Anya Reiss

Drawing together the work of ten leading playwrights – a mixture of established and current writers – National Theatre Connections 2013 offers young performers between the ages of thirteen and nineteen everywhere an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study. Each play is specifically commissioned by the National Theatre’s literary department and reflects the past year’s programming at the venue in the plays’ ideas, themes and styles. The plays are performed by approximately 200 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional regional theatres where the works are showcased. The volume features an introduction by Anthony Banks, Associate Director for the National Theatre Discover Programme, and each play includes notes from the writer and director addressing the themes and ideas behind the play, as well as production notes and exercises. Published to coincide with the 2013 Connections festival, and the 50th anniversary of the National Theatre, this year's collection features work from Howard Brenton, Jim Cartwright, Lucinda Coxon, Ryan Craig, Stacey Gregg, Jonathan Harvey, Lenny Henry, Jemma Kennedy, Morna Pearson, and Anya Reiss.

Nothing's newEverything's old. I'm exactly the same as everOnly more lazyMore aimlessMore curmudgeonly...'One of the high points of world drama, Chekhov's bittersweet tale of frustrated lives and unrequited loves - by turns witty, playful, nostalgic and tragic - is captured in all its complexity by Bryony Lavery's spirited, sharply-written adaptation, first produced at Birmingham Rep in 2007.

This has been the worst day of my life. So can you please get drunk with me? Dana, Ruth and Jess down shots to console the heart-broken, to comfort the anxious and just pass the time. Kicked out from the family home Jess’s dad, Jim, invades the party with just as much recklessness as the girls. As the night passes and vodka bottles are emptied, Friday night in becomes high drama. An unruly new comedy asking if age equals maturity, Acid Test opened at the Royal Court in May 2011.

Winner of 2010 Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award For Most Promising Playwright, of the 2010 TMA Award for Best New Play and Winner of 2011 Critics Circle award for Most Promising Playwright. This play looks at the distance between close family relations and a young girl on the brink of adolescence.