LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Alan Ayckbourn
built 119 days ago
Alan Ayckbourn's new play is several plays in one. It is a ghost story without a ghost - though to elaborate on that would give too much away. Julia Lukin was a musical genius who, 12 years ago, at 19, died of an overdose in her university students' residence. Her father Joe (Ian Hogg), a Yorkshire businessman, has built a study centre there, dedicated to her memory. Her bedroom, where she died, is preserved like a shrine; and Joe has brought Julia's former boyfriend Andy (Damien Goodwin) to see it. For Joe, Julia is dead but not gone. He is obsessed with her presence.
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This section of the website is a research tool for people wanting to learn more about the theatre Alan Ayckbourn is most associated with. The Stephen Joseph Theatre was founded in 1955 by Stephen Joseph with the intention of promoting and producing new writers and new writing; a policy it continues to this day. Within these pages, a glimpse into the work of Stephen Joseph and Alan Ayckbourn's work at the Stephen Joseph Theatre can be found complete with plays commissioned, plays produced and cast & crew who have worked on these productions. More details about the theatre's work today can be found at its official website at
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A statement issued by the SJT’s chairman Sue Trufitt said: “Over the last couple of years, Alan Ayckbourn's day-to-day involvement in the running of the Stephen Joseph Theatre has been decreasing, although his directing work has continued as normal. In the forthcoming season, he will be directing Relatively Speaking and A Trip to Scarborough and he is planning for the 2008/09 season. This decrease in his workload will lead to the appointment of a new artistic director in the summer of 2008, to plan the 2009/10 season. Alan intends to continue to direct revivals of his plays at the theatre as well as premiering any of his new work there.”
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Quite early in his play-writing career, Alan Ayckbourn became the world's most performed playwright. There was a decade's resistance from the literati, refusing to publish his work because it was 'not literature'. He has over-come such hiccups. Recently, a knighthood officially confirmed the long-standing popularity. Currently, he is about to publish another book.
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Alan Ayckbourn was born in Hampstead, London, England, on April 12, 1939. His father, Horace Ayckbourn, was an accomplished musician who served as deputy leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. His mother, Irene (Worley) Ayckbourn, was a journalist who wrote for popular women's magazines. When Ayckbourn was five, his parents divorced. He remained with his mother, who married a bank manager and moved to rural Sussex. The new marriage was troubled as well... and Ayckbourn endured a very unhappy childhood.
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Alan Ayckbourn, Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, was born in London in 1939. He has worked in theatre all his life as, variously, stage manager, sound technician, lighting technician, scene painter, prop maker, actor, writer and director. Most of these talents he developed (or abandoned) thanks to his mentor and founder of the Theatre in Scarborough, Stephen Joseph, who first encouraged him to write. Almost all of the 56 plays Alan Ayckbourn has written to date received their first performance at this theatre. More than 25 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or the RSC since his first hit, Relatively Speaking, opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
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