Alan Bissett and Sacha Kyle present The Red Hourglass

New one-man show from Scottish Writer of the Year Alan Bissett gets up close with your least favourite creepy-crawly...

Spiders!

Not everyone's favourite species - so why, then, has avowed arachnophobe Alan Bissett decided to follow up his 2010 sell-out show The Moira Monologues with a play about six of them?

The Red Hourglass will run at the Edinburgh Fringe and will play from Wed 15th - Sat 25th August at the National Library of Scotland from 7pm.

Developed with the support of the National Theatre of Scotland as part of their Reveal season, The Red Hourglass is a series of interlinked monologues, written and performed by Bissett, from the points of view of several different (anthropomorphised) species of spider.

From the hilarious truth-telling of the Glaswegian house spider (he prefers not to be called 'common'), the political call-to-arms of the Venezualan tarantula and the erotic murder ballad of the Black Widow, The Red Hourglass is a dark, witty, sexy satire; both a laugh-out-loud natural history lesson and a compelling analogy for the state of things today.

Alan Bissett is the current Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Scottish Writer of the Year.

He's the author of four novels, Boyracers, The Incredible Adam Spark, Death of a Ladies' Man and Pack Men (the latter two both shortlisted for the Scottish Mortgage & Investment Trust Novel of the Year).

His 'one-woman show' The Moira Monologues was a huge hit during Fringe 2010, subsequently toured the UK, with a very successful run at the Manchester Royal Exchange, and is currently being adapted for television by the BBC Comedy Department.

His play Turbo Folk was nominated for Best New Play at the 2012 Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, while The Shutdown, a short documentary he wrote and narrated, has won Best Short Film at five major international film festivals, and been nominated for two BAFTAS. A film adaptation of Boyracers, for which he wrote the screenplay, is currently in production, and he's well-known to television audiences from his appearances on BBC programmes The Big Questions and The Culture Show.

Alan suffers from extreme arachnaphobia, and has created The Red Hourglass in part as an attempt to overcome this.

Sacha Kyle trained at RSAMD, and as an award winning theatre director has created work for both children and adults. As well as The Red Hourglass, she's currently directing I, Tommy, the Tommy Sheridan story, for Fringe 2012 (Gilded Balloon).

Recent work includes: FaceGone by Will Gore, The Kiss by Murray Watts (Oran Mor), The Confidant(NTS/ Oran Mor/ Traverse) The Moira Monologues and Turbo Folk by Alan Bissett, The House by Stevie McNicoll (Oran Mor) The Library (Arches Award for Stage Directors/National Theatre of Scotland) Lost Property (Arches).

For more information visit www.alanbissett.com