University snaps up Ayckbourn archive collection

The archive of Sir Alan, one of the country’s foremost contemporary English dramatists, has been bought by York University in a £240,000 deal.

The collection includes original stage sketches, working manuscripts, plot diagrams and correspondence mapping his career over five decades as a playwright, a theatre director and the artistic director of Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre.

It also includes correspondence with some of the 20th century’s biggest names in drama, including playwrights, actors and directors as well as producers, designers and agents.

Peter Hall, Peggy Ramsay, Trevor Nunn and Michael Winner, along with Stephen Sondheim, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Alan Plater and Martin Jarvis are among the famous names which appear.

The archive is now part of the Samuel Storey Writing and Performance Collection at the university’s Borthwick Institute.

Sir Alan said: “The archive is really about the writing process. The old method was my wife, Heather, at an old typewriter with me dictating from my handwritten notes. I always like to go to bed with a tidy script and, in the old days, I would trawl back through several pages of typing and blot things out with Tippex or cover my scripts with arrows.

“I realised that what I was learning from others and from experience was valuable and I wanted to chronicle it. I hope the archive is an extension of this. I think the archive will be a fertile ground for ideas and inspire people to write.”

The purchase has been funded by organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Samuel Storey Charitable Trust.

The archive is now available for public viewing, although it has yet to be fully catalogued. It will also form a teaching resource for students in the university’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television.

Anyone wishing to view the archive can e-mail [email protected] or call 01904 321166.

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