The Crafty Art of Playmaking

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250083087
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
In The Crafty Art of Playmaking, this seminal guide from renowned playwright Alan Ayckbourn shares his tricks of the trade. From helpful hints on writing to tips on directing, this book provides a complete primer for the newcomer and a refresher for those with more experience. Written in Ayckbourn's signature style that combines humor, seriousness, and a heady air of sophistication, The Crafty Art of Playmaking is a must-have for aspiring playwrights, students of drama, and anyone who has ever laughed their way through one of Ayckbourn's plays.

A Small Family Business

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573693779
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
Jack McCraken has the opportunity of a lifetime: he is the new head of a family furniture business and believes he will initiate a new age of honesty and integrity. He quickly learns that everyone else involved in the enterprise has a vested interest in maintaining business as usual, rife with dishonesty and deceit "--

The Crafty Art of Playmaking

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Trade
ISBN: 9781403962294
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
For the first time, Alan Ayckbourn shares all of his tricks of the playwright's trade. From helpful hints on writing to tips on directing, the book provides a complete primer for the newcomer and a refresher for the more experienced. Written in Ayckbourn's signature style that combines humor, seriousness, and heady air of theatrical sophistication that Noel Coward would envy, The Crafty Art of Playmaking is a must-have for aspiring playwrights and students of drama.

Communicating Doors

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573626845
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
This intricate time traveling comic thriller by the British master of farcical comedy delighted London and New York audiences. A London sex specialist from the future stumbles into a murder plot that sends her, compliments of a unique set of hotel doors, traveling back in time. She and two women who were murdered in 1998 and 1978 race back and forth in time trying to rewrite history and prevent their own violent ends. The frantic race begins when Poopay is hired for an evening at the Regal Hotel by an old man who eschews a fling in favor of confessing his role in the demise of his wives. Now a target, Poopay flees into the vestibule and somehow triggers the time machine. -- Publisher's website.

Comic Potential

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573627972
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 108

Book Description
A play set in the foreseeable future when everything has changed except human nature; a future where TV daytime soaps are performed by android actors emotionally programmed by the control room. One, JC 31333, finds herself humanized as Jacie Triplethree, complete with a sense of humour and Adam, a young scriptwriter, falls for her.

Woman in Mind

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571318223
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 103

Book Description
The central character of Alan Ayckbourn's new play is Susan, a parson's wife, 'one of the most moving and devastating that he has created...' Robin Thornber reviewing the first production in Scarborough in the Guardian.

little scratch

Author: Rebecca Watson
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385545770
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
"Extraordinary"--THE NEW YORKER In the formally innovative tradition of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Ducks, Newburyport comes a dazzlingly original, shot-in-the-arm of a debut that reveals a young woman's every thought over the course of one deceptively ordinary day. She wakes up, goes to work. Watches the clock and checks her phone. But underneath this monotony there's something else going on: something under her skin. Relayed in interweaving columns that chart the feedback loop of memory, the senses, and modern distractions with wit and precision, our narrator becomes increasingly anxious as the day moves on: Is she overusing the heart emoji? Isn't drinking eight glasses of water a day supposed to fix everything? Why is the etiquette of the women's bathroom so fraught? How does she define rape? And why can't she stop scratching? Fiercely moving and slyly profound, little scratch is a defiantly playful look at how our minds function in--and survive--the darkest moments.

Invisible Friends

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571325777
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description
Alan Ayckbourn's play is about a very ordinary teenager called Lucy. With her father glued to the cowboys on the telly, her mother preoccupied with neighbourly gossip and her brother enclosed in his ear-phones, no one wants to know about her place in the school swimming team. So Lucy revives her childhood fantasy friend, Zara, setting a place for her at the very ordinary tea table. This time Zara materializes, bringing with her an idealized father and brother, and showing Lucy how to make her real family vanish. The moral of this cautionary tale is carefully spelt out - that when you get what you want it's not what you wanted - as Lucy's dream family turns out to be a nightmare. The play is supposedly for children of seven upwards, but there's a message here for parents, too, about listening to kids.

A Creative Writing Handbook

Author: Bill Greenwell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
Packed with stimulating writing exercises, numerous quotes and over 30 extracts from literature across a wide variety of genres, this book will both inspire and assist anyone interested in creative writing. The book can be followed as a complete course or dipped into as desired.

Relatively Speaking

Author: Alan Ayckbourn
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573615023
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Book Description
The play opens in the flat of Greg and Ginny, a young co-habiting couple, Ginny being the more sexually experienced. Greg finds a strange pair of slippers under the bed and is too besotted to believe they might have been left by another man (which would also explain the bunches of flowers and boxes of sweets filling Ginny's apartment). Ginny goes off for a day in the country, supposedly to visit her parents but actually to break things off with her older married lover, Philip. Greg decides to follow her. The next scene is on the patio at the home of Philip and his befuddled wife Sheila, whose marriage is clearly under strain. Greg shows up unannounced before Ginny, and wrongly assumes that they are her parents. Greg asks for her hand from Philip, while Philip mistakenly believes that the strange young man is asking permission to marry Sheila. Once Ginny arrives, she convinces Philip to play the role of her father. Meanwhile, Greg still believes that Sheila is Ginny's mother. The situation becomes increasingly complicated and hilarious.