Plays for One Performer

Discover fringe-theatre shows turned award-winning TV series, memoir-monologues, writer-actor collaborations and so many more excellent examples of solo shows in our collection below.

If you're a theatre-maker interested in creating your own solo show, there's no better place to start than with Making Your Solo Show: The Compact Guide, by Lisa Carroll and Milly Thomas – both experienced solo-show writers, who teach popular workshops on getting to grips with the form.

Discover 10 top tips to make your solo show memorable, an extract from Lisa and Milly's book over on our blog.

Showing 37-48 of 130 items.

Hamish

A short monologue play exploring the challenges facing a young wheelchair user, commissioned by the BBC as part of CripTales, a television series marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the UK's Disability Discrimination Act.

Published in volume CripTales: Six Monologues

    The Real Deal

    A short monologue play exploring the issue of benefits fraud, commissioned by the BBC as part of CripTales, a television series marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the UK's Disability Discrimination Act.

    Published in volume CripTales: Six Monologues

      Pussycat in Memory of Darkness

      By Neda Nezhdana Translated by John Farndon

      A powerful play about the shattering impact of war, and the astonishing resilience of those living through it, written by one of Ukraine's leading playwrights.

      Published in volume Voices from Ukraine: Two Plays

        Isolated But Open

        Voices from Across The Shutdown

        By various

        Twelve new monologues written in response to the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 as part of Papatango's scheme to inspire creativity and share brilliant new stories.

        Boo

        A powerful and beautifully observed short play for one actor, exploring the impact of the newly established National Health Service on working people's lives in the 1940s and 50s.

        Published in volume Jack Thorne Plays: Two

          small hours

          A collaborative theatre piece created by playwrights Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime with theatre director Katie Mitchell, dissecting the claustrophobic world of a new mother struggling to cope on her own.

          Death of a Cyclist

          A poignant, bleakly comic short monologue told by a woman killed in a cycling accident.

          Tituba

          Tituba by Winsome Pinnock is a one-woman show about Tituba Indian, the enslaved woman who played a central role in the seventeenth-century Salem Witch Trials.

          Finsbury Park

          A short autobiographical monologue, first performed as part of the Come to Where I'm From festival at the Park Theatre, London, in 2016.

          The Price of a Fish Supper

          A short play about a man whose fortunes have declined along with the Scottish fishing industry in which he has worked all his life.

          Primadonna

          A one-woman play that lays bare the world of the celebrity PA as a young first-timer navigates impossible tasks, difficult conversations and fearsome passive aggression.

          Angel

          Inspired by the extraordinary true story of the Angel of Kobane, Angel is part of Henry Naylor's Arabian Nightmares trilogy.

          Amateur Productions
          On Now & Coming Soon

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          Olivia Hirst & David Byrne

          EV Crowe