OUR NEIGHBORS: From the start, theater really did get in his blood

MAT-SU — In his first role on stage, the theater hit Grant Olson over the head. Literally.

Olson was playing Tom Sawyer after San Francisco State University made a casting call for its musical production at his elementary school. In one of the final rehearsals, the 11-year-old Olson bumped into a piece of the set, which then crashed onto his face.

“It cut my eyelid. There was blood all over,” Olson said. “I went on for three performances with an eye patch. I was a kind of pirate Tom Sawyer.”

Despite this early warning of the toll the performing arts can take, Olson was undeterred.

After studying theater from junior high school through earning a master’s degree, he has helped students and the average Joe of the Mat-Su Valley realize the expansive power of theater.

“I decided I didn’t want to live the gypsy life,” Olson said, rationalizing why he has always kept steady jobs while acting, directing and writing on the side.

In 1976, that income stream brought Olson and his wife to Alaska. He worked for Carrs grocery stores in Anchorage before buying the Sutton General Store with two other partners.

By 1980, Olson found himself directing his first show with Valley Performing Arts, the local theater group that formed two years prior. The shows were done in an 80-seat theater, he said, and VPA could not afford to keep a full-time general manager.

Olson worked with VPA as its artistic director, resident director and president. His directing credits include almost 40 plays, and it was one of his productions that christened the stage when it expanded to its current 140-seat location in Wasilla.

Now, Olson said, he has moved away from the VPA, working only as a contract director. He finds himself drawn to work that challenges the audience, but may not bring the best box office returns.

“I’m at the point in my life where I want to do what I want to do. That is not necessarily compatible with what they need to do to make money,” Olson said.

Olson said he is writing more of his own plays — calling it the “quintessential creative process” — seven of which have been performed on stage. He is finishing a movie script, his third, and hopes to show this one at film festivals.

As he has been drawn away from VPA, Olson has also found more time to commit to his other artistic venue, Palmer High School.

An advanced language teacher at Palmer Junior Middle School, Olson has directed six plays at the high school strictly as a volunteer.

The school’s production of “Little Women — The Broadway Musical” continues April 8.

Whether adults or adolescents, Olson approaches each production the same way.

The words and songs are already written, and the actors sing and deliver the lines. It’s hard to see the work of the director, and that’s exactly how it should be, Olson said.

The director determines the look of the set, the pace of the play and movement on the stage. And then there’s working with actors.

“You talk about the character. What are you really thinking? What are you trying to achieve?” Olson said. “You have to work with the individual people in different ways.”

The perfectly directed show is one where the audience can’t see the “heavy hand of the director,” he said. Olson — like his wife, who sews costumes and plays violin, or his longtime set, sound and light coordinator Rod Mehrtens — said his work is best accomplished when it is disguised in one seamless package of a production.

The whole point, he said, is to get the audience to buy in and help newcomers realize theater is open to all-comers.

“I can’t imagine a more fulfilling experience than realizing what you present has changed in some way people’s sensibilities,” Olson said.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.