Sir Alan Ayckbourn,Two Interviews by Stacey Morley..page7

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Two Interviews:Sir Alan Ayckbourn...page7

^{written by:} Stacey Morley

Interview of July 29, 1997:

S.M.- For me as an actor in training - if theatre didn't happen again we wouldn't die but for you and me it's something which we would hope to spend the rest of our lives in - it's a need, something we need to do but for the average individual outside, they don't particularly feel that that's the case but if we look at the history of theatre, Society informs theatre and theatre informs Society in the sense of what humans need.

A.A.- Well it's all related. I mean we need our storytelling.

S.M.- Thank you so much Sir Alan for giving up your lunch hour, I really appreciate this opportunity to interview you. I'm sure 'Things We Do For Love' will have a successful transfer to The West End.

Interview of April 2, 1998:©

S.M.- I would like to ask what you saw Stephen Joseph's legacy to be?

A.A.- Well. several things. He of course was enormously influencial in introducing back into this country if you like, The Round, but more than that he opened up the whole prospect of open staging. There were no 'professional' stages around when I started in the 1950's, except for the temporary. There was no Chichester, no Bolton, no Crucible which had direct influence from Stephen and I suppose indirectly two of the three auditoriums at The National had open staging and this all came about, I think, because of Stephen and not just him but a small group of men who formed the A.B.T.T. (Association of British Theatre Technicians) which was the first time theatre practitioners had attempted to put together the legacy of theatre building. So many theatres in this century have been built entirely by town planners - probably never having gone through a pass door into back stage. There are disastrous pieces of building that are built by people who didn't understand and although one might argue places like some of the West End theatres are sight lines - the sight lines are appalling for a modern play, but they were never designed for that, they were only intended to see one actor which was the actor/manager in the centre of the stage but what they did have, and what many people forgot, is that they had wonderful acoustics - all that plaster and red velvet was there for a very good reason. So when we come to build our two great national auditoria, The Olivier and The Littleton, they are both acoustically severely imperfect buildings and they are having to be redesigned at great cost but I think Stephen's thing was to formulate the process of theatre design.

S.M.- Apart from the theatre building side did he have a particular vision on the type of theatre that should be performed?

A.A.- He like 'The-Round'. He was not too fond of what he called the compromises between 'The- Round' and the Proscenium. He didn't like three sided stages very much and I know why, I don't either. The reason being is that you can finish up with the worst of both worlds. I mean I don't like particularly theatres like Sheffield where the actors have terrible trouble focusing; they have a small amount of audience at the side so you tend to play to the front, so the side audience always feels slightly cheated. The sight lines are all peculiar. He, I think, felt that theatre particularly sort of mid 20th century should begin to address itself to people rather than the elite stalls, slightly elite dress circle and rather a commoner upper circle, he was very keen to bring the audience as whole, back into the proximity of the theatre. So he felt very strongly about it being in the Round but that was dictated not just by his passion for architecture it was also his passion for re-establishing the basics of theatre, actors and audience. He had practically no time at all for Directors, he had very little time for designers except purely as supplementary. Light, sound he liked as ingredients because they were much more supportive of actors. In the end he had sort of three ingredients and I suppose he would have thrown one of those out if he thought it would help. He had a writer, he had his actors and he had his audience.

S.M.- As far as the writings were concerned, was what he was giving the audience in terms of content important to him?

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