Grinder's Grumblings

A rehearsal shot from Stacey for 5 Women Wearing the Same Dress, July 16th - 18th at the Belwood Hall. Cast List (in order of appearance): Frances - Alexena Whiting Meredith - Allison Espina Trisha - Alyssa Wright Georgeanne - Kelly Taylor Mindy - Ashley Goldsmith Tripp - Aaron Wright

I often wonder what reasons people have for getting involved with theatre in general, and Grinder Productions in particular. There must be countless stories behind everyone's reason why they choose to get involved in a play. While I think it's rude to pry and outright ask people what has drove them to leave behind the TV, the computer, the comforts of home and the people they love in order to come to rehearsal I have managed to pick up a few comments and some general trends over the years: Responses can include the "I just need to get out of the house" to "I need to get the kids up off the couch and out of the house" to other, more cerebral meanings. For some people, I'm afraid, the only reason they are coming out is because they have bought into the fantasy of fame and fortune that has somehow become attached to life in the entertainment industry. These are the people we commonly refer to as the ones with the stars in their eyes, who see getting ons...

I’ve been talking a lot this week about all the shows we have coming up at Grinder, and while I haven’t gotten to all of them yet I have put a few of them out there for you to start thinking about. But my flurry of show announcements hasn’t been by design,- it’s been more about catching up than anything else. I have been hopelessly behind these past few weeks, - in fact I’ve been behind schedule for quite a few of the past weeks now. Some people just say that I’ve got too much on my plate, and a few just call me lazy. Personally, I’m not too sure exactly what has put me behind (can't help but think the wedding had something to do with it) but whatever the case I'm determined to keep up the spectacular progress I've made since getting back from the honeymoon and get bak on track once and for all. I’m determined to rectify this situation, and fast. It’s costing me time and money, and there’s no good coming from it. I don’t ever want to fall this far behind again. No ma...

The final show announcement for this week is all about Vaudeville, our fourth and final show in the Ennotville Summer season. Vaudeville isn’t an original show but rather an anthology of all the best and brightest from the Golden Age of popular entertainment in North America. Before television, before radio, but after the whole continent was made easily accessible by railway, there was vaudeville. It was popular entertainment, of course, and no attempt was ever made to pass it off as high art (though the touring “star system” that formed the high art of the day was itself of highly questionable aesthetic value). Shows were a medley of singing, dancing, stand-up, sketches and novelty acts, all intended to make the audience laugh. There was plenty of room for individual talents to shine, and since the focus was purely on making a profit shows were thrust onto the stage with little or no rehearsal time, and the performers had to generate a fair amount of their performance on the spur o...

The cavalcade of show announcements continues with news about the 3rd show in our Ennotivlle Season, Commedia! This play is a free re-telling of a classic scenario of the Commedia D’ell Arte, an Italian form of Improv-based entertainment that was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is still performed today by various companies around the world. All Commedia D’ell Arte scenes are built around stock characters – usually heroic-but-foolish heroes, innocent virgins, dirty old men, bumbling fathers, etc. Many of the comedic “tropes” that form the basis for today’s TV sitcoms were first codified in the Commedia, from the “life lessons” of The Cosby Show to the buffoonery of Homer Simpson and the “show about nothing” devices of Seinfeld. So you might think that this play will be about strange places and far-out people, but it will actually have a lot in common with today. If you like comedy this is definitely the show for you. Commedia opens July 23rd and runs to August 8th. Call ...

One of the most talked about shows this season has been our first Belwood show, 5 Women Wearing the Same Dress. The title alone has sparked a lot of conversations in theatre lobbies, over dinner tables and in casual talk over the winter and spring. But the play is more than just a quirky one-line gag – it’s something much more. I don’t want to give too much away about this play – keeping people guessing about the times and places when five women would be caught dead wearing the exact same dress is half the fun. But the other half is what’s taking shape in rehearsals, and on that front I can let you in on just a few of this show’s secrets. The show is being directed by Stacey Ingham, whom some of you may remember from last year’s sleeper hit at the Ennotville Library, First Kisses. Last year marked Stacey’s directorial debut, and in the off-season she’s been studying theatre arts at Sheridan college in Toronto, so for her second season she has come equipped with a wealth of new kno...

I’m pleased to report that after much soul-searching, hand-wringing and other consternations I have finally found a work-able forumla for our second show of the Ennotville summer season, William Rowley’s the Birth of Merlin. The Birth of Merlin is a Jacobean play, erroneously (or purposefully) attributed to William Shakespeare, though even a cursory examination of the text is enough to dispel his hand in the authorship. It concerns several facets of the Arthurian legend – the battles between the English and the Welsh, the trials of Uther Pendragon, and of course Merlin. It takes a fanciful turn in imagining Merlin’s Birth as a fully-grown man, fathered by the devil himself and brought into the world by one “Joan Go t’oot” a lovely but somewhat gullible lass with a clown for a brother. As I said, it’s not Shakespeare. Rowley’s command of the English language, while potent enough, pales next to the richness and daring of The Bard. And the plot relies more on mysticism and enchanted d...

And we're back! Just a brief note today to let everyone know that we're back from a week of fun in the sun and some much needed R&R. After a very, very hectic and stressful period leading up to the wedding it took all that we had to make it to the airport on Sunday morning - and our contribution to that entailed walking out the door and into the Red Car. I'll spare you all the blog postings that were running through my head the week we were away. Had it gotten online then (and I had to force myself not to) you would have been subjected to a freewheeling travel narrative about the minutiae of life cruisin' on a soggy boat, loaded up with crazy people. Fortunately my cooler head continually prevailed as the week went on, and now most of the drivel has passed me by. Now that we've returned it has become apparent just how badly we needed to get away. Gone is the paralysis and overwhelment that punctuated the last few months for me, and while the days and weeks ...

Just a reminder that our Summer season kicks off tonight! Click here for tickets.

I'm now just under a week away from what I'm sure will be the happiest day of my life so far. This Saturday the world's greatest girlfriend and I will be tying the knot in a small, intimate ceremony that seems to have attracted a lot of attention and well-wishers. We're both really looking forward to the big day, and while we're certainly a little bit nervous we know in our hearts that as impossible as it may seem, this is something that was always meant to be. So while our wedding, honeymoon and subsequent life together will usher in a time of great happiness, getting there is proving to be a bit more of a pain, and I'm not talking about the actual wedding plans, which thanks to Jules' superior management skills are progressing just fine. The pain I'm talking about comes from that pesky mistress, Grinder Productions. She isn't taking too kindly to me putting her into second place forever, and she's determined to make my life a living hell u...