When Billy Met Alasdair and The Red Hourglass

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 60th 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 exuberant 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 transformed Scotland’s cultural imagination. The Red Hourglass turns from Scottish literary history to the unsettling world of the spider. Darkly funny, formally daring and full of theatrical bite, the play gives voice to a series of arachnids caught in systems of fear, control, violence and exploitation. What begins as a comic bestiary becomes a sharp satire on power, survival and the human instinct to dominate what it does not understand. Together, these plays show Bissett at his most playful, political and theatrically alive: blending biography, fantasy, comedy, cultural memory and fierce social imagination. Written for solo performance but adaptable for flexible casting, this volume is particularly suited to performers, theatre students, small companies and readers interested in contemporary Scottish drama. The Red Hourglass CAST: 1-6 actions DURATION: 60 minutes When Billy Met Alasdair CAST: 1-3 actions DURATION: 60 minutes