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Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE FRSA
Ayckbourn in 2010
Born	(1939-04-12)12 April 1939 (age 85) Hampstead, London, England
Occupation	Playwright, director
Period	1959–present
Website
www.alanayckbourn.net

Sir Alan AyckbournCBE FRSA (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. As of 2025, he has written and produced 90 full-length plays inScarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of theStephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in theWest End, at theRoyal National Theatre or by theRoyal Shakespeare Company since his first hitRelatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.

Major successes includeAbsurd Person Singular (1975),The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973),Bedroom Farce (1975),Just Between Ourselves (1976),A Chorus of Disapproval (1984),Woman in Mind (1985),A Small Family Business (1987),Man of the Moment (1988),House &Garden (1999) andPrivate Fears in Public Places (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven LondonEvening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged onBroadway, attracting twoTony nominations, and one Tony award.

Ayckbourn was born inHampstead, London.^[1][2] His mother, Irene Worley ("Lolly") (1906–1998), was a writer of short stories who published under the name "Mary James".^[3] His father, Horace Ayckbourn (1904–1965), was an orchestral violinist and was the lead violinist at theLondon Symphony Orchestra.^[4] His parents, who separated shortly afterWorld War II, never married, and Ayckbourn's mother divorced her first husband to marry again in 1948.^[1]

Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge (a preparatory school in the village ofWisborough Green) when he was about 10.^[5] While he was at prep school as a boarder, his mother wrote to tell him she was marrying Cecil Pye, a bank manager. 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.^[6]

Ayckbourn attendedHaileybury and Imperial Service College, in the village ofHertford Heath and, while there, he toured Europe and America with the school's Shakespeare company.^[2][7]

After leaving school at 17, Ayckbourn took several temporary jobs in various places before starting a temporary position at theScarborough Library Theatre, where he was introduced to the artistic director,Stephen Joseph.^[2][8] It is said that Joseph became both a mentor and father figure for Ayckbourn until his untimely death in 1967,^[9] and Ayckbourn has consistently spoken highly of him.^[10]

Ayckbourn's career was briefly interrupted when he was called up forNational 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.^[11] Although Ayckbourn continued to move wherever his career took him, he settled in Scarborough, eventually buying Longwestgate House, which had previously been owned by his mentor, Joseph.^[12]

In 1957, Ayckbourn married Christine Roland, another member of the Library Theatre company.^[13][14][15] Ayckbourn's first two plays were, in fact, written jointly with her under the pseudonym of "Roland Allen".^[16] They had two sons, Steven and Philip.^[17] However, the marriage had difficulties, which eventually led to their separation in 1971. Ayckbourn said that his relationship with Roland became easy once they agreed their marriage was over. About this time, he shared a home with Heather Stoney,^[18] an actress he had first met ten years earlier.^[19] Like his mother, neither he nor Roland sought an immediate divorce and it was not until thirty years later, in 1997, that they were formally divorced and Ayckbourn married Stoney.^[13][20] One side effect of the timing is that, when Ayckbourn was awarded aknighthood a few months before the divorce,^[21] both his first and second wives were entitled to take the title of Lady Ayckbourn.

In February 2006, he suffered a stroke in Scarborough, and stated: "I hope to be back on my feet, or should I say my left leg, as soon as possible, but I know it is going to take some time. In the meantime I am in excellent hands and so is the Stephen Joseph Theatre."^[22] He left hospital after eight weeks and returned to directing after six months.^[23] The following year, Ayckbourn announced he would step down as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre.^[24] He continues, however, to write and direct his own work at the theatre.

Since the time Ayckbourn's plays became established in the West End, interviewers have raised the question of whether his work is autobiographical.^[25] There is no clear answer to this question. There has been only one biography, written by Paul Allen, which primarily covers his career in the theatre.^[26] Ayckbourn has frequently said he sees aspects of himself in all of his characters. InBedroom Farce (1975), for example, he admitted to being, in some respects, all four of the men in the play.^[27] It has been suggested that, after Ayckbourn himself, the person who is used most often in his plays is his mother, particularly as Susan inWoman in Mind^[28] (1985).

What is less clear is the extent to which events in Ayckbourn's life have influenced his writing. It is true that the theme of marriages in difficulty was heavily present throughout his plays in the early seventies, at about the time his own marriage was coming to an end. However, by that time, he had also witnessed the failure of his parents' relationships and those of some of his friends.^[25] Which relationships, if any, he drew on for his plays, is unclear. In Paul Allen's biography, Ayckbourn is briefly compared with Dafydd and Guy inA Chorus of Disapproval (1984). Both characters feel themselves to be in trouble and there was speculation that Ayckbourn himself might have felt the same way. At the time, he had reportedly become seriously involved with another actress, which threatened his relationship with Stoney.^[29] It is unclear whether this had any effect on the writing; Paul Allen's view is that Ayckbourn did not use his personal experiences to write his plays.

