Constant Companions: Facts
Constant Companions
Play Number: 89World Premiere: 5 September 2023
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: No
Other Media: N/A
Cast: 3 male / 4 female
Run Time: 2hr 11mins
Synopsis: Lorraine is a fabulously successful lawyer of a certain age. Jan Sixty is the janitor of her building, an android of indeterminate age. In a not-too-distant future humans have turned to artificial friends for companionship without compromise, can Lorraine and Jan find true love?
- Constant Companions is Alan Ayckbourn's 89th play.The play's premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 5 September 2023.
- Constant Companions actually incorporates much of the second act from an earlier play, Surprises. Unsatisfied with the earlier work, Alan interwove, refined and expanded the existing material into a new work which he felt better suited the material.
- The play was inspired by the a speech by the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, predicting that if first contact with an alien civilisation ever occurred, it would probably be with our AI successors and that race's AI successors.
- Contrary to speculation, the play was written during the summer of 2022 - far in advance of all the news headlines garnered in early 2023 by the rise of AI developments such as ChatbotGPT and other Artificial Intelligence developments.
- It is considered on of the playwright's future-set /. Speculative fiction works and develops themes and ideas previously explored in Henceforward… and Comic Potential.