School and youth theatre companies from Cambridgeshire, Canterbury, Chester, East London, Herefordshire, Kildare, Peterborough and St Albans will perform at this year’s National Theatre Connections Festival, which will run from 1 to 6 July 2015. Ten new plays for young performers aged 13-19 by both established and emerging playwrights have been premiered across the UK by 270 school and youth theatre companies in 27 leading regional theatres; ten of those companies have been invited to perform their productions at the National’s Olivier and Dorfman Theatres.
Next year, the annual festival of new plays for young performers will celebrate its 21st anniversary with 500 companies reviving great plays from past years.
National Theatre Connections will celebrate its 21st anniversary in 2016 by doubling the number of companies taking part. 500 youth theatre and school companies will perform ten outstanding plays drawn from more than 150 new works commissioned and premiered by Connections since its inception, by writers including Simon Armitage, James Graham, Katori Hall, Jackie Kay, Bryony Lavery, Patrick Marber and Mark Ravenhill.
Alice King-Farlow, Director of Learning, says: ‘Connections has revolutionised the landscape for youth theatre over the 21 years of its existence, creating an extraordinary body of over 150 specially commissioned scripts for young performers by leading dramatists. Teenagers also get the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of theatre-making, from set design to marketing. Over 60,000 young people have taken part in Connections over the years, with audiences of 600,000 all over the UK. It’s immensely exciting to announce a hugely expanded Connections programme for 2016, which celebrates both past and future by reviving some of the most successful plays from the Connections portfolio and welcoming double the number of participants to perform in their home venues and at our partner theatres across the UK; culminating, as usual, at the National Festival itself.’
The 2015 Connections Festival schedule is:
Wednesday 1 July – Dorfman
19:00
Follow, Follow by Katie Douglas
St Ives Youth Theatre, Cambridgeshire
20:30
Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent
Theatre Royal Stratford East Youth Theatre
Thursday 2 July – Dorfman
19:00
The Boy Preference by Elinor Cook
Best Theatre Arts, St Albans
20:30
The Crazy Sexy Cool Girls’ Fan Club by Sarah Solemani
Key Youth Theatre, Peterborough
Friday 3 July – Dorfman
19:00
Hospital Food by Eugene O’Hare
Kildare Youth Theatre
20:30
Hood by Katherine Chandler
Found in the Forest Youth Theatre, Gloucestershire
Saturday 4 July – Dorfman
19:00
Remote by Stef Smith
UROCK Youth Company, Peterborough
20:00
Drama, Baby by Jamie Brittain
Bishops High School, Chester
Monday 6 July – Oli
19:00
The Edelweiss Pirates by Ayub Khan Din
Gulbenkian Youth Theatre, Canterbury
20:00
The Accordion Shop by Cush Jumbo
LSC Expressive Arts, Leyton
Drama, Baby by Jamie Brittain
It’s the final rehearsals before the practical A Level theatre studies exam, and Neil wants everything to be just perfect. Two competing groups of students attempt to achieve that ever-elusive ‘A’ grade, soon finding the competing forces of sex, alcohol and Artaud threatening to destroy their hopes of a good university place. As egos clash and new relationships are formed and broken, Drama, Baby goes to the heart of what it means to perform, and what it’s like when the handbags and gladrags are stripped away.
Jamie Brittain was born in Edinburgh in 1985 and grew up mostly in the Lake District and Bristol. He created the teen drama series Skins, which he wrote for throughout its seven-year run, picking up a BAFTA along the way, and has since written for the Channel 4 show Dates. Drama, Baby is his first piece of theatre.
Hood by Katherine Chandler
Hood’s Mam has run off with a bacon licking vegetarian and her Dad spends his days and nights lost in a chair, feeding his addiction to ‘The Waterboys’. There’s no money left, there’s five struggling kids to feed and interfering Father Tuck just won’t let them be. But our modern day hero, Robyn Hood is determined to keep her family together, whatever it takes… A modern day tale about family and food.
