During an almighty rainstorm, Vera Shrimp discovers she has a remarkable gift. She can read raindrops, each one having soaked up an emotion from those the water has come into contact with.But as her family disintegrates, Vera's extraordinary ability takes on a darker and more urgent significance.Part science lesson, part story-telling, The Soaking of Vera Shrimp is a poignant and playful solo show about love, grief and never giving up.Alison Carr's play was...

'I keep telling you, it's different this time. Bad luck, but not this time. We'll be unshackled. Start again.'Where do you turn when you've got £100,000 of credit card debt and a £400,000 mortgage? For Colin, the answer is simple: fake your death in a canoeing accident in the North Sea. But as his 'widow' Deborah enacts a complex plan to secure his life-insurance payout, the lies begin to take their toll…Inspired by real events, All At Sea is a witty and t...

'I've been waiting for something like this to happen. I'm surprised it's taken so long. The signs have been building up for a while.'An ordinary Tuesday turns really, really weird when the sky over the school playground suddenly rips open. Pupils and teachers are sucked up to a parallel universe, whilst a new set of people start raining down from above. 'Us' and 'Them' must come together to work out what is going on, and how they can get things back to how they were.

'The end-of-the-world quiz waits for no man, literally. Onwards, ever onwards, to our fiery decline. Round three…'It's the end of the world. The last night on Earth. An asteroid is heading straight for us and there's nothing we can do about it.Except for maybe host a pub quiz – which is exactly what landlady Kathy and her quizmaster Rav are doing. But, with time ticking, some unexpected guests explode on the scene – Bobby wants to settle old scores, and Fran wants ...

'I expect the plummet, I brace, but no. The wind is now a breeze is now a whisper and I've stopped; suspended in the sky…'Greasy fish'n'chips, sticks of rock and a pot-bellied Spider-Man throwing himself off the pier; the annual 'Birdman' competition is in full flight. It's the busiest weekend of the year in this faded seaside town, but Bayview B&B is somehow closed for business.A finalist in the Theatre503 Playwriting Award, Alison Carr's play Caterpillar...

National Theatre Connections 2023 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 clim...

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...

Drawing on interviews with a breadth of different showgirls, from shows in Paris, Las Vegas, Berlin, and Los Angeles, as well as her own artworks and those by other contemporary and historical artists, this book examines the experiences of showgirls and those who watch them, to challenge the narrowness of representations and discussions around what has been termed ‘sexualisation’ and ‘the gaze’. An account of the experience of being ‘looked at’, the book raises questions of how the showgir...