ANDREW BISS

The Meta Plays , my anthology of short comedic plays, is now available through Cyberpress , the publishing arm of the website Stageplays . Stageplays offers the largest collection of Plays & Musicals in the world. Based in the UK and the USA, they’ve been serving the online theatre community since the last century…if you can remember that far back. I’m very pleased to have this play available through another publishing platform, especially one that is geared specifically to the theatre community where it’s likely to have far greater exposure to its target audience. Check out Stageplays the next time you’re looking for a play to produce or a monologue to perform – they’ve got it covered. And now they’ve also got… The Meta Plays! This unique compilation of wittily inventive short comedies can be performed by as few as 4 actors or as many as 18, all with minimal set and prop requirements. Many of these plays have gone on to receive highly successful productions around the wor...

It’s been a long road to the Amazon Kindle Store for my play A Cure for the Common Cold . I first became aware of the story of Ronald Maddison back in 2003. The UK press were reporting on the opening of an investigation (named “Operation Antler”) by the Wiltshire police force into the death of Mr. Maddison at the Porton Down chemical warfare establishment in Wiltshire, more than 5 decades after the fact. Although the inquiry wasn’t able to find sufficient evidence to proceed with a criminal prosecution, their findings were given to Lord Chief Justice Woolf at the time, who then moved to quash the original inquest (held in secret) and open a new one. Leading Aircraftman Ronald George Maddison (c. 1933 - 6 May 1953) The tragic, ghastly tale of what befell this innocent, trusting young man affected me quite profoundly and I wanted desperately to write a play about it. However, at that time I simply didn’t feel equipped as a writer to do it justice, daunted as I was by the scale an...

Though it may have appeared as though time itself might actually expire before The Meta Plays would finally be released, in the metaphysical world, that seemingly endless wait for one of the most hotly anticipated works of fiction in the known (and unknown) universe actually took place in the mere blink of an eye. And so it has arrived, without great fanfare, without fuss, and without any grinding and tiresome ad campaign desperately trying to flog it to death to all and sundry. No, instead it quietly – some might say eerily – materialized one day in that vast expanse of literary agglomeration known as the Kindle Store . And that day, of course, was today…or, if you’re reading this in the future, quite some time ago. And what better way to ring in the holidays than with a collection of metaphysical short dramatic works hell-bent on tinkering with your jaded sense of reality. Imagine the look on little Timmy’s cherubic face as he wakes up on Christmas morning, delves into his v...

No, not politics – plays! “The Skewed Picture”, my one-act comedy from “The Meta Plays” collection, has been chosen to be part of Stage Left Theater’s Hit and Run IX, the ninth year of their ever popular staged reading of short comedies by playwrights from the Spokane area and beyond. The show will take place November 6-8, 2015. Located in Spokane, Washington, Stage Left Theater is committed to presenting works of social, political and intellectual merit. The plays will be recorded and posted online, so I will endeavor to embed or provide a link to them here at that time.

I’m pleased to report that “A Rebel Among the Wretched” has been selected for production by Phoenix Stage Company in Naugatuck, Connecticut as part of its 3rd Annual One Act Festival, a four day festival of one act plays from around the world. After receiving over 600 entries for this year’s festival, the company’s reading committees have selected a small number of scripts to be performed over four days. Plays ranging in length from 10 to 30 minutes, comedies, dramas and farces will be performed in this hosted event. This will mark the first full production of the play, which was a Heideman Award finalist in 2011 and was performed in a staged reading by LA’s Actors Workout Studio in 2014 as part of their Spring Festival. The production will take place at the company’s temporary home at Clockwork Repertory Theater , in Oakville, CT, June 18-21, 2015. More details can be found on the company’s website .

I received word today from The Royal Court Theatre that one of my monologues that had been chosen for their online GRIT Project earlier this year has now been selected to be performed at the theatre as part of an evening of works that will represent the culmination of the GRIT Project. The monologue (an abridged version of “A Small Act of Vandalism”) will be performed alongside other short pieces as a rehearsed reading by the Royal Court Front of House staff. The night, hosted by a compere, begins at 7.30pm on Tuesday, June 2nd and will be held in the Royal Court Bar & Kitchen. I’m very pleased indeed to have a piece of my writing performed at The Royal Court Theatre and only wish I could be there in person to see the show. GRIT was announced in December 2014 and was an open call to writers of all ages and experiences to submit a play about everyday resistance, revolution and defiance, in response to the work on both Royal Court stages. The Royal Court Theatre is the ...

I was recently informed that a monologue from my play “ Suburban Redux ” has been selected for inclusion in a new monologue collection to be published by Pioneer Drama Service, Inc. The new monologue anthology, “Audition Monologues For Young Men 2016,” is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2016 and will be edited by Gerald Lee Ratliff. This will mark the fourth collection of Mr. Ratliff’s that I have had the honor of having my work included in, and my first with Pioneer Drama Service. The monologue in question for this particular book comes from the rather shy, awkward character of Tristram. Pioneer Drama Service is an Englewood, Colorado-based publisher of plays and musicals, and is one of the largest play publishers in the United States.

I’m very pleased to have had “The Craft” selected by Bellingham, Washington’s iDiOM Theater for its Best of Brass Monkey production, part of its upcoming Spring Rep show. This will be the Pacific Northwest premiere of the play, and I have a feeling that iDiOM Theater are going to do a terrific job with it. They are, after all, the Hardest Working Theater in the Known World! The show takes place from May 7 to May 30, with more details available on the company’s website .

I’m happy to report that the Royal Court’s GRIT project has just added my monologue “Organ Failure” to its Tumblr site. If you have a spare moment I highly recommend taking a look through some of the plays, short texts and images on the theme of “moments of rebellion that go unnoticed and the voices of dissent which can't be heard.” There’s a great variety of work, from the very moving to the wryly humorous, and some very clever examples of tiny acts of defiance.

The Royal Court Theatre is currently running a project called GRIT , which is a collection of short/small works that are about acts of everyday resistance, revolution and defiance. The pieces can be created in any medium - words, videos, images or audio – and those selected will be put up around the theatre, as well as online at their Tumblr site created for the project. Today I was pleased to see that the extract from my extended monologue play “A Small Act of Vandalism” has been chosen for the project and can now be seen online along with all of the other pieces selected thus far. I would encourage anyone to head over to the site to take a look around as there are many truly excellent submissions – text and images – on display.