On April 28, 2012, at the Mayfair Theatre, I watched an enthusiastic cast present the premiere of a musical I'd written.
Grimhilda! had taken about 30 years to get to this point.
Back in the late '70s I'd been musical director for A Statue for the Mayor, which featured young actors and singers.
Afterwards, I thought, I can write something like this, and produced 20 minutes of a ''children's opera''.
It duly went into the proverbial bottom drawer.
The computer age dawned, along with a marvellous music program called Sibelius.
I took out the opera, put it on the computer, and played it to an old friend of mine, who enthused about it.
But 20 minutes wasn't going to go anywhere, so back it went into the bottom drawer again.
Sometime later I met a woman who is now a very good friend.
I acted in some plays with her, and realised she had the knack of seeing the bigger picture in terms of scripts.
She and I started the children's opera from scratch.
Out went most of the original script and most of my favourite music!
For the next year we hammered away at getting the story to work, gradually honing it into a script.
I wrote a lot more music.
By this time I was a member of a theatre group, Stageworks.
They graciously agreed to become the show's production company.
An old friend said he'd direct it.
We advertised auditions, and found four great children to alternate the two main roles, along with a wonderful actress to play the frenetically nasty Grimhilda.
Other actor/singers joined us, some of them, in due course, becoming good friends.
Naturally, the process of getting the show on stage wasn't straightforward.
I learned a great deal about advertising, funding and shoestring budgets in the months leading up to the performances.
We found a musical director, pulled together an orchestra, and even managed to find an electronic keyboard to produce the essential celesta sound, after inquiring on Twitter.
An unassuming guy from a local church did an excellent job on the sound.
Other theatre groups helped with props.
Dunedin people are great!There was an added bonus that night.
My daughter, who was then living in Auckland, flew down to Dunedin (without telling me beforehand) to see the premiere.
My 6-year-old grandson's verdict on the show: ''That was awesome, Granddad.''
• Mike Crowl is a Dunedin writer, musician and composer.
