My Wonderful Day: Character Notes

Alan Ayckbourn has not written any notes specifically regarding the characters of My Wonderful Day, but he has touched upon the subject of Winnie several times in interviews (see also the Ayckbourn Quotes page).

"I've always thought of children as small recording devices. They take in everything.
"Winnie’s third-generation Caribbean. I wanted to write a child that heard and listened and was invisible. Girls naturally tend to be able to play younger. Boys have big deep voices.
"If they assumed she was foreign, in this all-white English household, and so slightly different, then they could talk frankly in front of her without knowing that she understood them. Then I used the device that the mother is insisting they learn terrible French."

Ayesha Antoine on playing Winnie: "Alan’s best note to me was, 'Hold your nerve during the silences. Don’t rush it; don’t do too much; don’t feel like you have to over-explain anything in terms of your reactions. Trust yourself that any little thing you do we are interested in.'"

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