It is possible that Ayckbourn wrote plays with himself and his own situation in mind but, as Ayckbourn is portrayed as a guarded and private man,^[26] it is hard to imagine him exposing his own life in his plays to any great degree. In the biography, Paul Allen writes, with regard to a suggestion inCosmopolitan that Ayckbourn's plays were becoming autobiographical: "If we take that to mean that his plays tell his own life story, he still hasn't started."^[25]

On leaving school, Ayckbourn's theatrical career began immediately, when his French master introduced him to SirDonald Wolfit.^[30] Ayckbourn joined Wolfit on tour to theEdinburgh Festival Fringe as an acting assistant stage manager (a role that involved both acting and stage management) for three weeks.^[2][31] His first experiences on the professional stage were various roles inThe Strong are Lonely byFritz Hochwälder.^[32] In the following year, Ayckbourn appeared in six other plays at the Connaught Theatre,Worthing^[2][33] and the Thorndike theatre,Leatherhead.^[2][34]

In 1957, Ayckbourn was employed by the directorStephen Joseph at the Library Theatre,Scarborough, the predecessor to the modernStephen Joseph Theatre.^[2][8] Again, his role was initially as acting stage manager.^[2][8] 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 wasThe Square Cat, written under the pseudonym Roland Allen and first performed in 1959.^[35] In this play, Ayckbourn himself played the character of Jerry Watiss.^[32]

In 1962, after thirty-four appearances in plays at the Library Theatre, including four of his own, Ayckbourn moved toStoke-on-Trent to help set up the Victoria Theatre (now theNew Vic),^[36] where he appeared in a further eighteen plays.^[32] His final appearance in one of his own plays was as the Crimson Gollywog in the disastrous children's playChristmas v Mastermind.^[37] He left the Stoke company in 1964, officially to commit his time to the London production ofMr. Whatnot, but reportedly because was having trouble working with the artistic director,Peter Cheeseman.^[38] By now, his career as a writer was coming to fruition and his acting career was sidelined.

His final role on stage was as Jerry inTwo for the Seesaw byWilliam Gibson, at theCivic Theatre inRotherham.^[32] He was left stranded on stage because Heather Stoney (his future wife) was unable to re-appear due to her props not being ready for use. This led to his conclusion that acting was more trouble than it was worth.^[39] The assistant stage manager on the production,Bill Kenwright, would go on to become one of the UK's most successful producers.

Ayckbourn's first play,The Square Cat, was sufficiently popular locally to secure further commissions, although neither this nor the following three plays had much impact beyond Scarborough.^[40] After his transfer toVictoria Theatre inStoke-on-Trent,Christmas v Mastermind, flopped; this play is now universally regarded as Ayckbourn's greatest disaster.^[41][42]

Ayckbourn's fortunes revived in 1963 withMr. Whatnot, which also premiered at the Victoria Theatre. This was the first play that Ayckbourn was sufficiently happy with to allow continued performances today, and the first play to receive aWest End performance. However, the West End production flopped, in part due to misguided casting.^[43][44] After this, Ayckbourn experimented by collaborating with comedians, first writing a monologue forTommy Cooper, and later withRonnie Barker, who played Lord Slingsby-Craddock in the London production ofMr Whatnot in 1964, on the scripts forLWT'sHark at Barker. Ayckbourn used the pseudonym Peter Caulfield because he was under exclusive contract to theBBC at the time.^[45]

In 1965, back at the Scarborough Library Theatre,Meet my Father was produced, and later retitledRelatively Speaking. This time, the play was a massive success, both in Scarborough and in the West End, earning Ayckbourn a congratulatory telegram fromNoël Coward.^[46][47] This was not quite the end of Ayckbourn's hit-and-miss record. His next play,The Sparrow ran for only three weeks at Scarborough^[48][49] but the following play,How the Other Half Loves, secured his runaway success as a playwright.^[50][51]

The height of Ayckbourn's commercial success came with plays such asAbsurd Person Singular (1975),The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973),Bedroom Farce (1975) andJust Between Ourselves (1976). These plays focused heavily on marriage in the British middle classes. The only failure during this period was a 1975 musical withAndrew Lloyd Webber,Jeeves; even this did little to dent Ayckbourn's career.^[52][53]

From the 1980s, Ayckbourn moved away from the recurring theme of marriage to explore other contemporary issues. One example wasWoman in Mind, a play performed entirely from the perspective of a woman going through a nervous breakdown.^[54][55] He also experimented with unconventional ways of writing plays:Intimate Exchanges, for example, has one beginning and sixteen possible endings, and inHouse & Garden, two plays take place simultaneously on two separate stages. He also diversified into children's theatre, such asMr A's Amazing Maze Plays and musical plays, such asBy Jeeves (a more successful rewrite of the originalJeeves).

