Alan Ayckbourn



Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE (born 12 April 1939) is one of England's most prolific and commercially successful comic playwrights.

Quotes

 * Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.
 * Preface to The Norman Conquests (New York: Grove Press, [1975] 1988) p. 11.
 * There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.
 * Newsweek (25 March 1979).
 * A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?
 * "A Crash Course in Playwriting" (1993).
 * The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.
 * The Crafty Art of Playwriting (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 3.
 * They've started this filthy floodlit cricket with cricketers wearing tin hats and advertisements for contraceptives on their boots.
 * A Gardener in Love, Intimate Exchanges (1982).

About Ayckbourn

 * Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.
 * Press release by the Arts Council of Great Britain (2 November 1983).
 * Reputed to be the source of the common, but unsubstantiated, statement that Ayckbourn is the second most performed playwright after Shakespeare.