60 Years At The SJT: 1969 - 1970

2017 marks the 60th anniversary of Alan Ayckbourn joining the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in 1957. Alan has been indelibly associated with the company since that time as actor, writer, director and Artistic Director.

60 Years At The SJT: 1969 - 1970
After the founder of Scarborough's Library Theatre, Stephen Joseph, had died in 1967, it was not certain who - if anyone - could be found to replace him and take the company forward.
Between 1967 and 1971, the role of the Director of Productions (essentially Artistic Director) was appointed annually and for the first two years, the position had been taken by Rodney Wood.
There is nothing to indicate that Rodney was considered a long-term solution to the need for an Artistic Director though, but the appointment for 1969 did begin to address this situation.
For that year, Alan Ayckbourn was asked to take on the role, despite the fact he was still a full-time employee of the BBC based in Leeds.
Alan agreed and took charge of both the 1969 and 1970 seasons, programming the plays, scheduling, casting actors and directing the majority of the productions.

It was a slightly strange situation as Alan was essentially trying to protect the legacy of Stephen Joseph and help the company survive. But the company was in a precarious position, reduced to just a three month summer season and with no money to pay the Artistic Director; Alan was employed with only the offer of accommodation for the summer available.
Alan also had the pressing problem of having to pretend he was still in Leeds much of the time, getting his secretary to reroute his calls from the BBC to the Library Theatre! As he noted in an interview in 1970 after leaving the BBC: "I was hardly ever there, anyway."
These two years could be seen as the test-bed for Alan and his ability to run the Library Theatre and whether he was capable of running the company successfully; certainly his writing and directing credentials were not in doubt by now.

That Alan was keen to ensure Stephen's legacy of encouraging new writing survived and thrived was also not in doubt; given how the same system had nurtured Alan and given him so much opportunity, it could be taken as a given. Between 1969 and 1970, Alan programmed nine plays at the Library Theatre, five of which were new plays and six were directed by Alan himself.
His championing of new work was also something he was well aware was not something that was prevalent in regional theatres at the time, as he noted in an article written in 1970.
"The new theatres, then, are the most likely to include that play with the grandiose description so often found on playbills, 'World Premiere': theatres with fresh audiences who come prepared. The season at Scarborough, which I've been running myself for the past couple of years, can safely present new plays in over half the programme, thanks mainly to the enlightened policy introduced by its founder, Stephen Joseph, over ten years ago."
Of course, the Library Theatre now had two advantages in its aim to champion new work. The first being the presence of a new play every year by Alan Ayckbourn - the success of which was as close to a guarentee in theatre as possible - as well as royalties from Alan Ayckbourn's West End productions.
The latter had not kicked into high gear yet, but the theatre benefitted substantially from Relatively Speaking's West End premiere in 1967 and was about to become a regular source of income from 1970 when How The Other Half Loves kick-started an almost perpetual Ayckbourn presence in the West End for the next three decades.

It was not all plain sailing though as Alan's first season as Director Of Productions saw the Library Theatre's attendances drop significantly. A point raised by the board at Scarborough Theatre Trust's annual general meeting.
"[The] Secretary felt that the 1969 season had been very successful artistically but there had been a considerable drop in the attendance at the box office which the Trust felt was due to the choice of plays. The Secretary hoped that more consideration would be given to the early season audiences in 1970. Mt Ayckbourn noted this and told the meeting that he was planning to write a musical for the 1970 season."
Whether Alan actually intended to write a musical is open to debate as there is no record of any attempts to write a musical during this period in archive; famously his first musical was the West End flop Jeeves in 1975. Alan was, however, unanimously agreed to be asked to be appointed the Director Of Productions for 1970, which he agreed to.
But it proved to be another challenging year and at the 1970 AGM, it was announced the company had made a loss of £1,330 that year and the minutes recorded the note: "Artistically the season has been excellent, I think we have never before had such a strong and competent company of actors. However, the choice of plays did not make the season a success from a box office point of view."