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 is one of England's most successful living playwrights. Despite his success, honours and awards (which include a prestigiousLaurence Olivier Award), Alan Ayckbourn remains a relatively anonymous figure, dedicated to regional theatre.^[56] Throughout his writing career, all but four of his plays premiered at theStephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in its three different locations.^[2]

Ayckbourn received the CBE in 1987^[2][57] and was knighted in the1997 New Year Honours.^[2][21] It is frequently claimed^[58] (but not proved)^[59] that Alan Ayckbourn is the most performed living English playwright, and the second most performed of all time, afterShakespeare.

Although Ayckbourn's plays no longer dominate the theatrical scene on the scale of his earlier works, he continues to write. Among major success has beenPrivate Fears in Public Places, which had a hugely successfulOff-Broadway run at59E59 Theaters and, in 2006, was made into a film,Cœurs, directed byAlain Resnais.^[60] After Ayckbourn suffered a stroke, there was uncertainty as to whether he could continue to write.^[61] The play that premiered immediately after his stroke,If I Were You, had been written before his illness; the first play written afterwards,Life and Beth, premiered in the summer of 2008. Ayckbourn continues to write for the Stephen Joseph Theatre on the invitation of his successor as artistic director, Chris Monks. The first new play under this arrangement,My Wonderful Day, was performed in October 2009.^[62]

Ayckbourn continues to experiment with theatrical form. The playRoundelay opened in September 2014; before each performance, members of the audience are invited to extract five coloured ping pong balls from a bag, leaving the order in which each of the five acts is played left to chance, and allowing 120 possible permutations.^[63] InArrivals and Departures (2013), the first half of the play is told from the point of view of one character, only for the second half to dramatise the same events from the point of view of another.

Many of Ayckbourn's plays, includingPrivate Fears in Public Places,Intimate Exchanges,My Wonderful Day andNeighbourhood Watch, have had their New York premiere at59E59 Theaters as part of the annual Brits Off Broadway Festival.

In 2019, Ayckbourn had published his first novel,The Divide, which had previously been showcased during a reading at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.

As a consequence of the Covid lockdown, Ayckbourn's 2020 play,Anno Domino, was recorded as a radio production, with Ayckbourn and his wife Heather playing all the roles. Similarly, Ayckbourn's Covid-period 2021 play,The Girl Next Door, was streamed online and made available behind a paywall on the Stephen Joseph Theatre's website.

In 2022, the first Ayckbourn play in around 60 years premiered in a venue other than Scarborough:All Lies at the Old Laundry in Bowness-on-Windermere.

Although Ayckbourn is best known as a writer, it is said that he only spends 10% of his time writing plays. Most of the remaining time is spent directing.^[64]

Ayckbourn began directing at theScarborough Library Theatre in 1961, with a production ofGaslight byPatrick Hamilton.^[64][65] During that year and the next, he directed five other plays in Scarborough and, after transferring to theVictoria Theatre, in 1963 directed a further six plays. Between 1964 and 1967, much of his time was taken up by various productions of his early successes,Mr. Whatnot andRelatively Speaking and he directed only one play,The Sparrow, which he wrote and which was later withdrawn. In 1968, he resumed directing plays regularly, mostly at Scarborough.^[65] At this time he also worked as a radio drama producer for the BBC, based in Leeds.

At first, his directing career was kept separate from his writing career. It was not until 1963 that Ayckbourn directed a play of his own (a revival ofStanding Room Only) and 1967 before he directed a premiere of his own (The Sparrow).^[65] The London premieres remained in the hands of other directors for longer; the first of his own plays to be directed by him in London wasBedroom Farce, in 1977.^[66][67]

After the death ofStephen Joseph in 1967, the Director of Productions was appointed on an annual basis. Ayckbourn was offered the position in 1969 and 1970, succeeding Rodney Wood, but he handed the position over to Caroline Smith in 1971, having spent most that year in the US withHow the Other Half Loves. He became Director of Productions again in 1972 and, on 12 November of that year, he was made the permanent artistic director of the theatre.^[68]

In mid-1986, Ayckbourn accepted an invitation to work as a visiting director for two years at theNational Theatre in London, to form his own company, and perform a play in each of the three auditoria, provided at least one was a new play of his own.^[69] He used a stock company that included performers such asMichael Gambon,Polly Adams andSimon Cadell. The three plays became four:Tons of Money byWill Evans andValentine, with adaptations by Ayckbourn (Lyttelton);Arthur Miller'sA View From the Bridge (Cottesloe); his own playA Small Family Business (Olivier) andJohn Ford's'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Olivier again).^[70] During this time, Ayckbourn shared his role of artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre with Robin Herford^[69][71] and returned in 1987 to direct the premiere ofHenceforward....^[67][71]

