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!