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Up Close and Personal with BroadwayWorld's Don Grigware
Nov 7, 2022
Michael Sterling, BroadwayWorld TV's Los Angeles On-Air Host and Producer, gets up close and personal with well-known and respected theatre reviewer/journalist Don Grigware (www.grigwaretalkstheatre) and Los Angeles Senior Editor for www.BroadwayWorld.com, has just released the sequel to Two Worlds Together, Donnelly's Greatest Christmas, which was released on amazon.com last December, 2014. The title of the sequel is Two Worlds Together, Donnelly's Greatest Christmas Books II andamp; III, which concludes the story introduced in the first volume. Books II & III are together in one volume and include colorful illustrations by local artist Laurie Morgan. Both this volume and the previous one are available in paperback and on kindle.
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Welcome to Broadway World TV. I'm Michael Sterling. Thank you for joining us. I'm here today at the Road Theater in the NoHo Arts District of North Hollywood, California
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Today, the guest is Don Grigwer, who is senior editor for Broadway World here in Los Angeles
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and he is also a company member of the Road Theater, which is very distinguished here and has been established for the last 25 years as one of our most prominent theaters in the city
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Don Grigwer, welcome to Broadway World TV. Thank you very much. It's great to be here
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Tell us about the Road Theater. Well, I've been a member of the Road, unbelievably, for the last part of the table, 11 years, and every year, and every year
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Here at this time, they have what is called the Playwrights Festival, and it's the sixth annual
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playwrights festival this year, and during that week, all original plays by playwrights
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from all over the country are read in not one but two spaces here on Magnolia, and in our
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main theater on Lancashem in the Noho Arts Gallery, and they call it eight days, 30 plays
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Unbelievable. But the entire company takes apart, and we have guest actors
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come in and guest directors, and 30 original plays are read during the course of only eight days
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and we have fantastic audiences, talkbacks after the play, entertainment, and as well as refreshments
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and many of the main stage productions that you see at the road here during the regular season
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come directly from these brand new plays that are read during the Playwrights Festival
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So come on out to the playwrights. And you and I were talking earlier about this, and you said people come to the same
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festival from all over the country. Yes, they do. Yeah, their playwrights. They've been reading plays now all
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year in preparation for this and they from every single state in the Union as far as John and I usually talk theater when we together but today we talking about something a little bit different and that is a beautiful children book that he has written It now in its third volume
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and it is called Two Worlds Together, Donnelly's Greatest Christmas. Tell us about this beautiful book with these amazing graphics that are in there
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Yes, aren't they really amazing? I actually wrote this back in 2001. I was very staggered and appalled at the events of 9-11
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2001, as all of us were. And as I sat watching television that morning, the first thought that came
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into my head was, I'm angry. I want to do something. But I thought, well, what can I do? Maybe I can do
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something creative. So I went to the computer. And in the back of my mind, there was this little
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story about a wolf and a fawn that I had read and translated into Spanish for my Spanish classes
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when I taught high school. I called it El Reno Yelobo. And the wolf viciously terrorized
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is the fawn, will not let him drink from the lake. And I thought, what if I could create a whole community of animals
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that would be terrorized by this wolf? And I called him venomous tea wolf
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And over the next three weeks, I wrote it. And what I got at the end was Rudolph's greatest Christmas
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It's a familiar name. Yes, it certainly is. Public domain now at this point
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So it was Rudolph's greatest Christmas, and it was all creatures in the land of the Holy Old
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terrorized by venomous tea wolf. Wait a minute. You said holy oak, isn't that in Massachusetts
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That's exactly where I'm from. It's Holyoke, Massachusetts. But I call this, there's a big oak tree right in the center of the community
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And so it's called the land of the holy oak. No similarity, of course
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But when I wrote this, I was thinking about my little Cocker Spaniel Merlin
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and I wanted somehow to get him involved in the story. Well, I put it on the shelf anyway as Rudolph's Greatest Christmas
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sent out hundreds of outlines and to publishers all over. And, of course, it was ignored and rejected
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And then within the course of a year, I thought, well, maybe I could write a part for Merlin in this story