Alan had been unanimously agreed to be offered the Director Of Productions role in 1970 and whilst all evidence points to the fact Alan would have been offered the job again, it's open to speculation whether - after two loss-making seasons - he was seen as the man to turn things round.
But that decision was about to be taken out of the Trust's hands. Having been censured for running over-budget by £900 for hiring two extra actors that season, resulting in a vote by the Trust that the Artistic Director must not go over-budget, it was announced Alan - not present at the AGM - would not be available to run the theatre in 1971.
It later transpired his unavailability was due to his first Broadway transfer and he would be accompanying How The Other Half Loves on its North American debut tour and transfer to New York.
With Alan away from Scarborough for at least a year, the Library Theatre had to find a new Director Of Productions for 1971 with no guarentee of Alan's involvement in the season.
Would Broadway and the West End tempt Alan away from Scarborough for good?

Ask The Archivist: Confused About Confusions

Ask The Archivist is an occasional feature allowing you to put your Alan Ayckbourn related questions to the playwright's archivist Simon Murgatroyd.
If you have a question regarding any aspect of Alan's work, email it to: admin@alanayckbourn.net (labelled Ask The Archivist) and we'll publish any interesting questions.

Question: I'm confused about Alan Ayckbourn's play Confusions! I've read conflicting reports that all / some / none of the plays are linked. What is the answer?

Answer: The definitive answer - as provided by the playwright - is all the plays are loosely linked. If the play is staged as the author intended - i.e. as in the world premiere at Scarborough and not the London premiere - each play has a loose link to the next. So...

> In Mother Figure, it is mentioned Lucy's husband Harry has been trying to telephone her...
> Harry features in Drinking Companion, having just tried calling his wife. He is served by the hotel's waiter...
> Who is the same waiter who features in Between Mouthfuls, serving dinner to guests including Mr and Mrs Pearce...
> Mrs Pearce - or Councillor Mrs Pearce - also appears in Gosforth's Fete having been sent by the Mayor to open the fete. It is also mentioned Gosforth is a divorced landlord...
> Divorced from Doreen, who appears in A Talk In The Park, mentioning her former husband who is a landlord.

So there is the playwright's definitive answer. Each of the plays has a loose narrative link to the next.

In which case, you might wonder why there is confusion about whether the plays are linked. This essentially boils down to two reasons. The London premiere and the inaccurate assumption that London productions are definitive.
This particularly applies to the well-received London premiere of Confusions which was produced as a star vehicle for John Alderton and Pauline Collins. Rather than casting the play as the playwright intended as an ensemble piece intended to give each actor their moment to shine, John Alderton took the 'lead' part in Drinking Companion, Between Mouthfuls and Gosforth's Fete, unbalancing the play. The main result was that the waiter in Drinking Companion - who has a minor role - then comes to prominence in Between Mouthfuls. As Alderton played Harry in Drinking Companion and the Waiter in Between Mouthfuls, that link was lost. Several publications subsequently made the inappropriate assumption that the London production - which was not even directed by Alan Ayckbourn - reflected the author's intentions and incorrectly noted there only some of the plays were linked.
When studying Alan's plays, it should always be remembered that the definitive production should essentially always be the world premiere, staged in-the-round, featuring an ensemble cast and from the 7th play onwards, directed by Alan Ayckbourn.

Hopefully, that clears up the confusion about Confusions.

Confusions, directed by Alan Ayckbourn, can be seen at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, this summer between 9 July and 26 September. Further details can be found at www.sjt.uk.com.

To submit your question to Ask The Archivist, email Simon Murgatroyd at: admin@alanayckbourn.net labelled Ask The Archivist.

Countdown to 60

Monday saw the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough celebrate its 59th birthday.
It is the venue most associated with Alan Ayckbourn and, it is fair to say, the two are now inextricably linked. Further more, after six decades in the town, both the theatre and playwright are also inseparable from Scarborough.
One of the questions frequently asked of the website is, why Scarborough? What were the links between Stephen Joseph and Alan Ayckbourn with the town leading them to become such an essential part of the cultural fabric of it?
The answer is, surprisingly, luck and chance. Which given both elements have played significant parts in several Ayckbourn plays (including his latest Roundelay), seems very appropriate.

