This Week’s Flashback -20th anniversary of my first play

Today, March 21st, it's twenty years since I first had a play produced and perfomed –two, in fact, as it was a double-bill consisting of two one-act plays I wrote for The Oslo Players under the umbrella title "Another Place". The two plays were "The Royal Box" –a light comedy about the panic created in a theatre when it is announced that they are to have a royal visit; and "Snail Street" -a tragi-comedy about people living in cardboard boxes on the street. I directed and appeared in the former. God only know show I found the energy and time for all this, because I was also studying full-time and working part-time too. It was a truly gargantuan adventure, and one of the most tiring times of my life, but utterly rewarding. It was also the first production of The Oslo Players –the English-speaking drama group at the university of Oslo, and the start of that whole adventure I later used the process of this production as part of my thesis in theatre studies. Of the two plays my greatest affection is for "The Royal Box", and on re-reading it today, I must say it holds up remarkably well, and is certainly very tightly written, and it is more like a full-length play than a one-acter. I am very fond of it.
Here's part of the prologue to the pair of plays..spoken by a cleaner in front of the stage:

THE CLEANER:
More dust! Don't you ever wonder where the hell it
all comes from? I do. ...Sometimes I wonder whether
there's not a huge cloud of dust, way up there; and
every room in every building in the entire world gets
like a ...a daily dose of dust. A daily dose of dust from
this gigantic cloud! I mean it's all the same isn't it...
dust I mean. The dust of a palace is just as ...dusty as
that of a prison or a church or your sleazy downtown
joint. Kings and housewives fight against it; painters
and surgeons hate it, and bakers and cooks fear it.
Yet it keeps me in a job (pause). Strange though, isn't
it, to think that when we, God forbid, die, we eventually
become dust ourselves. Sure it takes time, but sooner
or later you'll find yourself floating to the floor in a
thousand specks in places like this! That's why I stick
to my job -I come across so many interesting people!

Opera update

Sadly I have not been very good at updating this blog over the last couple of months, and you would be forgiven for thinking that this is due to not having done anything worth mentioning. However, the opposite is closer to the truth –I have had too much to do to find the time to write here. I shall from now on though try to post an update once a week, even it is only a few lines.
I am glad to say that the work I put into "The Rape of Lucretia" was well received and the opera itself a great success. I was very happy when I attended the last performance in Oslo and heard that all the coaching I had done with the soloists had worked so well, and I was very proud of them. The whole experience of working with the opera has been enormously educative and enlightening, and made my present work on the next opera much easier. "Peter Grimes" is a vast enterprise compared to the chamber intimacy of "Lucretia" –majestic, daunting and tremendous. My focus is primarily on the libretto by Montagu Slater, but I cannot help but be affected and moved by the magnificent music of Benjamin Britten –even when played in bits and pieces on a piano in a rehearsal room –it is constantly surprising, playful, alarming, rich and atmospheric –and above all exciting. I have had the great pleasure of giving some language instruction to the 50 or so strong opera chorus, and found that rather challenging, but mostly I am working with the soloists individually, ironing out any vocal anomalies when it comes to vowels or providing alternatives. Once you get down to very close analysis of the sounds of a language you discover all sorts of issues about how a particular word should sound in a particular context -and in many cases there is no one correct answer. The singers I am working with are however all so professional and quick at following suggestions that I feel confident everything will sound excellent when the opera opens –still a couple of months away!