Full Description
Marking its 30th anniversary, National Theatre Connections 2025 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 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. Wrestling with themes like the cost-of-living crisis, activism, neurodiversity, the point and pointlessness of regret, human rights, and loneliness, this collection lays bare a rich and complex terrain in which students can fully immerse themselves, explore and discover.
This 2025 anthology represents the full set of ten plays offered by the National Theatre 2025 Festival, as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production.
Like candles on a 30th birthday cake, this collection is bright, striking and set to make a lasting impression - the culmination of the celebrations it also strikes a note of eager anticipation as the next chapter begins
Contents
Head of Young People's Programmes Introduction
Connections Dramaturg Introduction
Connections 2025 Synopses
YOU 2.0 by Alys Metcalf
Workshop Notes
Normalised by Amanda Verlaque
Workshop Notes
Brain Play by Chloë Lawrence-Taylor and Paul Sirett
Workshop Notes
Saba's Swim by Danusia Samal
Workshop Notes
No Regrets by Gary McNair
Workshop Notes
The Company of Trees by Jane Bodie
Workshop Notes
Their Name is Joy by May Sumbwanyambe
Workshop Notes
Ravers by Rikki Beadle-Blair
Workshop Notes
Mia and the Fish by Satinder Chohan
Workshop Notes
Fresh Air by Vickie Donoghue
Workshop Notes
Participating Companies
Partner Theatres
National Theatre Connections Team
Performing Rights
