Show & Tell: Interviews
These pages contains interviews with Alan Ayckbourn about his play Show & Tell. For the other interviews about the play, click on the links in the right hand column below.The interview below with Alan Ayckbourn was conducted by Nick Ahad and was broadcast on Front Row on BBC Radio 4 on 6 May 2024.
Show & Tell: Nick Ahad interviews Alan Ayckbourn
So Show & Tell is indeed a backward look. Because I thought, how am I going to celebrate number 90? And I thought, well, what have I been doing all my life? And I think it is in a sense, in part, a celebration of theatre.
It is about a very small fringe company. It's a tiny, tiny company that is living on its uppers, really. I mean, it's in danger of closure, as indeed our company was at the very beginning. And I'm looking right back to the early days of Stephen Joseph, when we didn't have a permanent home and we used to just set up. So this is a company really up against it.
And performing to the other side of the story, in real life, there's a man with severe dementia. He lets this company into his house. It's a sort of company, one of those companies that perform in your front room. One of those real in-your-face companies. And he invites them in.
Nick Ahad: There's a quote from the play. One of the characters says, 'You set out determined to give the public what you feel they need and finish up desperately trying to give them something you hope they want. Somewhere in between, you do your best to compromise, finally settling for something they quite enjoy with something you're still reasonably proud of.' Is that something that's informed your career?
That's very much my career. In the 1950s, way back then, I joined a company with Stephen Joseph’s lot here in Scarborough and we were playing in the library and Stephen had a policy of, 'It didn't matter who you were.' And I was just the stage manager. And he determined to get everyone writing because he wanted to generate writers from within the company.
I was already practicing writing, but he commissioned me to write a play. But I knew very well that this was the devil and the deep blue sea. I was a stage manager who was also acting. So I had to write something which my fellow actors in the dressing room would not lynch me if they thought it was total rubbish. So I had to write them something worth playing.
But I had to also fill that 200 seat theatre-in-the-round with something that people wanted to come and see. So it had to be comic. It had to be entertaining. So I became an experimental and commercial writer, really, by definition.
My first few plays, they were all hijinks, Scarborough jollies. And it was only later I began to start writing my characters in some depth as I began to realise that I was building an audience and they were trusting me. I edged more and more towards bigger, deeper plays. It's been a very gradual process.
But the trouble is that although a lot of me is slowing down - I mean, I'm now wheelchair-bound - there's a part of me that's still steaming away. And I've written this year's play. I wrote it last year, Show and Tell. And I've written the one after already, 2025's play. And I'm working on 2026's play. So I'm already thinking, "Stop, head. Please stop."
So it's been a long journey, but it's been an interesting one. And I think the audience has held onto my hand quite sweetly over the years.
You began with Scarborough hijinks. Looking back, can you see the imprint of Scarborough on all of your work?
I think so, very much so. I mean, I deliberately stayed here. I've only written plays for here. Occasionally I've written one for the National or a couple for the National. But mostly they've been always with Scarborough in mind. And I've thought, "No, come on. Don't suddenly step away from what was working. If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it."
So I've stayed, I hope, true to my audience. And it's not like - I don't like the phrase - I experiment with the audience here. But I write for them. Because they seem to like the plays that will then go on. And suddenly there's a whole load of French or Germans or Scandinavians laughing at them. And maybe even Americans. Who knows?
But the audience seems to be my test audience. Which almost infallibly give me the vote of confidence or no confidence.
I have to ask, as a cricket man, do you have your eye on a century?
Oh, God. Well, I had my eye on 90. And I'm now skirting 92. So, God knows. I'm 85 years old now. Let's not count our chickens. But I'd like to carry my bat to the hundred.
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