more enjoyable for all involved. The last time one of these master plans were developed one of the major results that came out of it was the Sportsplex itself. In that report, the cultural scene received a paragraph's worth of treatment. This time aroun...

With a crop of fresh faces now initiated into the company (many thanks to all who came out and enjoyed our reading of Euripides "The Cyclops" this past weekend) it's time to look ahead to the many exciting projects that we have coming this winter and spring at Grinder Productions. January: Beat the Winter Blahs - preparations for our comedy and variety cavalcade this weekend are coming along well. We still have some room for more performers, and it's only a one-performance commitment, so if you have some talent you'd like to share with the world this is your chance! This show will also be an opportunity to showcase the new members of Grinder Productions, as well as a few old faces who are returning to give us as much diversity in these performances as we possibly can. This is raw talent at its best, and I'm confident that the faces you'll see for the first time at this show will go on to become our company's future stars. February: No performances (...

This weekend at the Elora Centre for the Arts we will be presenting a staged reading of Euripides' The Cyclops, an ancient Greek Satyr play. The cast and chorus will feature some of the people who have auditioned for Grinder Productions recently, and for many of them it will be the first time they have ever been onstage. Come on out and support them in their theatrical debuts! Friday, January 23rd at 8pm Saturday, January 24th at2pm and 8pm

The Township of Centre Wellington has just recieved a draft report of the Parks, Recreation and Culture Master Plan. This document is available on the township's website here and contains a lot of important information about the direction the community has suggested we take regarding the growth and development of parks, arenas, community halls, the senior's centre, the Fergus Grand Theatre and other facilities. A bit long-winded, but definitely worth a read.

Well, here it is, Wednesday afternoon, and I still haven't blogged this week! Sorry for the silence, everyone, but I've been digging out from under a massive pile of casting offers. Our auditions this past Saturday went very well. Thank-you to all those who came out. It was just the injection of new, raw talent that the company needed, and on a personal level it has really lifted my spirits watching all these new talents coming to light over the past few days. These are heady times if you're a newbie. Your head may be filled with excitement, or doubt or even fear, but at the same time you can't wait to get started on that first show. It's a big deal. Of course, the elation won't last forever for everyone. I'm already getting rejection replies, people realizing they suddenly did have some conflict they forgot to write on the schedule, etc. But I know that and I'm used to that, and I don't have a problem with it. If you're a regular Grinder mem...

In case you missed it the first million times, we have auditiosn coming up this Saturday! I apologize if I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but I can't stress enough how vital it is for the company to constantly be encouraging and nurturing new talents with our company. If you're sitting on the fence and thinking about it don't delay, call us today! I want to see as many old and new faces as possible on Saturday. We have so much coming up, everyone will have more than one chance to be involved with us in shows in Fergus and Elora between now and June 2009. We need performers of all ages, types and genders - there's literally something for everyone to do. If you love to perform, this is your chance to shine. Please feel free to pass this information along to anyone you know! Often the people whom we would never think of as being interested are the ones who knock our socks off in the auditions. As I said, age, gender, previous acting experience, it ...

Just a quick posting today - audition spaces still available! Lots of room left for the kids and teens, especially, and plenty of chances to get them onstage between now and June, so feel free to let the youngsters in your life know they can be on stage with Grinder Productions! As always, please call 519-780-7593 or e-mail grinder@grinderproductions.org to book an audition.

After the formatting disaster last time (I'm sure you can put a table into blogger, but I don't speak HTML), I'll simply tell you that we've still got plenty of spaces left for the child, teen and adult auditions for the Regular Grinder shows. The Hopeless Romantics spaces are filling up rather quickly, so if you are interested exclusively in those shows you had best let me know soon. If it does fill up completely, however, there's no need to panic - I will simply have to take you in the regular audtions and note that you're interested in HRP as well. However, the regular auditions represent a great opportunity to get someone new involved with the company. We thrive on new people bringing in new talents and perspectives, so the more the merrier! Young or old, we'll find a way to get everyone involved. Feel free to pass the information about these auditions along to your family, friends, neighbours, co-workers, classmates, anyone and everyone that might ...

Starting in January, I will be pleased to offer one-on-one acting lessons to anyone who is interested, either on a “one-time” basis, or as part of a multi-week program. Lessons can be tailored to anyone ages 8 through adult, and students will have plenty of opportunities to tailor lessons to their particular needs, be it preparing an audition piece, building characters, voice, movement, scene study, or simply learning more about the craft of acting. All lessons will be $30 per hour, with both daytime, after school and evening timeslots available. Call 519-780-7593 or e-mail grinder@grinderproductions.org to for more information or to book. Listed at the bottom of this post is the auditions availability chart. I'll publish this often between now and the 17th so that you can see how much space is still left. If you're thinking about auditioning but not sure please jump on in soon - I don't want to leave anyone out! Auditions Availability Chart Date: Friday, January 9th, ...

Have you been dumped? Sure you have. It was likely an embarrassing, painful experience at the time, right? But now, when you think about it, it seems kind of silly. Grinder Productions wants to hear your worst “dating disaster” stories. It could be a first date that went horribly wrong, an ill-considered birthday gift (seriously guys – she doesn’t want power tools!), or any other event in a past relationship that is too outrageous to believe. Send us a written submission of 500 words or less describing your disaster. We’re not going to check your facts here, so as long as you leave the names out of it, feel free to expand, exaggerate and get creative – we want your story to be funny and entertaining – not necessarily true! Send your submissions to grinder@grinderproductions.org. Ten finalists will be chosen from the submissions, and asked to read their stories live onstage in February, where the audience will vote for the “dating disaster of the year.” And you thought your ex was ...

Happy New Year! At Grinder Productions, many, many things are happening. First and foremost, I have a programming change to tell you about. Our production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, originally scheduled for January 22nd - 24th at the Elora Centre for the Arts, will now take place March 14th - 16th. In its place will be a production of The Cyclops, a "Satyr play" by Euripides. An ancient form of Greek drama, the Satyr play was written as comic relief to come at the end of the trilogy of tragic plays that made up a day of Athenian playgoing. There are only two surviving extant Satyr plays (though we know there were many more), and this one seems to be the better preserved of the two. I've been wanting to bring a small sampling of ancient Greek theatre to Centre Wellington for some time now, and I think that this production will be an excellent opportunity to do just that. And where am I going to find a chorus of Satyrs? Read on... Also...

Happy New Year from Grinder Productions! It's great to be here, on this, the first dawn of 2009. As always, I'm really looking forward to the year ahead, but this year it's for different reasons than I've had in the past. This is the first New Year's I have any sadness about leaving the old year behind. While 2008 certainly had its ups and downs (right to the bitter end!) it also wound up being the first year where the personal and professional successes finally out-paced the personal and professional failures. We had, on balance, a good year, both on and off the stage. To have reached the point where it's possible to say even that much is a quite remarkable, at least to me. So for once I'm not overly eager to simply forget the past year. At the same time, though, I am very eagerly looking forward to the challenges of 2009. Some things won't change - there will still be too much to do, not enough time/money/people to do it, and I know that there will...