Ayckbourn Talks: Kaleidoscope (1987)
This short extract from Alan Ayckbourn was broadcast on BBC Radio's Kaleidoscope on 8 June 1987. Within it, he briefly discusses his play A Small Family Business."I'd been thinking for some time about writing a play about honesty, about the way - lacking if you like a certain moral code these days. Well, it's a sort of rather variable moral code. Everyone has a moral code, but it toughens as it overlaps with other people's. And it struck me that I would like to write about [in A Small Family Business] if you like a decline of a family who allow themselves to be eroded by compromise - as we all are.
"I am quite a moral writer, in a funny way, and I do think that if one looks at my plays, a lot of people who sow do reap by the end. I don t say that all the good people go to heaven and all the bad people don't, because I don't think that really happens. Would that it did. I do think that we do share an awful lot of responsibility - much more responsibility for each other perhaps than we're prepared even nowadays (and particularly nowadays perhaps) to recognise. And I think there is an awful feeling of let them be, it doesn't matter to me."
Copyright: Haydonning Ltd. Please do not reproduce without the permission of the copyright holder.