When Billy Met Alasdair and The Red Hourglass by Alan Bissett (paperback)

When Billy Met Alasdair and The Red Hourglass bring together two vivid, inventive solo plays by acclaimed Scottish writer and performer Alan Bissett.

In When Billy Met Alasdair, Billy Connolly’s sixtieth birthday party in Los Angeles becomes the starting point for a journey back to Glasgow in 1981, and the launch of Alasdair Gray’s landmark novel Lanark. Moving between Connolly’s wild comic storytelling, Gray’s strange and searching reflections on art, and Bissett’s own voice as writer-performer, the play imagines a meeting between two Glaswegian originals whose work helped reshape Scotland’s cultural imagination.

The Red Hourglass enters an altogether different world: the unsettling, darkly comic realm of the spider. Giving voice to a series of arachnids caught in systems of fear, captivity, control and exploitation, the play becomes a sharp satire on power, survival and the human instinct to dominate what it does not understand.

Playful, political and theatrically alive, this double volume showcases Bissett’s gift for blending comedy, cultural memory, fantasy and social imagination. Written for solo performance, but adaptable for flexible casting, these plays offer rich opportunities for performers, theatre students, drama schools and small companies interested in contemporary Scottish drama.

Particularly suited to

• Performers looking for bold solo material and extended monologues
• Drama schools, acting students and young performers exploring character voice
• Small theatre companies seeking flexible, low-resource performance texts
• Readers and students interested in contemporary Scottish theatre
• Fans of Alan Bissett, Billy Connolly, Alasdair Gray and Glasgow cultural history
• Courses exploring Scottish literature, adaptation, satire, performance and identity

When Billy Met Alasdair
CAST: 1-3 actors
DURATION: 60 minutes

The Red Hourglass
CAST: 1-6 actors
DURATION: 60 minutes