Neither Stephen Joseph nor Alan Ayckbourn had any pre-existing links or connections with Scarborough. It is actually just a fortunate set of circumstances which brought both men independently to the town creating life-long bonds.
With regard to the British theatre pioneer Stephen Joseph, he arrived in Scarborough almost as a last resort as he struggled to find a home for what would become the UK's first professional theatre-in-the-round company during the '50s; in context, the vast majority of theatres in England at this point were proscenium arch - theatre-in-the-round was a rarity outside of experimental theatre groups in thiscountry.
Stephen Joseph had been searching for a home for theatre-in-the-round, preferably in London, for a number of months having seen a number of theatre-in-the-round venues in the USA. Unable to find or afford suitable premises in the capital, his attentions led elsewhere as he explained in his book Theatre In The Round.

“For several years, John Wood, education officer for the North Riding Education Committee, had asked me to take part in weekend courses and summer schools in Yorkshire, and it was on a weekend course in acting at Wrea Head that he challenged me to put theatre in the round to the test of professional performance to the public, I told him of the difficulties in finding a suitable hall, in London. So he took me to the concert room in the Central Library at Scarborough; and after a friendly and helpful talk with W.H. Smettem, the librarian, our first booking was made.... On the whole, a very good place in which to make experimental first steps.”

But the Library Theatre at Scarborough's Public Library was never intended to be a permanent home for the company. Stephen later noted: "And so each year another and another season was planned. But still on a very ad hoc basis. No sureness about the future; each season likely to be the last." One of the main reasons for this was the lack of guaranteed financial backing from Scarborough Council or, several years later, a perceived lack of support in finding a permanent new home for the company.
So the town which has the longest continual association with theatre-in-the-round in the UK was an accidental choice and certainly never intended to be a permanent home for Stephen Joseph's theatrical experiment.
When the Library Theatre began touring in 1957, Stephen did not hide the fact he was essentially selling his product to towns without a civic theatre, hoping theatre-in-the-round would catch someone's attention and they would build a permanent home for his company.
This eventually resulted in the Victoria Theatre being built in an old cinema conversion in 1962 in Stoke-on-Trent; what is now the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme is considered the UK's first permanent professional theatre-in-the-round venue.
Stephen was a practical man and, although he liked the town, he had no long-term loyalty to Scarborough. Indeed, as chronicled in his book Theatre In The Round, in 1965 he decided to close the venue due to a perceived lack of support from the town council.
That the theatre survived and flourished was due to the support and commitment from the town itself with an amateur theatrical, Ken Boden, arranging for the theatre to continue and relaunch itself as a professional venue in 1967, the year Stephen Joseph died.
This is the moment the Library Theatre - later the Stephen Joseph Theatre - really became a permanent fixture in Scarborough, further cemented in 1972, when Stephen's protege Alan Ayckbourn committed himself to the theatre and the town by becoming the Artistic Director of the venue for the next 37 years.

As to why Alan Ayckbourn found himself in Scarborough - and then decided to make it his adopted home - that's the subject of another feature on the blog in the near future.

You can find out more about the history of the Stephen Joseph Theatre and its connections with Scarborough at the website Scarborough In The Round, a sister site to Alan Ayckbourn's Official Website and the Stephen Joseph & The Library Theatre website, where you can also learn more about Alan Ayckbourn's most influential mentor Stephen Joseph.

Alan Ayckbourn premieres his latest play Roundelay at the Stephen Joseph Theatre this year with it running from 4 September - 8 October. He is also currently directing the world premiere of the musical adaptation of his play The Boy Who Fell Into A Book. Further details about both plays and how to book tickets can be found at www.sjt.uk.com.