I have finished reading all the plays of Stewart Parker. Now I am concentrating on the work of Alan Ayckbourn. Alan Ayckbourn is a British playwright known for his suburban farces. He seems like the ideal playwright because he captures the foibles of life in the suburbs. I have lived in the suburbs all my life and it seems perfectly normal to me, the picture of the quotidian, the reality of life. So plays set in the suburbs are plays that reflect real life as far as I’m concerned. It is a quiet life without a lot of drama so the playwright must focus on the drama of interpersonal relationships. Suburbs in the UK are not quite the same as suburbs in the United States, but they are close enough to be recognizable in general.
There is a wealth of material available for studying Alan Ayckbourn‘s work. There is a biography, Grinning At The Edge, and his book on playwriting, The Crafty Art of Playmaking. There are 2 Grove Press collections of his plays and Faber & Faber numbered collections of his plays. I am familiar with that type of collection from previous UK playwrights I’ve studied. Alan Ayckbourn is a great comedic writer and everything he writes seems very witty and entertaining. For the student of the farce, he must be considered the modern master. That is how I discovered his work, by asking for recommendations of good farces. There are earlier farces such as the work of Georges Feydeau, active during the Belle Epoche in France, and a period of French farces and Victorian farces by long-forgotten playwrights like John Maddison Morton. I don’t think anything by John Maddison Morton is in print but you can find his scripts online. It may be possible to find unknown French farces that only require a good grasp of French, but I am studying Spanish so I have no time for learning another language.
