Anno Domino: Facts
Anno Domino
Play Number: 84World Premiere: 25 May 2020
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre website
Premiere Staging: Audio play
Published: N/A
Other Media: Audio play
Cast: 3m / 3f plays plus 2 off-stage voices
Run Time: 1hr 45m
Note: Originally written as a staged play in 2018, but adapted in 2020 as an audio play.
○ It premiered on 25 May 2020 on the Stephen Joseph Theatre's website as an audio stream initially for a month - this was extended by an extra week due to demand for the play.
○ It is the first Ayckbourn play to have its world premiere as an audio play.
○ Anno Domino is, it should be emphasised, a full-length play intended for the stage - which the playwright hopes will be staged as intended in the future.
○ Anno Domino was written during Autumn 2018 without a specific production slot for the Stephen Joseph Theatre in mind; it is one of several Ayckbourn plays written since 2017 which have yet to be produced on stage.
○ For the world premiere, Alan Ayckbourn and his wife, Heather Stoney, played all the roles in the play. This marked Alan's first return to professional acting since 1964.
○ The world premiere production marked the first time Alan Ayckbourn had both directed and acted in one of his own plays.
○ The title not only reflects a key element within the play but is also a play on the words Anno Domini - the full form of AD (as in 2020AD), but also Latin for 'advancing age.' It also suggests the idea of a domino effect - another theme of the play.
○ Arguably the play revisits some of the ideas previously - less successfully - explored in the now withdrawn play Virtual Reality; this too explores the idea of how one couple's disintegration has unforeseen effects on the relationships around them.
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