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and a light bulb flash And I thought why don I make him an angel and make him the hero of the story He be the mascot of the reindeer So I called him Donnelly instead of Merlin
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Can you give the viewers a brief summary of the story? Well, what happens is, I think I mentioned that the wolf, Phenemis T. Wolf, terrorizes the, actually in this version, Donnelly
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And then Donnelly goes back to the North Pole. He's on a mission for Santa Claus to scout out reindeer replacements for Christmas Eve
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and he is so thrown back by what Venomus has done to him that he flies off
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He's an angel, of course, and very distressed and not knowing not only what he can do to save the land
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to save all of the creatures there from Venomus T. Wolk. So it becomes Donnelly's mission to go back to the land and to save the creatures there
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and in books two and three, which is volume two, it's Donnelly's return to the land
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and you see all of the creatures of Holyoke, which I'm not saying that I wrote it as an autobiography
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It certainly isn't, but it certainly has a lot of the characters that are in my family and friends that I knew as I was growing up
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Of course, you know what happened, then you have to buy the books and read all the way through to get to the ending, right
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It was a plea for nonviolence. This is the big thing. I never thought I could write something about animals, for one thing
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So writing a story with all animals was a challenge, and I was very proud of it when I finished it
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And I made a bucket list, and a year ago I said, I'm getting it out there, so I self-published
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You know, there could not be really a better time to write something with that kind of theme involved about violence
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and especially for children to be aware of that in this day and age. which is paramount
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You know, it's violence, not violence, countering violence, but non-violent, the non-violent approach of what to do with venomous evil
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and to save the land and save the creatures. And, of course, to bring them Christmas for the first time
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So that becomes Donnelly's mission. And he succeeds, I hope. So it is published and it is out there for sale now Where can people find this Okay I just want to give a clue a little tip also that Lori Morgan who is a wonderful singer locally
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she's with the group rep theater, she's an artist as well. She did the illustrations for the second book
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They're a beautiful, beautiful job. And this is the Holyoke. It looks very Christmassy
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And you can buy it at Amazon.com. It's in paperback and also on Kindle
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So buy it. So it's easy to access. Right? And I'm sure at a great price point
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Oh, yeah, absolutely. Especially the Kindle. Yeah, very reasonable. So, Don, real quick, I'm going to ask you this one question that is relative now to theater
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What do you think the state of the arts is here in Los Angeles as far as theater is concerned
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Or is it happening? We've just been through the whole equity waiver debacle that's..
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I think we're in the midst of it still. I mean, I'm reading Facebook messages every day
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And I really thought that there would be some kind of a lawsuit against equity
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Maybe it's still coming, I don't know. But I think their decision was horrible
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I think they're trying to destroy it, Equity Waiver Theater. And I don't know what's going to happen to
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If we are going to band together and fight it, I'm not really sure what's going to happen. But doing away with Equity Waivered Theater is a crime
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It really is. I agree. Several things have been born in Equity Waiver Theater that won't possibly have that opportunity in the future
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Yeah, it's produced some of the greatest theater in Los Angeles plays
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that have gone on to New York and to other venues. And for the actor, it would be able to hone his craft in an equity waiver theater
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There is nothing quite like it. So we desperately need it, and we want to keep it the way it is
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So hopefully we will find a solution that they will come together and sit down at a table and talk it out
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I hope this is what's going on. Well, there's still some time for that, hopefully, to happen. I think they've got several months ahead of them before that takes place
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Don, thank you for being with us today on Broadway World TV. It's always a pleasure to talk to you
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Thank you, Michael. And also, ladies and gentlemen, one more time about Don's book, Two Worlds Together, Donnelly's Greatest Christmas
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Go out and buy it. I'm sure your children will love it. And love you for doing it
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All right. Thank you, Doctor
#Books & Literature
#Children's Literature
#Broadway & Musical Theater