Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany was an American educator and civil rights pioneer who was the subject, along with her younger sister, Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany, of the New York Times bestselling oral history biography, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, by journalist Amy Hill Hearth. Sadie was the first African-American permitted to teach domestic science at the high-school level in the New York public schools, and became famous, with the publication of the book, at the age of 103.
Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End. The play received its London opening at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1986 where it received predominantly excellent reviews.
Annie Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany was an American civil rights pioneer who was the subject, along with her elder sister Sarah "Sadie" Delany, of The New York Times bestselling oral history, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, written by journalist Amy Hill Hearth. Delany earned a Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree from Columbia University in 1923. She was the second black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York State, and became famous, with the publication of the book, when she was aged 101.
Body Language is a 1990 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about two women, one thin and one fat, who have their bodies swapped as a result of a botched operation.
Janie Dee is an English actress and singer. She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Play, and in New York the Obie and Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer, for her performance as Jacie Triplethree in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential.
Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.
Sisterly Feelings is a 1979 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is the first of Alan Ayckbourn's plays to have alternate plotlines depending on decisions made during the plays. In this play, two sisters, Abigail and Dorcas, compete for the attention of their brother's fiancée's brother, Simon, and whoever ends up with him depends on a toss of coin for scene two, and a decision made by the actors in scene three.
Improbable Fiction is a 2005 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a writers' circle, on the night the chairman, Arnold, seems to wander into the imaginations of the other writers.
Sugar Daddies is a 2003 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a student who forms a friendship with a rich man over three times her age, who has a sinister past, and maybe a sinister present too.
Haunting Julia is a 1994 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about Julia Lukin, a nineteen-year-old brilliant musician who committed suicide twelve years earlier, who haunts the three men closest to her, through both the supernatural and in their memories. In 2008, it was presented as the first play of Things That Go Bump.
Snake in the Grass is a 2002 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The play is about a middle-aged older sister who returns to the family home where her younger sister still lives, shortly after their abusive father's death. It was written as a female companion piece to the 1994 ghost play Haunting Julia, and in 2008 these two plays, together with new play Life and Beth were folded into a trilogy named Things That Go Bump.
Things That Go Bump is a season of plays performed in 2008 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn.
Miss Yesterday is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was, like My Sister Sadie shown the previous year, billed as a "family" play in the Stephen Joseph Theatre's Christmas production. It is about a teenage girl who is sent back in time one day to prevent the death of her older brother in a motorcycle accident.
My Wonderful Day is a 2009 play by Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a nine-year-old girl, Winnie, who has an essay to write about her day, and records the shenanigans of grown-ups around her.
Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years is a 1993 New York Times bestselling book that was compiled by Amy Hill Hearth and contains the oral history of Sarah "Sadie" L. Delany and A. Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany, two civil rights pioneers who were born in the late 19th century to a former slave. Their stories were largely unknown until The New York Times reporter Amy Hill Hearth interviewed them for a feature story in 1991, and the popular story was expanded into book form.
Neighbourhood Watch is a 2011 play by Alan Ayckbourn. The play premiered on 13 September 2011 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough.
Dorothy Caroline Atkinson is an English actress and singer. She has appeared in several plays by playwright Alan Ayckbourn and in films by Mike Leigh, including Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing, and Mr. Turner, which premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and for which she was nominated for the BIFA Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Science fiction theatre includes live dramatic works, but generally not cinema or television programmes. It has long been overshadowed by its literary and broadcast counterparts, but has a long history, and via the play R.U.R. introduced the word robot into global usage.
Ursula Jones is a British actor and children's author. Her picture book The Witch's Children and the Queen won a gold Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, and the sequel The Witch's Children Go to School won the inaugural Roald Dahl Funny Prize.
