Yes, there is a Plan

I knew a man once who said "I start things." He started theatre companies, newsletters, conspiracy theories, and lots of other things. He was the stereotypical "ideas man" - always keen to start something fresh and new, clearing away, tossing out, or simply ignoring who or what had gone before him. 

Years later I met a woman who went shopping for seasonal décor for events like Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas every year. She always bought items new, always at stores that sold only mid-range home décor products. Things like ceramic squirrels peaking out of pumpkins, plush bunnies in flimsy baskets sitting on plastic eggs, Santa Claus decorating a tree in the forest surrounded by frolicking woodland creatures. A because most of the items were rather delicate and flimsy they didn't last long, but even if they did make it through a festive season she threw out most of the items every year to make room for her new purchases. The sum result was a house that stayed full to the brim, just full enough to make it difficult to find a place to sit down, but not quite full enough to tip the scales into a declaration of hoarding.  

I am not either one of those people. I did not understand them then, and I do not understand them now. I don't like to start things that I don't have a plan to finish. I don't like to buy anything without knowing that I'll need it, what I'll use it for, and where I will put it when it has served its purpose. And I wasn't born that way. I've started lots of things that I quickly found out were impossible for me to finish. I used to buy things, even tacky crap, and not really know why. But I don't do those things anymore. I wonder why I've changed in this respect, while others (both of my examples were several years my senior) do not. I wonder what things I do that don't make any sense to other people? 

And you're probably wondering what in the world this has to do with Grinder Productions. 

What I'm saying (as much for my own sake as for yours) is that I do have a plan. A perfect plan? No. A plan that's written in stone? No. A plan that will actually work? We'll have to see. But yes, there is a plan.

I'm currently looking for people to get involved in Grinder in ways other than just being in shows. I'm looking for directors, for board members, and for people to sit on a play selection committee. All that is part of a plan, one that has been evolving, slowly, for a very long time. It's part of a plan that doesn't involve starting from scratch, but builds on who and what have come before, using what has been learned, by others and by me. 

The plan doesn't call for world domination. It's not about scaling Grinder Productions into something that Ed Mirvish or Alex Mustakas might call a theatre company. But it's not about turning Grinder into your grandma's community theatre either. The Grinder motto "Theatre that Dares to be Different" still applies. I don't need Grinder to be the start of something big, and I don't need it to produce tacky crap. What I do need is for Grinder to fit into my life, in the space I have made for it (and that I continue to hone as time goes on). That is part of the plan. 

So yes, there is a plan. Sometimes it doesn't look like it, sometimes it doesn't feel like it (and sometimes I even forget it) but yes, there is a plan.