Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE (born 12 April 1939) is a popular and prolific English playwright.

Childhood
Ayckbourn was born in Hampstead, London. His mother Irene Worley ("Lolly") was a writer of short stories who published under the name "Mary James". His father, Horace Ayckbourn, was an orchestral violinist, at one time deputy leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. His parents, who separated shortly after World War II, never married, and Ayckbourn's mother divorced her first husband to marry again in 1948.

Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge preparatory school when he was about 10. While at prep school as a boarder his mother wrote to tell him she was marrying Cecil Pye, a bank manager, and when he was at home for the holidays his new family consisted of his mother, his stepfather and Christopher, his stepfather's son by an earlier marriage. This relationship too, reportedly ran into difficulties early on. Paul Allen has compared characters and themes in Ayckbourn's mature plays with his childhood experience of several unconventional relationships and an unhappy marriage.

Ayckbourn attended Haileybury, and while there toured Europe and America with the school Shakespeare company.

Adult life
After leaving school at 17, Ayckbourn's career in the theatre took him to Edinburgh, Worthing and Leatherhead. Then, starting a temporary job at the Scarborough Library Theatre, where he was introduced to the artistic director, Stephen Joesph. It is said that Stephen became both a mentor and father figure for Alan Ayckbourn, and although Stephen Joseph died only a few years later in 1967 , Ayckbourn has consistently spoken highly of him to this day.

Ayckbourn's career was briefly interrupted when he was called for National Service. He was swiftly discharged, officially on medical grounds, but it is suggested that a doctor who noticed his reluctance to join the Armed Forces deliberately failed the medical as a favour. Although Ayckbourn continued to move where his career took him, he settled in Scarborough, eventually buying Longwestgate House, the house formerly owned by Stephen Joseph.

In 1957, Ayckbourn married Christine Roland, another member of the Library Theatre company, and indeed Ayckbourn's first two plays were written jointly with her under the pseudonym of "Roland Allen". They had two sons, Steven and Philip. However, the marriage had difficulties which eventually led to their separation in 1971. Alan Ayckbourn said that his relationship with Christine became easy once they agreed their marriage was over. Around this time, he started to share a home with Heather Stoney, an actress he had first met ten years earlier. Like his mother, neither he nor Christine sought a divorce for the next thirty years, and it was only in 1997, when Alan married Heather Stoney in 1997, that they formally divorced.One side-effect of the timing is that, as Alan was awarded a knighthood a few month before the divorce, both his first and second wife are entitled to take the title of Lady Ayckbourn.

Influence on plays
Since Alan Ayckbourn's plays started becoming established in the West End, interviewers have raised the question of whether his work is autobiographical.There is no clear answer to this question. There has only been one biography, written by Paul Allen, and this primarily covers his career in the theatre. Ayckbourn has frequently said he sees aspects of himself in all his characters. For example, in Bedroom Farce, he admitted to being, in some respects, all four of the men in the play.It has been suggested that, after Ayckbourn himself, the person who is used the most in his plays is his mother, particularly as Susan in Woman in Mind.

What is less clear is how much influence events in Ayckbourn's life have had on his writing. It is true that the theme of marriages in various difficulties was heavily present throughout his plays in the early seventies, around the time his own marriage was coming to an end. However, by this time, he had also witnessed the failures of his parents' relationships as well as those of some of his friends. Which relationships, if any, he drew on for his plays, is unclear. In Paul Allen’s biography, Ayckbourn is briefly compared to Dafydd and Guy in A Chorus of Disapproval. Both characters feel themselves in trouble, and there was speculation that Alan Ayckbourn himself may have felt himself to be in trouble. At the time, he had reportedly become seriously involved with another actress, which threatened his relationship with Heather Stoney. But again, it is unclear whether this had any effect on the writing, and Paul Allen's view is that it is not current experience that Ayckbourn uses for his plays.

It could be that Ayckbourn had written plays with himself and his own issues in mind, but as Ayckbourn is portrayed as a guarded and private man, it is hard to imagine him exposing his own life in his plays to any great degree. In the biography, Paul Allen wrote, regarding a suggestion in Cosmopolitan that his plays were becoming autobiographical: "If we take that to mean that his plays tell his own life story, he still hasn't started."

