With a raft of 5-Star awards from the Edinburgh Fringe, My Name is Bill: An Afternoon with an Alcoholic introduced audiences to the most extraordinary loser they'd ever meet. A storyteller. A stockbroker. And a raging alcoholic. This moving one man show revealed what happened on the day he hits rock bottom and creates Alcoholics Anonymous.

With My Name is Bill, a solo drama written and performed by Bryan Bounds, Amerrycan Theatre used live drama to take a hard look at the subject of alcoholism – an illness that affects one in ten people in the world. Much confusion exists on the true nature of the illness, so the route that we’d taken is to focus on one man’s story, because his story is the story of alcoholics everywhere.

In both theatres and secondary schools, the drama was hard-hitting, entertaining and informative.

My Name is Bill: An Afternoon with an Alcoholic is a gutsy one-man show centered on the true story of Wall Street banking millionaire Bill Wilson – who descended into the depths of destructive alcoholism and later founded Alcoholics Anonymous.

Set 75 years ago during America’s Great Depression, the emotionally charged play portrays the rollercoaster life of Bill Wilson who was one of the few persons in history to turn down a Nobel Peace Prize. The play is written and performed by Bryan Bounds, a recovered alcoholic himself.

Bill Wilson was one of the most intelligent investment bankers of the 20th century who made a far-reaching decision in one of his darkest moments that not only saved his own life but, ultimately, that of millions of others by founding one of the biggest social movements of the 20th Century.

The one-man show portrays Bill alone and newly sober, abandoned in a hotel lobby after the collapse of a crucial business deal. His drink obsession returns and, in desperation, he invites the audience into his alcoholic mind. With black humor and crackling wit, he unreels an eerily familiar story of his quest for fame, materialism and belonging, the suspense and anguish reaching its climax with a phone call that heralded his redemption and that of struggling alcoholics across the world.