SOURCE: “Plotting Success,” in The Times Educational Supplement, No. 3898, March 15, 1991, p. 34.

In the following essay, Ayckbourn discusses Invisible Friends, a work he considers to be a morality play.

“I may not have a lot of things, but I do have technique.” I suppose it comes from doing the same job for 33 years. Despite his standing as one of the most successful playwrights in the English-speaking world today, Alan Ayckbourn is nothing if not humble. The award-winning writer and director who describes himself as someone who is “known for making plots like watches” is in London rehearsing his new family play Invisible Friends at the National Theatre. When it opened last year at Ayckbourn's own theatre, the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough, The Times hailed it as “one of the best examples of children's drama … since Peter Pan”.

Ayckbourn himself wouldn’t be caught dead calling his own work “children's...