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| The poster for the London premiere of Things We Do For Love in 1998. |
> The world premiere was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 29 April 1997.
> The London premiere was held at the Gielgud Theatre on 3 March 1998; it would transfer to the Duchess Theatre on 26 August 1998.
> Things We Do For Love was only the fourth play Alan Ayckbourn wrote specifically for end-stage performance and the first Ayckbourn play to be performed in the end-stage at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough (the end-stage question is slightly complex, see note at foot of the page).
> The motivation for writing an end-stage play was partly derived from a funding crisis which hit the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the months after the new venue had opened in 1996. Facing calls to cut costs and to close The McCarthy auditorium, Alan Ayckbourn instead wrote a play specifically for the end-stage space.
> One of the play's inspirations was a from the movie In The Line Of Fire in which Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo passionately strip each other, but it is shot entirely from floor level so we see only the characters' feet and their clothes falling to the floor. Things We Do For Love similarly features a sex scene in which we can only see the feet of the protagonists and the foot of the bed they end up in.
> Alan Ayckbourn won the Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year for Things We Do For Love. He was the first and last recipient of the award which closed in the months following the initial award.
> The play was adapted for the radio by the BBC and directed by Gordon House, a veteran adaptor of Alan Ayckbourn's plays for the radio. It featured Joanna van Gyseghem, Teresa Gallagher and Cameron Stewart reprising their roles from the original Scarborough production.
> It is the first Ayckbourn play to feature the 'F' word.
> Things We Do For Love has the distinction of being the Ayckbourn play whose title is incorrectly reported the most frequently. It is constantly referred to as The Things We Do For Love rather than just Things We Do For Love.
Things We Do For Love opens at the Theatre Royal Bath from 16 - 26 April, 2014, before going on tour; details of which will be announced soon.
* The number of plays Alan Ayckbourn considers he has written for the end-stage can be a confusing one as he has written plays originally produced in the end-stage which he does not consider end-stage and also plays originally produced in the round, which he considers are end-stage!
Alan considers the following plays as his end-stage plays: Bedroom Farce, A Small Family Business, Haunting Julia, Things We Do For Love and Virtual Reality. All these plays were conceived in the playwright's mind as end-stage productions and generally work best there. However, both Bedroom Farce and Haunting Julia were originally produced three-sided and have been successfully produced in the round. Arguably, they work best in the end-stage for which they were originally conceived though.
Just to complicate matters, the world premieres of Jeeves and House (from House & Garden) took place in the end-stage, but Alan does not consider them end-stage plays as he did not conceive them specifically for end-stage performance, that just happened to be the staging they were first produced in.
