Things We Do For Love: Interviews
This section contains interviews with Alan Ayckbourn about his play Things We Do For Love. Click on the links in the right-hand column below to access the relevant interview.This interview by Alan Ayckbourn's Archivist Simon Murgatroyd was first published during 1997 by the Scarborough Evening News to mark the world premiere of the play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Things We Do For Love (1997)
Alan Ayckbourn: I haven't written a new play for a very long time so it was quite interesting to do again. I haven't had a new play since long before we arrived at the new theatre discounting rewrites, musicals, revivals and children's shows - you're back to Haunting Julia in 1994.
It’s also unusual in that it’s been written specifically for The McCarthy – an end-stage theatre.
For our first year here [at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, which opened in 1996] I worked exclusively in The Round and I only got to see the results of the work in The McCarthy. It intrigued me to write something for the McCarthy as it's an unusual space and I haven't written for an end-stage since A Small Family Business at the National Theatre in 1987.
What is the new play about?
It's about what it says really. I'm always amazed that some of the worst behaviour is propagated by people who are in love. We seem to save our worst behaviour for those we love. The reason is, of course, desperation to communicate, to be loved. This is a sort of love story and judging by people who have read it so far, it's quite a painful revisitation of love!
You originally intended to open The McCarthy with the end-stage intended Haunting Julia, but staged it instead at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round – with obvious compromises. Is the new play really specific to the end-stage?
I couldn't really do this in the Round at all. It uses the stage in a way people seem to enjoy when I do something silly. It's unusual and my designer is going hairless setting it out!
Should the Stephen Joseph Theatre be staging new work at such a precarious time, especially considering the controversy regarding its funding in the past few months?
We're looking for new voices and exciting new ideas because the aim of this theatre is to move on. Obviously we do come a cropper occasionally, but that's par for the course. My third play [Dad's Tale] here [at the Library Theatre] had only three people in the audience on the first night. Two of them were Stephen Joseph and the director!
Presumably it’s worth the risk, if something new breaks out and is successful?
Tim Firth did it several years ago with Neville's Island. He was a new writer who filled the theatre in August. Tim is going to write a new play for next year, but he now comes with a certain reputation. Every new play we do, the proviso we put on the writers is you have to try and fill the auditoria.
*Alan Ayckbourn had written the family play The Champion of Paribanou the previous year.
Article by Simon Murgatroyd. Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.