Deadline: October 2, 2026
HOW TO SUBMIT
1. Prepare your manuscript according to the guidelines above.
2. Include a 50–100 word third-person author bio.
3. In the body of your email, include:
Your full name
Title of the play
Country of residence
The subtheme your play most closely relates to
A brief 1–3 sentence description of the play
4. Attach your manuscript as a DOC, DOCX or PDF file.
5. Name your file:
YOURNAME.docx
6. Send your submission to:
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Submit original work only.
Submit manuscripts in DOC, DOCX or PDF format only.
Use a readable 12-point font.
Number all pages.
Include a title page with the title of the play and author's name.
Scripts should follow standard dramatic formatting where appropriate.
Include a third-person author bio of 50–100 words at the end of the manuscript.
Multiple submissions are welcome (in a single email).
Simultaneous submissions are welcome; please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Please submit only work for which you hold the necessary rights.
UMBRELLAS FOR FISH
An International Journal of Absurd & Existential Drama
Umbrellas for Fish is pleased to announce a special international anthology of Absurd and Existential One-Minute Plays: ONE MINUTE BEFORE NOTHING HAPPENS
What can happen in one minute?
- A lifetime can end.
- A universe can begin.
- Someone can forget why they entered a room.
- A chair can refuse to be sat upon.
- Two strangers can wait for something that never arrives.
- A person can discover the meaning of life—just in time to forget it.
- Or, perhaps, nothing happens.
We are seeking original one-minute plays that explore the strange, comic, unsettling, irrational, and deeply human experience of existence.
This anthology celebrates the extraordinary possibilities of theatrical brevity. We invite playwrights to create worlds in miniature—moments of revelation, confusion, silence, contradiction, catastrophe, comedy, and cosmic indifference.
Your play has approximately one minute.
What will happen before nothing does?
THEME & SUBTHEMES
All submitted plays should engage broadly with absurdist, existential, surreal, experimental, or philosophically unsettling theatre.
Writers may interpret the following themes freely and imaginatively.
1. Waiting for Something That Never Arrives
Characters wait—for a person, an answer, a bus, God, death, an announcement, or something they cannot name.
2. The Meaning of Life Is Temporarily Unavailable
A search for meaning meets bureaucracy, confusion, technical difficulties, silence, or an unexpected customer-service representative.
3. One Minute Until the End of the World
The apocalypse is imminent—or perhaps it has already happened, and nobody noticed.
4. Conversations with the Universe
The universe may finally respond. Unfortunately, it may have misunderstood the question.
5. Time Has Stopped, but Everyone Is Late
Clocks malfunction, time repeats, yesterday returns, or characters remain trapped inside a moment.
6. Nobody Remembers Why We Are Here
Identity, memory, purpose, and location dissolve into increasingly uncertain explanations.
7. Instructions for Existing
Characters receive rules for life, consciousness, happiness, breathing, or being human—but the instructions may be incomplete.
8. The Last Ordinary Thing
A familiar object, habit, conversation, or everyday action becomes suddenly strange, impossible, or profoundly significant.
9. Silence Has Something to Say
What happens when silence becomes a character—or when words become less trustworthy than what remains unspoken?
10. The Wrong Person Has Been Chosen to Exist
A bureaucratic, cosmic, or administrative error has occurred. Someone may have been given existence by mistake.
11. Exit Signs Point in Different Directions
Characters attempt to escape a room, a relationship, a memory, a role, a system, or existence itself.
12. Everything Is Fine, Except for Everything
Ordinary life continues despite an unnamed catastrophe, an impossible situation, or the slow collapse of reality.
13. A Small Eternity
One minute becomes endless. A brief moment expands into repetition, memory, regret, anticipation, or infinity.
14. The Things We Cannot Explain
Something impossible happens, and everyone attempts to explain it—making the situation increasingly incomprehensible.
15. One Minute Before Nothing Happens
- The central theme of the anthology.
- Something is about to happen.
- Or perhaps something has already happened.
- Or perhaps nothing is happening at all.
- The characters may be waiting for a beginning, an ending, a revelation, a disaster, or a moment that never arrives.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
- We seek original one-minute plays that are:Absurd, existential, surreal, experimental, or darkly comic
- Theatrically imaginative and stageable
- Concise but emotionally, intellectually, or philosophically resonant
- Bold in form, structure, voice, or theatrical logic
- Strange for a reason—not merely random
- Open to ambiguity, contradiction, uncertainty, and unanswered questions
- Memorable enough to leave an impression long after sixty seconds have passed
We welcome:Monologues
- Dialogues
- Ensemble pieces
- Experimental dramatic fragments
- Non-linear theatre
- Surreal theatrical situations
- Dark comedy
- Minimalist drama
- Meta-theatre
- Unconventional forms of dramatic writing
We are particularly interested in plays that take creative risks and demonstrate a strong sense of theatrical possibility.
SUBMISSION LENGTH
Each play should be designed to be performed in approximately one minute.
Maximum Length: 2 pages
There is no minimum or maximum number of characters.
A play may contain dialogue, silence, movement, stage directions, or any combination of theatrical elements.
Response Time
Approximately 1–2 weeks
Publication Date
OCTOBER 15, 2026
FEE
There is no reading fee, submission fee, or publication fee.
RIGHTS
If a work is selected for publication, the playwright retains all intellectual property, copyright, and performance rights to the work.
By accepting publication in ONE MINUTE BEFORE NOTHING HAPPENS: A Special International Anthology of Absurd & Existential One-Minute Plays, the author grants Umbrellas for Fish non-exclusive permission to publish the work as part of the anthology.
All rights remain with the author following publication. Authors remain free to reproduce, perform, publish, or republish their work elsewhere, provided that first publication in ONE MINUTE BEFORE NOTHING HAPPENS is acknowledged where appropriate.
PAYMENT
- Umbrellas for Fish is currently a non-paying market.
- As an independent literary journal and publishing initiative operating without grants, institutional funding, or regular donations, we are presently unable to offer royalties, honoraria, or other forms of monetary compensation to contributors.
- Authors whose work is selected for publication will receive publication credit and international exposure through the anthology.
EDITORIAL VISION
Umbrellas for Fish is devoted to theatre that embraces uncertainty.
We believe that theatre does not always need to provide answers.
Sometimes a question is enough.
Sometimes a contradiction is enough.
Sometimes a person standing in an empty room, holding an umbrella over a fish, is enough.
With ONE MINUTE BEFORE NOTHING HAPPENS, we want to explore what theatre can accomplish in the smallest possible spaces.
A minute can contain:
A beginning.
An ending.
A joke.
A catastrophe.
A confession.
A silence.
A universe.
Or nothing at all.
We welcome playwrights from all countries, backgrounds, and stages of their careers. We are especially interested in amplifying voices and theatrical perspectives that have been underrepresented in the dramatic canon.
YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE.
MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN.
OR DON'T.
ONE MINUTE BEFORE NOTHING HAPPENS
A Special International Anthology of Absurd & Existential One-Minute Plays
PUBLICATION DATE: OCTOBER 15, 2026
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