Despite his status as one of the United States' foremost upcoming playwrights, Jakob Holder's work has never been produced in the United Kingdom. Bedtime Solos, his first play, will be presented at The Old Red Lion Islington from 8 September by Across The Pond, a new theatre company forging cultural links between the UK and the USA.

Bedtime Solos tells the story of a couple over an evening of physical intimacy, and explores the isolation and loneliness that can exist between two people, even in the height of passion. The couple never touch, instead exploring the stage separately, both speaking the physical words of their conversation and verbalising their innermost thoughts. They exist half in the waking world, half in sleep, sometimes connecting, more often removed from each other.

To create this world, director Samuel Miller will be working with a choreographer Eleanor Perry (Rambert Dance Company) and an AV designer Cherry Truluck (whose work was last see in Orwell a Celebration at The Trafalgar Studios).

Jakob Holder is a two-time winner of The Last Frontier Theatre Conference Playlab Award. His plays have been semi-finalist, and straight out finalist, to the O'Neill Theatre Conference and the Princess Grace Award, among others. A resident of New York City, he is a 2002 Dramatists Guild Fellow, a 2003 Lark Theatre Fellow, a 2006 Oriveden Opisto Resident Artist in Finland, and a member of The Dramatists Guild. Jakob has been mentored by Edward Albee for some years, and Housebreaking recently won the 2009 Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project, one of the most prestigious new writing awards in New York.

"Jakob Holder is a gifted and provocative young playwright". (Edward Albee).

Bedtime Solos appears at The Old Red Lion alongside 'Til I Die, also directed by Samuel Miller.