Improving the How

It's been almost a month since we brought the curtain down on our summer season at the Ennotville Library, and I'm only now just getting a chance to write about it (and even this one is going to have to be a quickie). After a whirlwind year of playing catch-up in my non-Grinder life I'm now, finally, no longer playing catch-up, but actually doing some badly-needed catching up. 

On the whole I'm very pleased with how things went this summer. Did they go according to plan? Of course not! But they did go, and we put on two weeks of shows, including a week of all-female works. We also raised some money for the Library's new HVAC system, which I'm pleased to report has now been installed and is doing what it was intended to do. Those are two really big boxes checked for me. 

But of course, as Stanislavsky purportedly said "contentment is the enemy of the artist," and for all the success we had this past season I want to build on that success, and do even better next year. Better doesn't necessarily mean more shows, more patrons, or anything else like that. I'm past the point in my life where bigger is better, and now I'm more interested in the "how" than the "how much" when it comes to putting a play on stage. Next year, I want to improve the how, making not more theatre but better theatre, and making it in a better way.

So what is that going to look like? I'm not sure yet, to be honest, though I do have some ideas. One idea, and one that I'm going to be working on for the balance of 2023, is seeing if I can organize workshops of some of my plays. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a workshop can mean a lot of different things, but basically it's a bunch of actors (and sometimes a director) getting together with a playwright, reading one of their scripts, and then providing some structured feedback on it. Some workshops are strictly table-based, while others get the play up on their feet, and some even conclude with a small staged reading. 

I did a few workshops when I was just starting out as a playwright, but I haven't really done one for a while now, but if I want to improve the how then one of the best places to start is with my scripts, so I think this is a worthwhile goal to occupy my fleeting free time over the next few months, keeping in mind my usual deadline of New Year's Day to announce my 2024 season. 

Watch this space for more upates soon!