His total love for the theatre began when Alan Ayckbourn worked backstage, and then worked the lights. He eventually began writing plays. To date, he has written 47 of them. Ayckbourn admits that his plays may be dark but he explained that he tries to add some humor into them, too. When writing a play, and without any notes, Ayckbourn said, he'll take four or five days to write out an entire play on a word processor.