The Crafty Art of Playmaking - Softcover

Alan Ayckbourn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571215106 ISBN 13: 9780571215102

Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

With over 60 plays written and staged, many playing in the West End or the Royal National Theatre, Alan Ayckbourn's expertise on writing and directing plays is unsurpassed. Here, he shares his tricks of the trade. From helpful hints on writing (Where has your play come from? Where is it going? How does it get there? What is comedy and how do you write it? What is tragedy and how does it work?) to tips on directing (working with actors and technicians, when to listen to the experts, how to cope with rehearsals), the book provides a complete primer for the tyro and a refresher for the more experienced.

About this title

Book Description

For the first time, Alan Ayckbourn shares all his tricks of the playwrights trade. From helpful hints on writing (Where do you start? How do you continue? What is comedy and how do you write it? What istragedy and how does it work?) to tips on directing (How does one work with actors and techinicians? When is it time to listen to the other experts? How does one cope with rehearsals?) the book provides a complete primer for the newcomer and a refresher for those more experienced. Written in Ayckbourn's signature style that combines humor, seriousness and heady air of sophistication Coward would envy, The Crafty Art of Playwmaking. It is a must-have for aspiring playwrights, students of drama and anyone who has ever laughed his way through one of Ayckbourn's plays.

About the Author

Alan Ayckbourn was born in London in 1939 to a violinist father and a mother who was a writer. He left school at seventeen with two 'A' levels and went straight into the theatre. Two years in regional theatre as an actor and stage manager led in 1959 to the writing of his first play, The Square Cat, for Scarborough's Theatre in the Round at the instigation of his then employer and subsequent mentor, Stephen Joseph. Some 75 plays later, his work has been translated into over 35 languages, is performed on stage and television throughout the world and has won countless awards. There have been English and French screen adaptations, the most notable being Alain Resnais' fine film of Private Fears in Public Places.

Major successes include Relatively Speaking, How the Other Half Loves, Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce, A Chorus of Disapproval, The Norman Conquests, A Small Family Business, Henceforward . . ., Comic Potential, Things We Do For Love, and Life of Riley. Surprises was first presented at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and subsequently at the the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in 2012.

In 2009, he retired as Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where almost all his plays have been and continue to be first staged, after 37 years in the post. Knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre, he received the 2010 Critics' Circle Award for Services to the Arts and became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0571215106
• ISBN 13: 9780571215102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192