Transcript IV. An Interview with Alan Ayckbourn

Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
Part Two
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
Background Information
I.
Author
II.
Synopsis of Act I
III. Archive for Man of the Moment
IV. An Interview with Alan Ayckbourn
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
I.
Author
Alan Ayckbourn, born in 1939, British
playwright, actor, and theater director, best
known for his farcical dramas about the British
middle class. He went straight into the theatre
as a stage manager after leaving school. He is
now a full-time theatre director. Working both
at the Royal National Theatre in London and at
the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round,
Scarborough. He has written over 50 comedies,
many of them works of startling technical
ingenuity with surprising quantities of pain and
sorrow in them.
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
I.
Author
He is one of the world’s most
commercially successful dramatists,
and has demonstrated over a long and
constantly evolving career that it is
possible to both a popular and a
serious artist. He has been called
“wildly funny and deeply tragic”, “a
left-wing writer using a right-wing
form”, and “the most acute analyst of
contemporary British society”,
although he occasionally insists that
his only intention is to entertain.
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
I.
Author
Ayckbourn’s plays are often noted for their
interesting use of theatrical sets, as in The
Norman Conquests, a trilogy of plays that show,
respectively, simultaneous events in the dining
room, living room, and garden of the same
house during one weekend. The plays House
(1999) and Garden (1999) take place on a
single day and were designed to be performed
simultaneously, by the same cast, in adjacent
theaters. As Ayckbourn’s writing has matured,
the themes of his plays have become more
serious and the farce has become darker.
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
I.
Author
Other plays include Absurd
Person Singular, Intimate
Exchanges (a series of plays
with sixteen different
endings, all with the same
main characters and
opening scene), Woman in
Mind, and A Small Family
Business. His life and views
are entertainingly recorded
in Conversations with
Ayckbourn by Ian Watson.
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The end of Author.
Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
II.
Synopsis of Act I
The present text is Act II. The story goes like
this in Act I:
It was 17 years ago that Vic Parks and
Douglas Beechey first met, when Vic attempted
to rob the bank where Douglas worked. Douglas
foiled the robbery and became a hero, feted by
the media. Meanwhile Vic was sentenced to a
10-year prison sentence.
Seventeen years on and where are they both?
The media attention soon faded for mild
mannered Douglas and he drifted back into
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
II.
Synopsis of Act 1
obscurity, leaving the bank to work for a double
glazing company.
Vic meantime discovered an interest and
talent for writing whilst in prison and
proceeded to develop a successful publishing
and then TV career upon finishing his sentence.
Now living in a villa, complete with
swimming pool, in Spain, Vic has agreed to
appear in the TV show “Their Paths Crossed”.
The host Jill Rillington intends to bring together,
17 years on, Vic with Douglas Beechey—the
unassuming clerk who foiled the robbery.
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
II.
Synopsis of Act 1
Jill hopes to exploit the irony that although
Douglas had a brief 15 minutes of fame and
married his true love—incidentally maimed during
the raid—the man who has found true success
and celebrity is the villain. Expecting jealousy,
envy and bitterness from Douglas.
Now they are to be reunited at Vic’s
Mediterranean home. How will they react to
seeing each other once again and what effect will
their meeting have on Vic’s long suffering wife
Trudy?
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The end of Synopsis of Act 1.
Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
III. Archive for Man of the
Moment
Man of the Moment is one of
Ayckbourn’s typically very dark comedies in
which nothing is quite what it seems or as
clear cut as appearances would first indicate.
The play was presented in London in 1990,
becoming a joint winner of the Evening
Standard Best Comedy Award in the same
year. In 1990 it was also nominated for “the
Play of the Year”.
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The end of Archive for Man of the Moment.
Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
IV. An Interview with Alan
Ayckbourn
Clare Coulson interviews Sir Alan Ayckbourn
and gives a brief insight into the mind of Britain’s
most famous contemporary playwright.
Q: Where do you get your inspiration from?
A: Various places, snatches; fragments; I wait for
them to accumulate. I never start a play with
one idea, usually several, usually one is the
•
theme. The theme
really just occurs, I
sometimes look around deliberately but most
ideas have been expressed before, it’s finding
a different way to tell it. I've gone through
various convoluted ways of telling stories,
some interesting and unusual,
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
IV. An Interview with Alan
Ayckbourn
Damsels in Distress (three plays currently
showing at Durham’s Gala Theatre) are
examples of that, they share the same set and
company but change their personality with
each totally different play. A lot of good work
comes from actors working together and
trusting one another. I don’t know where the
ideas come from in the end is the short
answer!
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
IV. An Interview with Alan
Ayckbourn
Q: You said that there’s a bit of you in every
character and that there was a bit of your
mother in Mrs. Saxon, I was wondering how
this is the case as your characters are so
diverse and such separate entities?
A: There’s bits of me. I can remember writing
Kelly, feeling like Kelly. They all stem from
something within myself. I think there is a
male and female side within all of us. Mine are
relatively balanced. There seems to be quite a
lot
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
IV. An Interview with Alan
Ayckbourn
to draw on because of this. Men have a lot of
problems writing about women because they
don’t see the similarities.
Q: How do you feel about other representations
and interpretations of your work, do you
welcome them or do you ever feel they are
totally misrepresented?
A: Most of them I’d say—I don’t see a lot, they
upset me, I said in an interview once, it’s like
someone drawing a moustache onto your baby!
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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
IV. An Interview with Alan
Ayckbourn
I don't really like it that much. I’ve become so
much the writer-director that I have so much
more control over my material. In fact my
career grew separately, I wasn’t by any means
intending to direct my plays but I lost my
regular director and realised if I was authoring
it originally why not continue and now I
couldn’t tell you where it starts and it stops.
I've got a new one Snake in the Grass and I
already can see how it will be.
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The end of An Interview with Alan Ayckbourn.
Lesson 5—Man of the Moment
Part Two
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