Career

Early career and acting
On leaving school at 17 his theatrical career started immediately, with an introduction to Sir Donald Wolfit by his French master. Ayckbourn joined Wolfit on tour as an assistant stage manager and actor for three weeks.

In 1957, Ayckbourn was employed by the director Stephen Joseph as an acting stage manager (a stage manager with acting roles) at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, the predecessor to the modern Stephen Joseph Theatre. This employment led to Ayckbourn's first professional script commission, in 1958. When he complained about the quality of a script he was performing, Joseph challenged him to write a better one. The result was The Square Cat, written under the pseudonym Roland Allen and first performed in 1959. In this play, Ayckbourn himself played the character "Jerry Watiss".

Over the next few years, Ayckbourn appeared in many other plays, both his own and other people's, mainly in the Scarborough Library Theatre and the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent (now the New Vic). He continued acting until 1964, by which time his writing and directing were coming to fruition.

Writing
Ayckbourn has written and produced seventy-two full-length plays in Scarborough and London and is the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. All but four of his plays have received their first performance at this theatre. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.

Major successes include Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests trilogy, Bedroom Farce, Just Between Ourselves, A Chorus of Disapproval, Woman in Mind, A Small Family Business, Man Of The Moment and House & Garden. His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world.

Plays by Ayckbourn have also been filmed for cinema and television in English, French, Polish, German and Dutch among others. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway, attracting two Tony nominations. In 1991, he received a Dramalogue Critics Award for his play Henceforward.... Alan received the CBE in 1987 and was knighted in 1997.

After Ronnie Barker played Lord Slingsby-Craddock in the London production of Ayckbourn's Mr Whatnot in 1964, Ayckbourn collaborated on the scripts of Barker's television series for LWT Hark at Barker (in which Barker played Lord Rustless). Ayckbourn used the pseudonym "Peter Caulfield" because he was under exclusive contract to the BBC at the time. The London production of another early play, Relatively Speaking in 1967 helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.

Although his plays have received major West End productions almost from the beginning of his writing career, and hence have been reviewed in British newspapers, Ayckbourn's work was for years routinely dismissed as being too slight for serious study. Recently, scholars have begun to view Ayckbourn as an important commentator on the lifestyles of the British suburban middle class, and as a stylistic innovator who experiments with theatrical styles within the boundaries set by popular tastes. With a résumé of over seventy plays, of which more than forty have played at the National Theatre or in the West End, Alan Ayckbourn remains one of England’s most successful living playwrights. Despite his success, honours and awards (which include a prestigious Laurence Olivier Award), Alan Ayckbourn remains a relatively anonymous figure dedicated to regional theatre.

In February 2006, he suffered a stroke, and states on his website that "I am making a good recovery from my recent stroke. I received an overwhelming number of get-well cards and good wishes. I was extremely touched by the love and concern shown by so many friends, acquaintances and occasionally complete strangers", adding "Rest assured I'll be back." In September 2006 he returned to work and premièred his 70th play If I Were You at the Stephen Joseph Theatre on 17 October 2006.

Directing
Alan Ayckbourn began directing at the Scarborough Library Theatre in 1961, with a production of Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton. At first, this career was separate from his writing career. It was not until 1963 that Ayckbourn directed a play of his own (Standing Room Only), and 1977 that he was able to direct a play of his own in the West End (Bedroom Farce).

Since then Ayckbourn continued to work as a director, both of his own plays and those of other writers. In 1987 he directed four works in each of the auditoria of the Royal National Theatre, using a stock company for all four plays which included established performers like Michael Gambon, Polly Adams and Simon Cadell. Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge was performed in the Cottesloe, the farce Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine (with adaptations by Ayckbourn) was performed in the Lyttelton, 'Tis Pity She's A Whore was performed in the Olivier and his own A Small Family Business was also performed in the Olivier. Ayckbourn later directed Gambon in a season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough that included Othello and a revival of his own Taking Steps.

He announced in 1999 he would step back from directing other playwrights' work to concentrate on his own plays; the exception being in 2002 when he directed the world première of Tim Firth's The Safari Party - this is the only non-Ayckbourn play he has directed since Rob Shearman's Knights in Plastic Armour in 1999.

He announced on 1 June 2007 that he would retire as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2008. (The actual handover date to the new Artistic Director, Chris Monks, is 31 March 2009), but would continue to direct premières and revivals of his work at the theatre.

Back