Towards Ayckbournia in Germany

Alan Ayckbourn, one of England’s best-known director-playwrights, has so far written more than 80 stage plays, which he has directed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, Yorkshire, his very own ‘Ayckbournia.’ The first part of this volume deals with the make-up of Ayckbourn’s work and introduces the reader to some of the specifics of the SJT. The success of the English productions has ‒ over the past decades ‒ inspired theatre directors elsewhere to stage Ayckbourn’s plays in translation. The main part of this publication gives an insight into German productions of the ‘bard’s’ plays in German theatres: Where have they been staged? In which German cities? What have theatre critics had to say? How have the productions been received by German audiences? Which of the plays have been on the programme for a relatively long time? One may ask what lies behind the interest German theatregoers show in Ayckbourn’s plays, in English comedy in general. Alan Ayckbourn himself, a little tongue-in-cheek, told me of a woman who, after attending a performance of one of his plays, admitted to him that she wouldn’t have laughed so much if she had known what she was laughing about. English comedies have more than one dimension. There is something lurking under their entertaining surface.