Happy New Year! I’ve decided to start this year in April, instead of January. Why? Well, it took me a while to get ready for the New Year and I wanted to start the year off right! One of the books I read in 2018 was When by Daniel Pink. Pink suggests that choosing “when”…
Last weekend, my wife found an old contract I had made with her almost 25 years ago. It was signed August 1994. And in it, I committed to writing one page a day. That was back when I was writing fiction and short stories. I chuckled when I saw it. My contract with Deb was to show…
For almost four months I was trying to get started on my next playwriting project. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any ideas. The trouble was finding an idea that I would feel passionate enough about to overcome my inertia. What was the idea that would keep me away from the TV for hours on…
I’m a playwright, so why am I putting on a clown piece for the 2018 Hamilton Fringe Festival? Good question. I didn’t have a play ready when it was time to submit to the Fringe Lottery. To be fair, I didn’t have a clown piece ready, either. But I was just wrapping up another Clown…
Okay, full disclosure. I don’t really know how to be a good parent. When my children were growing up and people would ask me why my kids were so well behaved, I would usually say “I’m lucky”. Or point to Deb, because she is an awesome mother! My kids are now 26, 23, and 20.…
Last year, I had intended to document the journey to getting my play The Lost Years ready for the Hamilton Fringe 2017. Unfortunately, I never started the documentation and before I knew it, opening night was upon us. This year, I wanted to do the same thing, but I found I was letting procrastination get…
It’s the night before I do a clown turn at the Red Nose Cabaret. I’ve been fretting about it for the last couple of days. Will I be funny? Will I be focused? Will I be open to failure? Clowning is like riding a unicycle. You have to flirt with losing your balance and falling…
It was the first day of classes in Grade Four and Mrs. Korb asked John Hazel and me to stand up. She wanted us to be “buddies” with the new kid, George Snider. I turned and looked over to the red-faced kid with the bowl hair cut and big teeth. To be fair, he looked…
One of the big takeaways I had from doing the Hamilton Fringe Festival last summer was that marketing is important. Really important. How do you get people to go see your show when there are 30 other shows they can see? And a thousand other reasons for them NOT to see it? And how do…
Sometimes we set a goal for ourselves and we don’t quite make it. Maybe we don’t come anywhere near reaching it. Do we give up? If it’s a worthy goal, you carry on. Or start over. Fall down three times and get up four times. It’s the getting up and retrying or starting over that…
peter gruner 