We have two more performances of Things I Know to be True. It’s always weird when a show is coming to the end of the run. We’ve spent weeks working on this show. Rehearsals started in February, but we met as a cast before that. It feels like we’ve been working on it much longer.…
Last night we had our first read through for Things I Know to be True by Andrew Bovell. I like having the read through. There’s no pressure. The cast just reads the lines of the script. It’s the last time that the play will be just the playwright’s. Starting with our next rehearsal, we will…
We open The Game’s Afoot a week from tomorrow. And I need to do the thing I dislike the most. Promoting the play. I find it harder to do that than remembering my lines. It’s such a strange thing. I don’t mind telling people that I’m in a show. But it feels weird trying to…
Can I let you in on a secret? Acting is fun. I love it. It’s all make believe. Sometimes you play a serious character in a serious play. Sometimes you play a silly character in a silly play. Or maybe it’s a silly character in a serious play. Or the other way around. But it’s…
My mother had a book called Super Learning that was in our home for years. I picked it up and read it on a whim after I graduated from University. One of the topics in the book was visualization. The subject fascinated me. There was an exercise in the book that guided you through visualizing…
A friend of mine saw me in Burn. She told me that it was the best performance she’s seen me do in all the shows of mine that she’s seen. She might be right. You hope that you do a good job when you’re acting in a play. But I’m lazy when I’m preparing for…
One of the things I hate about doing a show is checking for friends after the performance. When the applause ends, the actors leave the stage. And we get out of our costumes and make up. If you know that you had family or friends in the audience, you get changed quickly. Otherwise, you can…
After a show opens, there’s usually a “line run”. Between the end of one week’s performances and the start of the following week’s performances. It’s when the actors say their lines to each other but usually there isn’t any action or movement. Often everyone is just sitting around. Or it’s a Zoom call. The tricky…
I’m only a third of the way through the performances for Burn and already I’ve got to think about the next thing. There’s an audition this week for The Game’s Afoot by Ken Ludwig. The Peninsula Players are putting it on. It’s a fun play. Comic. The show goes up in November. But they are…
One of the things our director, Matt Willson, wants to do for the play is have a pre-show. That means that before the show starts, we actors come out as our characters and do stuff. It’s not part of the play. And you don’t hear us talking. But the idea is that you see our…
peter gruner 