Grinder's Grumblings

It's taken me a couple of days longer than it should have to write this post - I had intended to post this Sunday night, but the stifling heat had other plans, making things like sleeping, eating, and thinking in complete sentences very difficult. Today the heat finally broke, and with the cooler temperatures my ability to be productive, however tenous, has returned once again.   Regular readers of this blog will recall that when I started this year's journey we were in yet another lockdown. I hated those days, as I'm sure many of you did too, but the one thing I had too look forward to, naively so or not, was the chance to get back to making some theatre this summer.  Preparing for an event that you aren't sure is going to go ahead has become a soul-destroying leap of faith for people in our industry, but this summer many things that were planned to happen actually happened, and you could almost hear the sigh of relief coming from producers as patrons arrived. Yes, the...

It's been a lonely couple of weeks in the rehearsal hall since the end of my last play. Devoid of actors, sets, etc, I've been playing to the barn cats (who are the most fickle of critics) as I try to do something I've never done before. It's been an interesting process to say the least, not simply due to being alone in what is usually a collaborative space. This show is all about digging up bones.  I knew this might happen when I wrote this play. For all my ability to look back now and laugh at all of the stupid things that I've done over the years, and laugh at myself about all the things that I thought were so important, it has still meant disturbing a lot of things that were buried in my past: shamings, regrets, missed opportunities, and times when I simply failed at life. And it's not just the stuff that's in the play that tortures my mind - there's some doozies that actually didn't make the cut, things that will only ever come out in the "...