National Theatre Connections 2024 draws together ten new plays for young people to perform, from some of the UK's most exciting and popular playwrights. These are plays for a generation of theatre-makers who want to ask questions, challenge assertions and test the boundaries, and for those who love to invent and imagine a world of possibilities.The plays offer young performers an engaging and diverse range of material to perform, read or study. Touching on themes like tran...

This is a story that is true for us, you, thousands of others across the world moving across the globe and thousands of others waiting to receive them. It is a story. It's not necessarily ours. It is not necessarily yours. But it is true.Melding lived experience with creative theatre-making, refugees Mo and Hossein share stories – both personal and global – that explore the very different journeys taken by unaccompanied minors as they leave their home countries in search o...

National Theatre Connections is an annual festival which brings new plays for young people to schools and youth theatres across the UK and Ireland. Commissioning exciting work from leading playwrights, the festival exposes actors aged 13-19 to the world of professional theatre-making, giving them full control of a theatrical production - from costume and set design to stage management and marketing campaigns. NT Connections have published over 150 original plays and regula...

A humorous and heartfelt look into the lives of the youth of one northern new town, where the weight of identity, place, and masculinity threaten everything they've ever known.

Susie, Edwina and Lucy have moved to a new school in a new town.Three very different sisters who will do anything to fit in and yet are desperate to be noticed. But how far will they go to break out of the roles in which they've been cast and will they ever be able to truly change their lives when they're swimming against the tide?A captivating, lively and poignant portrait of the pressures of being a teenager and the fight for acceptance.

A collection of three plays for the Young Vic's participation programme Taking Part, written by award-winning playwright Luke Barnes:Men in Blue, Fable, The Jumper Factory 'This is a collection of plays written with and for people who wouldn’t identify themselves as theatre-makers. The gesture of these plays is to give platform to people who aren’t heard in the hope that anyone who sees, reads, or does these plays will either be shaped by the experiences of lives removed from their...

Ten Storey Love Song follows Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, Johnnie's attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed, and Alan Blunt, a forty-year-old truck driver who spends a worrying amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school. A love song to a loveless Teesside, Ten Storey Love Song is a ferocious slab of concrete prose, peppered with beauty and delivered with glorious abandon.Middle Child returned from the 2015 ...

Am I a virgin? I think I am. I mean it went in her but it was floppy and it wasn’t very nice so I think I am a virgin. I’m going to say I am. Will look better on me uni applications.Liverpool, 1989. Greg is thirteen. He has just started secondary school. He earns pocket money sweeping up hair in a barbers. Girls are aliens. Liverpool FC are everything. Edinburgh, 2012. Greg has an extraordinary story to tell you. Bottleneck is a vibrant coming-of-age story about becoming a man thro...

Kenny Glynn is the world’s biggest Saints fan and for twenty-five years he has been locked in a game of football against the world. On his 26th birthday the world steps up its game and Kenny Glynn faces the match of his life as he takes on women, money and status with the help of his mates, his family and the guiding spirit of Matt Le Tissier. Can they conquer all the things the world is throwing at them? Will Southampton ever win the FA cup again? And what can we learn from the icons we h...

Meet Leah and Chris; raised on Harry Potter, New Labour and a belief that one day they would be as ‘special’ as their parents promised. But what happens when those dreams don’t become reality?Follow Leah and Chris over these twenty years as they realise the future they were promised as children hasn’t turned out as they hoped, against the backdrop of an asteroid heading for earth.Told through performance and live music on multiple stages, with support from a different Humbe...

From the rugged beauty of the Adelaide Hills comes a story of loss, hope and new beginningsClaire McIntyre has it all: an adoring husband, a bubbly best friend, a chic townhouse and a high–flying corporate career in the city. But somehow she's forgotten what really makes her happy.After receiving tragic news, closely followed by the loss of her job, Claire's world is thrown into turmoil. She is then forced to reconsider everything that matters to her.Claire soon fin...

A heart-warming short story that will make us laugh and cry, and remind us why the little things in our lives are so important, from one of Australia’s best-loved writers, William McInnes. Lachlan and his dad head down to the oval for the under-twelves cricket game, as they do most Saturdays in the season; it’s part of their routine. Lachlan hopes he’ll get some runs. His dad is happy to stand on the sidelines with the other cricket parents, drink coffee and cheer the team on. But this wee...