bt l ew lesson 5—man of the moment part two enter

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Lesson 5—Man of the Moment

Part TwoPart Two

ENTER

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I. Author

II. Synopsis of Act I

III. Archive for Man of the Moment

IV. An Interview with Alan Ayckbourn

Background Background InformationInformation

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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.

I.I. Author Author

To be continued on the next page.

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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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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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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.

I.I. Author Author

The end of Author.

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II.II. Synopsis of Synopsis of Act IAct 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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II.II. Synopsis of Synopsis of Act 1Act 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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II.II. Synopsis of Synopsis of Act 1Act 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?

The end of Synopsis of Act 1.

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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”.

The end of Archive for Man of the Moment.

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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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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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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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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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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.

The end of An Interview with Alan Ayckbourn.


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