Greg J. Anderson- Thespian and Director

The world may be a stage, but on the one that Greg Anderson presently stands, there’s a saloon, a forest, and a gigantic ox. 
 
“There’s a children’s theater group doing ‘Tall Tales’ here this week,” the friendly, sandy-haired actor explains. 
 
He hops off the stage and settles into a padded seat in the empty audience. Greg’s a lifer. He was born in Cloquet and now resides in Carlton. 

“I’ve lived within a five-mile radius, my entire life… this has always been my home, the whole time. My family is here.”

Anderson’s love for theater began to bud in his school years, as he graced the stage at Cloquet Senior High.

“I can’t pinpoint a specific moment where I realized I wanted to do theater,” he says, “some people have that, but I didn’t, really.”

Along the way, the hot stage lights singed an indelible streak into his soul, because after a length of time away from the theater, Anderson relates,

“I missed it so much. I had to get back into it.”

Anderson now does “about three to four shows a year” in the Duluth-Superior and surrounding areas.

In his years spent as a versatile young thespian in the region, he’s made the rounds of local theater— the Duluth Playhouse, Renegade Comedy Theater, UWS, the Shack, Rubber Chicken Theater, the County Seat Theater Company, and the Barnum Community Theater. He’s also done television commercials for Daugherty’s, Spirit Mountain, and the Lost Isle.

He’s played good guys, bad dudes, and he’s gyrated across the stage in tighty-whities during a run of the wildly-successful Duluth Playhouse production of the Full Monty. Now he’s taking on directing. 
 
“Cheryl Kramer, the creative director [for the County Seat Theater] kept telling me, ‘you should direct,’ and I finally decided to.  I’m excited!” 
 
Fresh off auditions for his upcoming production of Moon Over Buffalo, Anderson is poised to assume the duty of filling an empty stage with vibrant sights, sounds, and opportunities for ticket-purchasers to exercise their smile muscles and their willing suspension of disbelief. 
 
“There are eight people in the cast, and we’ll be performing at the end of September/beginning of October.

“[To prepare] I read the script a lot. I’m working from that; I’m big on visualizing things.” 
 
Anderson’s sentiments about live theater center around the human element, and the roots of his passion are based in as much.

“The people—you can be together for eight weeks and you become really close. [The scripts have] great characters, but we’ve also got great real-life ‘characters’ involved.”

Talking to Greg about his experiences in local theater, his affinity for the arts community is apparent:  
 
“A lot of people would be surprised by how much good theater there is here. There’s a lack of knowledge about where to look for it. Some of the smaller companies—the Shack, Rubber Chicken-- people don’t know about them as much, but boy, you put the right bunch of actors together and the technical aspects become subsidiary.” 
 
While Anderson notes that the recent downturn in the local economy has impacted ticket sales at some venues, he believes the theater arts community will continue to see success. While the big players are still frequently filling seats, the actor notes the significance of the little guys.

“The smaller ones have their niches. They have a more intimate feel. You really can’t compare [the larger and smaller companies].” 
 
He could’ve gone a couple hours south to seek fame at the Guthrie Theater, or out east to try to break into Broadway, but Greg stayed here, to bring smiles to his friends and neighbors.

“It’s so easy to meet people here. They open up to you. It feels like a small town… And oh God, that Lake; it’s just amazing.” 
 
You get the feeling that the few years Anderson spent away from the stage comprised the intermission of his life. It’ll be a theater-goer’s privilege to be a witness to his acts yet to follow.