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Alan Ayckbourn's programme note for the Stephen Joseph Theatre,
Scarborough, 2004
During the 80s and 90s, the distinguished French film director Alain Resnais
visited Scarborough on a number of occasions professing himself a fan of my
work. Indeed, later on he made a film version of Intimate Exchanges
which he re-titled Smoking/No Smoking. Typically, Alain chose from
the then current catalogue of around 45 plays a theatrical two-handed
marathon which boasted, on-stage, 16 different endings. Alain managed 12
over two films. Not bad going, I felt; and certainly one of the better film
versions of my work to date.
One year I asked Alain what he felt it was that drew us together, both of us
at first glance so different in style and content. He shrewdly observed that
whilst he considered his approach to films to be in terms of the stage play,
I on the other hand tended, it seemed to him, to approach stage plays as
though they were films. In other words, he made plays for the movies, I made
movies for the stage.
And it is indeed true that all my earlier childhood theatrical memories came
from films and rarely from the stage. Blessedly, I grew up during a period
when every English town, however small, boasted at least 3 cinemas.
These all showed double bills offering an 'A' and 'B' feature which changed
over mid-week. In addition, on Sunday (For One Day Only) they also showed a
totally different double bill. In other words, each showed on average 6
films a week; with 3 cinemas to choose from during the long summer holidays
there were 18 films playing in continuous performance from 2 pm through to
10 pm. My step-brother and I saw them all. Twice. Actually we preferred the
second viewing because we were able to anticipate the surprises and twists
and infuriate the other picture-goers.
Amongst these were some of the worst movies ever made - The Jungle Jim
series sticks in my memory especially (he fought most of the wildlife of
Africa bare-handed but never lost his hat) - but with so many films to
choose from, inevitably we hit a good one now and then. Some of the classic
films noir - the Ealing Comedies, Powell and Pressburger's groundbreaking
canon and those of Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder. Later
on came Rene Clair, Bunuel, Cocteau and a whole host of new wave European
directors.
I can't recall ever actually going to the theatre. At least not straight
theatre, not until well into my teens. A yearly visit to the current Crazy
Gang Christmas show at the Victoria Palace and that was the sum of my
juvenile theatre-going. Oh, and my mother once mistakenly took me to an
'adult' topless cabaret which I enjoyed quite a bit.
No, movies dominated everything. I can't really recall how I came to arrive
in theatre at all. By rights I should have run away at 10 and become a
clapper boy. The engagement with live theatre just sort of happened.
Probably, I suspect, because both my boarding schools, whilst extremely
active with stage drama, offered little or no opportunity for film making.
But still, the result was that when I embarked on my theatrical writing
career aged 19 my influences were definitely filmic. And have been, more or
less, ever since. This is not to deny the debt I owe to many of my
influential theatrical peers, H. Pinter, A. Chekhov and all. But none has
been as influential as Stan Laurel.
Which may explain why my plays, unless very drastically adapted, tend not to
translate into good movies. They are movies to begin with. Sometimes closer
to celluloid than others.
When I was approached by someone wanting to turn my two-part play The
Revengers' Comedies into a film my immediate reaction was - but it's
already a film. A very successful one too, Hitchcock's Strangers On a
Train. I had merely taken the initial concept, bent and reshaped it,
added references to well over 20 other movies and served it up on stage.
On other occasions, the references are slightly less obvious. But Bedroom
Farce's very filmic use of the cross-cut, How The Other Half Loves' use of
the superimposed, split-screen shot and most especially all my children's
plays - are movies set on stage.
Private Fears In Public Places is another. Not especially in content
- though you may spot an occasional (unintentional) reference. But in style,
construction and even, in a way, overall feel.
Welcome to the Theatre. Happy movie-going!
Alan Ayckbourn's preface to Alan Ayckbourn
- Plays 3
Private Fears in Public Places was a title I'd had in
reserve for several years but never got round to using. Nevertheless, like a
composer with a good tune, I stored it away for later use.
It's an unusually structured play, constructed in fifty-four short scenes,
which is unheard of for me. Indeed, I am generally critical of writers who
adopt this so-called celluloid approach to stage-play construction. It
suggests a laziness, a failure to create a proper dramatic concentration of
stage movement which, ideally, should present an uninterrupted narrative
flow. In theatre, using this multiple short-scene technique, a sort of
dramatic indigestion can easily set in, making for a series of irritating
scenic hiccups. In this case, with each of the fifty-four scene changes
lasting, say, thirty seconds, an audience could face a prospect of sitting
for twenty-seven minutes in the dark whilst people dressed in black
furtively shifted furniture.
Yet, given the nature of my story, or rather stories, this multi-scene
structure was precisely the one I needed to use. To compensate, therefore,
it was vital that the set was a permanent one, containing within it the
multiple fixed locations. That each scene would glide seamlessly into the
next, following the fragments of the characters' lives as they collided with
each other like so much solar debris adrift in space. On this occasion,
composition not only reflected the. requirements of the narrative but also
echoed the central theme of the play itself. That our lives are linked more
closely than we realise. That the actions of individuals, however
involuntary they may be, will often create ripples which turn into waves and
finally rock some stranger's craft moored miles away on some distant shore.
It's such a new play that, at the time of writing, I can say little more
about it. I think, I suspect, it explores new ground for me, in theme,
character and structure. But in drama, it is of course a mistake to believe
one has ever written anything truly original. In the main, it's about the
re-telling of old stories, some of them often familiar. But as the old comic
once remarked, it's all in the way you tell them, mate.
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