Bernard Levin in conversation with Alan Ayckboum Playwright, director, lyricist and ex-actor, ALAN AYCKBOURN has been stage-struck since his youth. Now, in his 40s, he is one of the world's most successful writers of plays, squeezing up to three a year into the gaps between his full-time career as director of productions at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. It would be difficult to find a week when one of Ayckbourn's works is not in performance somewhere; but though his popular acclaim is hard to equal, he writes almost reluctantly.