He announced in 1999 that he would step back from directing the work of other playwrights, to concentrate on his own plays,^[72] the last one beingRob Shearman'sKnights in Plastic Armour in 1999; he made one exception in 2002, when he directed the world premiere ofTim Firth'sThe Safari Party.^[73]

In 2002, following a dispute over theDuchess Theatre's handling ofDamsels in Distress, Ayckbourn sharply criticised both this and theWest End's treatment of theatre in general and, in particular, their casting of celebrities.^[74] Although he did not explicitly say he would boycott the West End, he did not return to direct in there again until 2009, with a revival ofWoman in Mind.^[75] He did, however, allow other West End producers to reviveAbsurd Person Singular^[76] in 2007 andThe Norman Conquests^[77] in 2008.

Ayckbourn suffered a stroke in February 2006 and returned to work in September; the premiere of his 70th playIf I Were You at the Stephen Joseph Theatre came the following month.^[78]

He announced in June 2007 that he would retire as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre after the 2008 season.^[24] His successor, Chris Monks, took over at the start of the 2009–2010 season^[79] but Ayckbourn remained to direct premieres and revivals of his work at the theatre, beginning withHow the Other Half Loves in June 2009.^[80]

In March 2010, he directed an in-the-round revival of his playTaking Steps at theOrange Tree Theatre, winning universal press acclaim.^[81]

In July 2014, Ayckbourn directed a musical adaptation ofThe Boy Who Fell into A Book, with musical adaptation and lyrics by Paul James and music by Eric Angus and Cathy Shostak. The show ran in The Stephen Joseph Theatre and received critical acclaim.

• 1973:Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, forAbsurd Person Singular
• 1974:Evening Standard Award, Best Play, forThe Norman Conquests
• 1977:Evening Standard Award, Best Play, forJust Between Ourselves
• 1981: HonoraryDoctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) fromUniversity of Hull
• 1985:Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, forA Chorus of Disapproval
• 1985:Laurence Olivier Award, Best Comedy, forA Chorus of Disapproval
• 1986:Freedom of the Borough ofScarborough.^[82]
• 1987:Evening Standard Award, Best Play, forA Small Family Business
• 1987: Plays and Players Award
• 1987: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) fromKeele University
• 1987: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) fromUniversity of Leeds
• 1987: Commander of theOrder of the British Empire (CBE)
• 1989:Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, forHenceforward...
• 1990:Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, forMan of the Moment
• 1997:Knight Bachelor
• 1998: HonoraryDoctor of the University degree (D.Univ.) fromOpen University
• 2008: Induction into theAmerican Theater Hall of Fame^[83]
• 2009: Laurence Olivier Special Award
• 2009:The Critics' Circle annual award for Distinguished Service to the Arts
• 2011: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) fromYork St. John University

Ayckbourn also sits on the Council ofthe Society of Authors.^[84] He is also a longtime patron of Next Stage Theatre Company, an amateur theatre company based in Bath.

Alan Ayckbourn has written eight one-act plays. Five of them (Mother Figure,Drinking Companion,Between Mouthfuls,Gosforth's Fete andWidows Might) were written forConfusions, first performed in 1974.

The other three one-act plays are:

• Countdown, first performed in 1962, most well known as part ofMixed Doubles, a set of short one-act plays and monologues contributed by nine different authors.
• Ernie's Incredible Illucinations, written in 1969 for a collection of short plays and intended for performance by schools.^[88]
• A Cut in the Rates, performed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1984, and filmed for a BBC documentary.

• Ayckbourn, Alan (2002).The Crafty Art of Playmaking. UK: Faber and Faber.ISBN 0-571-21509-2.
• Ayckbourn, Alan (2003).The Crafty Art of Playmaking. USA: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN 1-4039-6229-4.
• Ayckbourn, Alan (2019)The Divide. UK: PS Publishing. ISBN 978-1-786364-47-0.

Plays adapted as films include:

• A Chorus of Disapproval (play) filmed asA Chorus of Disapproval (1988 film), directed byMichael Winner;
• Intimate Exchanges (play) filmed asSmoking/No Smoking (1993 film), directed byAlain Resnais;
• The Revengers' Comedies (play) filmed asThe Revengers' Comedies (also known asSweet Revenge), directed byMalcolm Mowbray;
• Private Fears in Public Places (play) filmed asCœurs (2006 film) directed byAlain Resnais.
• Life of Riley (play) filmed asLife of Riley (2014 film) directed byAlain Resnais.

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