biography
| name: |
Ayckbourn, Sir Alan
|
pronunciation:
[aykbaw(r)n]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1939– )
|
| biography:
| Playwright, born in London, UK. He began his theatrical career as an acting stage manager in repertory before joining Stephen Joseph's Theatre-in-the-Round company at Scarborough. After his first success, Relatively Speaking (1967), he was quickly established as a master of farce. He has made considerable experiments with staging and dramatic structure: The Norman Conquests (1974) is a trilogy in which each play takes place at the same time in a different part of the setting, and Way Upstream (1982) is set on and around a boat and necessitates the flooding of the stage. Among his most successful farces are Absurd Person Singular (1973) and Joking Apart (1979). He has also collaborated in musicals, notably Jeeves (with Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1975), and is recognized as a theatre director. His later plays include Woman in Mind (1986), Man of the Moment (1990), Invisible Friends (1991), Communicating Doors (1995), and Things We Do For Love (1998). In 2000 he directed his 54th and 55th plays, the two interlocking dramas House and Garden respectively, in which the drama unfolds simultaneously in adjacent auditoriums with the same cast He was knighted in 1997. |
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