Happy Trails

Will this bitter cold never end? 

I have to confess that I'm not a big fan of winter. I really don't mind the cold and snow, until I'm knee-deep in it, trying to get my truck out of a snowbank during an extreme cold weather alert, after a long and exhausting day in the cold, and right before I desperately need a good night's sleep in order to get an early start on another long and exhausting day in the cold... but I digress. 

Another month in and I still can't announce the third project in my Grinder 2022 season, but I promise that I will, as soon as I can. I've been working on the script for it little by little in my spare time, but it still needs some further rewrites before it's ready for to see the light of day, so maybe the enforced waiting to reveal it is actually a good thing. 

For the plays that I have announced preparations are coming along well - prompt script is printed and bound, rehearsal schedules have been made (which are harder to make than you'd think, when you're dealing with five plays of varying lengths), and I've begun making director's notes and doing research in order to prepare for rehearsals. Now you might think it odd that I would need to do things like make director's notes or do research for my own plays, and to be honest it's a step I've never taken before, but once I got into it I quickly realized that I should have been doing this all along. Even when you're the playwright simply taking a look at your script through a director's lens reveals all sorts of new questions, things that I hadn't thought of, that I now want to know more about. I've got a clear plan in place for what I'd like to do in order prepare for each particular rehearsal on my schedule, and I'm going to need to fill in some very specific gaps in my knowledge in order to do so. I'm not getting as much time as I'd like to do this, but there's still time, and at least I have a plan. 

Next up: casting. I'll have more to say about that soon. 

On the non-Grinder front I am pleased to report that I've broken out of my post-Christmas writing lull. I've signed up for something called the Literal Challenge: 28 Plays Later. The idea is that every day in February they give you a writing prompt, and you have to write a complete play based on that prompt, and submit it within 36 hours. Since it's based in the UK the timing isn't great for me - I get the prompts at 5pm each day, and the only time I really have to write is in the evenings, so I tend to dash off something between 7pm and 9pm and submit it right away, so the plays I'm sending in aren't very long and they aren't very good. Nevertheless, it is making me write every day, and I'm finding the challenge easy to complete, even when I don't like the prompt (ever tried to write a play about Dolly Parton?).  Hopefully when this is all over I'll have 28 plays, none of which will ever see the light of day, and some slightly sharper playwriting skills.

Otherwise, that's about all I've been able to accomplish this winter - the shop is too cold to work in right now, and with the pandemic restrictions dragging on it's been a very slow start to the year. Fortunately warmer weather is in the forecast, with any luck I'll be tapping the maple trees in another week or so, and back in the shop, finishing off my new Front-of-House display board. Very soon the age of the public health order will be coming to an end, or so we hope. The theatre is slowly coming back to life, and along with it so much of what makes me who I am. I know we still have a long road ahead of us, but I'm happy to be finally getting started on the journey on that road, and grateful for the chance to walk down it once again.

Happy trails.