Alan Ayckbourn Encyclopaedia: Dates - April

2 April: Broadcast premiere of With Great Pleasure featuring Alan Ayckbourn on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

5 April:
West End premiere of Ten Times Table at the Globe Theatre in 1978; broadcast premiere of Profile: Alan Ayckbourn on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

6 April: Radio premiere of the BBC's adaptation of Confusions in 1987; Allan Ramsay's portrait of Alan Ayckbourn is unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in 1989; radio premiere of Don Haworth's There's No Point In Arguing The Toss in 1967, directed by Alan Ayckbourn and nominated for the Prix Italia award.

7 April: The Old Vic's acclaimed revival of The Norman Conquests transfers to the Circle In The Square, New York, in 2009.

8 April: West End revival of A Small Family Business at the National Theatre in 2014; West End revival of Bedroom Farce at the Aldwych Theatre in 2002.

9 April: Television premiere of the comedy series Hark At Barker in 1969 on ITV - Alan Ayckbourn is one of the script-writers but due to being employed by the BBC, writes under the pseudonym of Peter Caulfield.

11 April: Radio premiere of the BBC's adaptation of Man Of The Moment in 2009 on BBC Radio 4; London premiere of Neighbourhood Watch at the Tricycle Theatre, London, in 2012; A Chorus Of Approval event held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre to celebrate Alan Ayckbourn's 60th birthday in 1999.

12 April: Alan Ayckbourn was born in 1939 in Hampstead; radio premiere of the BBC's adaptation of A Small Family Business in 2009; Broadway premiere of A Small Family Business at the Music Box Theater in 1992.

13 April: Broadcast premiere of Nightwaves - Landmarks: The Norman Conquests on BBC Radio 3 in 2011.

14 April: Experiences theatre-in-the-round for the first time when he sees a performance of Sartre's Huis Clois at the Mahatma Gandhi Hall, in London, by Stephen Joseph's Studio Theatre company in 1957; directs Relatively Speaking for the first time with an amateur production at Leeds Civic Theatre in 1970.

15 April: Alan Ayckbourn directs one of his own plays for the first time with a production of Standing Room Only at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1963.

17 April: The first mass-market edition of an Ayckbourn play is published in 1975 with a hardback edition of The Norman Conquests.

18 April: Broadcast premiere of The Events At Black Tor by Roy Clarke, directed by Alan Ayckbourn, on BBC Radio 2 in 1968.

20 April: World premiere of Haunting Julia at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round in 1994; world premiere of Alan Ayckbourn and John Pattison's musical A Word From Our Sponsor at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round in 1995; West End premiere of Just Between Ourselves at the Queen's Theatre in 1977; appointed Director Emeritus of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2018.

21 April: World premiere of Time Of My Life at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round in 1992; radio premiere of the BBC's adaptation of Confusions in 1985.

22 April: West End premiere of Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Jeeves in 1975 at Her Majesty's Theatre.

23 April: The second Intimate Exchanges Grand Marathon begins in 2007 in which all 16 variations of the play are performed in two weeks for only the second time since the play's world premiere in 1982.

24 April: The Stephen Joseph Theatre opens in 1996 - this is a £5.2m conversion of Scarborough's former Odeon cinema and marks the first permanent home for the company founded by Stephen Joseph in 1955 and which Alan Ayckbourn was Artistic Director of at the time.

27 April: Revival of Intimate Exchanges at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2006.

28 April: New York premiere of A Small Family Business at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1992.

29 April: World premiere of Things We Do For Love at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1997 - a rare example of an Ayckbourn play specifically written for the end-stage.

30 April: Alan Ayckbourn is listed in Who's Who for the first time in 1975.

Original research for the The Alan Ayckbourn Encyclopaedia section is by Simon Murgatroyd and copyright of the author.