Katherine Chandler is a Welsh playwright who has had plays produced by National Theatre Wales, Bristol Old Vic, Sherman Cymru, Theatr Nan’Og, Spectacle Theatre and Dirty Protest. Her play Before it Rains won the Writers’ Guild Playwright award at the Theatre Critics of Wales Awards. Her adaptation of Terry Jones’ fairy tales The Silly Kings was produced and performed by National Theatre Wales in Europe’s largest Spiegel tent, in the grounds of Cardiff Castle. Her new play Bird won the 2013 Bruntwood judges’ prize and is now in development with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester.
The Boy Preference by Elinor Cook
In an affluent suburb in the near future, the birth of a boy is welcomed with shouts of joy and firecrackers, but when a girl is born, the neighbours say nothing. One night, Joey looks out of his bedroom window and sees many young women with a strange glow around them – are they the ‘missing women’? Why have they come back?
Elinor Cook is the winner of the George Devine Award 2013 for Most Promising Playwright. Her plays include The Girl’s Guide To Saving The World which was produced by the 2014 HighTide Festival; The Circle Game, winner of the Old Vic New Voices Time Warner Ignite 3 competition and also performed at Latitude Festival; and Head Music which toured recently with Box of Tricks’ Head/Heart project. Elinor has recently finished writing an episode of The Secret, a new series now filming for BBC1.
The Edelweiss Pirates by Ayub Khan-Din
Germany 1943. The Second World War rages into its fourth year. All internal opposition has been viciously silenced and the population follow blindly behind Adolf Hitler and his policies of total war and domination. Around Germany, small groups of youth form themselves into societies; some just to listen and dance to banned music and be with like-minded teenagers. Others are becoming more aware that it is they, the youth of the country, who have to start resisting the Nazis, in whatever way they can. One such group are The Edelweiss Pirates of Cologne: a group who have found the courage to say no, enough is enough. There are still people in Germany with a conscience and moral convictions to stand up to the regime even though they may have to pay a terrible price for their convictions.
Ayub Khan Din’s first stage play East is East (1997) was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre, has been produced many times since and was subsequently adapted by Ayub into a highly successful feature film. Both play and film have won numerous awards including Evening Standard Best Film Award, the Writers’ Guild Award for Best New Writer, Best West End Play and the John Whiting Award for Best Stage Play. West Is West, a sequel film, was released in 2010. Other plays include All the Way Home, and Rafta Rafta, an adaptation of Bill Naughton’s 1960s story ‘All in Good Time’, which was produced at the National Theatre, winning a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, and then in New York. Ayub’s screen adaptation of All in Good Time was released as a feature film in 2012.
Follow, Follow by Katie Douglas
After an Orange Order march through the town where they live, Al, Billy, Stacey, Kelly-Anne and Big Mikey head to the local park with a gaggle of younger kids, readying to drink, flirt and have a laugh. But when one of their group is robbed and the others assume they know who is to blame, a group becomes a gang. Events spiral out of control, ending in an act of violence which some of them can’t understand, none of them can handle, and all of them will remember for the rest of their lives.
Katie Douglas is a prize-winning scriptwriter whose work has spanned drama and comedy both here and in the States. She has worked on such shows as Secret Diary of a Call Girl, After You’ve Gone, MI High, Waterloo Road and EastEnders. As a playwright, she has worked with a number of theatres, including Liverpool Everyman, the RSC, Paines Plough, Soho and Southwark Playhouse, and her work has been shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
The Accordion Shop by Cush Jumbo
Mister Ellody has quietly kept his accordion shop going on his local high street for generations. One day, he steps out of his door and witnesses an extraordinary incident: hundreds of young people are surging onto the street, and they’ve all received the same text message on their phones which simply says “RIOT. THE ROAD. 7pm TONIGHT.”
Cush Jumbo is an award-winning actress and writer, who was nominated for an Olivier Award in 2014 for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre for Josephine and I which she wrote and performed at the Bush Theatre. She won the Best Actress award at The Manchester Theatre Awards 2014 for her performance as Nora in A Doll’s House at the Royal Exchange; previously she was nominated for an Olivier Award for her performance as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse, and was awarded the Ian Charleson Award 2012 for her performance as Rosalind in As You Like It at the Royal Exchange Theatre.
Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent
When Eloise is tasked with showing new girl, Beth, around the school, she takes her to the “Hackerspace” where her and her gang of nerdy friends hang out – a disused portacabin they’ve turned into a student-run IT lab. Although the gang call themselves Hackers, their activities are entirely harmless… Until the gang’s self-elected leader, Archie, is humiliated by the school bully and Beth inspires them to use their tech-savviness to avenge him. Revelling in their newfound power, the group allow Beth to lead them in an increasingly dangerous direction. With Archie usurped and everyone in Beth’s thrall, just what kind of hackers will they become and what will it take to stop them?
Ben Ockrent’s television work includesThe Secrets, Waterloo Road, Material Girl, Youngers and Joe Mistry. His theatre work includesBreeders (St James), Carrot (Latitude Festival), Bedrooms, Dens and Other Forms of Magic (Theatre503), The Pleasure Principle (Tristan Bates Theatre) and Honey, which was nominated for an Olivier Award as a part of the Tricycle Theatre’s season, Afghanistan: The Great Game (which toured the US, including a one-off performance in the Pentagon). Ben recently co-directed and co-wrote his first short film, Dust, starring Alan Rickman, which was long-listed for a BAFTA.
Hospital Food by Eugene O’Hare
Set in the present day, ten young people are residents of a teenage cancer unit in a city hospital. All of them are undergoing various conventional treatments for different cancers at different stages of progression. Their shared illness bonds them and they support each other as they reveal their fears and hopes for the future while confronting, head on, the very real prospects of untimely death. The teenagers have a special room called The Retreat where they can have peer meetings without adult intrusion – a place to go where it is calm and where their thoughts can be intimated to each other without fear. What is discussed in The Retreat stays in The Retreat.
Eugene O’Hare was chosen by Channel 4 from over 3,500 submissions for the 4Screenwriters placement for which he wrote the psychological thriller Shopping for Boys. He is currently adapting the 1979 cult film Scum for the stage alongside its original writer Roy Minton; his full length play Sydney & the Old Girl goes into production in 2015. Eugene is a member of Field Day Theatre Company; as an actor he has performed both on and off Broadway, at the National Theatre, Royal Court, Old Vic, Tricycle, Hampstead, Abbey Theatre, Arcola, Glasgow Citzens and extensively across Ireland. He has worked on several film and television productions and created the role of Aaron Monroe in the hit BBC 2 series The Fall.
Remote by Stef Smith
A girl called Antler steps out of her front door and throws her phone on the ground. She stamps on it. She then climbs the tallest tree in the park. She doesn’t want to be found, not by anyone. Seven teenagers’ lives all intertwine over the course of a single evening as they make their way through the park on a seemingly normal autumn night. Remote is a play about protest, power and protecting yourself.
Stef Smith is currently best known for supplying the text for RoadKill (Edinburgh Festival 2010, 2011) which won a Laurence Olivier Award in 2012. Other plays include: CURED (Glasgay!), Grey Matter (Aberdeen Performing Arts), Falling/Flying (The Tron, Glasgow), The Silence of Bees (The Arches) and a BBC Scotland radio drama entitled Tea and Symmetry.
The Crazy Sexy Cool Girls’ Fan Club
by Sarah Solemani
What makes a ‘fan’ girl? Who are they? What do they want? Who are the band? What are they in it for? And at £200 a ticket, who is the band’s fan base? Surely not girls aged 9-16? This riotous satire explores the teen politics of a ‘friendship group’, and the chaos and torment that can come with stardom at an early age. A play about desire, fantasy and worship with a hilarious and horrifying showdown finish.
Well known as an actress, Sarah Solemani is also a screenwriter and playwright. Her comedy, Aphrodite Fry, in which she also starred, was produced for SKY’s 2013 ‘Love Matters’ season. Her feature script, Live Forever, is in development with director Beeban Kidron and her work has been produced at the Soho Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Theatre 503 and the Public Theatre, New York. Her collaborations include Old Vic New Voices (Ignite), the Royal Court (Young Writer’s Group) and the Young Vic.
