Celebrate Valentine's Day with a night of theatrical shows and live music 

On Feb. 10, the Gritty City Theatre Company held their first-ever fundraiser event, Gritty City Steels your Heart, at the Spice Factory in downtown Hamilton. 

The Gritty City Theatre Company was founded in 2019 by Melissa Murray-Mutch and Jason Thompson. They wanted to explore race, class and all things theatrical in their productions and foster community and family through their spaces. 

“We have a great group of people that are working with us and they want to do it and I started to think of our theatre company as a home – we want it to be a home for people,” said Murray-Mutch. 

The purpose of the Feb. 10 fundraiser was to bring awareness to their company, thank the cast of their last Fringe digital exclusive performance and celebrate Valentine’s Day with the rest of the community.  

The evening of the Gritty City Steels your Heart event was filled with live music by arttheboy, a Hamilton-based artist and filmmaker; a live band performance by Badnew, a local punk band by Lola Medina and brothers Jack & Ben Caunter performing the “Hammered 2.0” soundtrack and an art exhibit and market organized by Jessika and Natasha Reddy. There were also performances from the Canadian Slavery Project, directed by Melissa Murray-Mutch and screenings of “Hammered” and “Hammered 2.0”, directed by John-Riley O'Handley and Lucy Reddy respectively. There was also food, drinks and raffles offered at the event. 

Murray-Mutch hoped attendees would learn more about the Gritty City family, their hidden talent and continue to support their work. She also hoped that this event will attract more artists to collaborate with them in future projects. 

“[We] want to attract more artists as well. We want people who want to work with us, and we want to let people know that we are [a] driving force in the community as well. Even though we're small, we’re mighty,” said Murray-Mutch. 

Most of all, she hopes attendees will have an enjoyable time at the event.  

“We want to do quality work, but we want to make it fun for everybody. We want people to come there and just have a great time,” she said.  

Moving forward, Gritty City plans on starting a new community theatre project and collaborating more with local artists. Additionally, they hope to continue to produce more showings for larger audiences while exploring new genres.