“It’s the good advice, that you just didn’t take And who would’ve thought it figures?” Alanis Morrissette A year ago, my brother suggested that I make a Kindle version of my book Laund-o-mat at the End of the World. (The typo in the title is deliberate.) It’s a collection of three of my one-act…
It’s the day after the night before and I survived the play reading. It went better than expected. People laughed. Which is good when the play is a comedy… Even if it’s a dark comedy. The actors did a great job reading all of the excerpts! But it still felt weird. I sat in the…
Next week, Theatre Aquarius puts on its Reading Week. The artists in the various programs that Theatre Aquarius supports during the theatre season will get a chance to present an excerpt from the piece that they’ve been working on. My turn is on Wednesday (June 19). It’s always good to get your work in front…
I was talking to someone about one of the plays I’m working on and they made a comment on the subject matter. “That’s unfortunate,” they said. “People are sensitive about that topic now.” The comment made me oddly defensive and before I knew it, I said, “You write what wants to get written.” I didn’t…
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 have a bad habit of taking long breaks between writing projects. I finish one project and it takes me months to gear up and start working on the next one. Why? It’s not from lack of ideas. I’ve got more ideas than time to write them all. It seems to be more from a…
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…
Today is a milestone birthday. Only birthdays ending in zeros or fives seem to be milestones when your age is in the double digits. But when you get to the triple digits, every birthday is a milestone again, like the first ten years of your life. I still have a ways to go before I…
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…
peter gruner 