Charlie Josephine

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 trans-rights, the mental health crisis, colonial history, disability activism, and climate change, the collection provides topical, pressing subject matter for students to explore in their performance. This 2024 anthology represents the full set of ten plays offered by the National Theatre 2024 Festival (eight brand-new plays, and two returning favourites), as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production.

In a sleepy town in the Wild West, the women drift through their days like tumbleweed. Their husbands, swept up in the goldrush, have been missing for almost a year and show no sign of returning. In fact, the town is almost cut off from outsiders entirely, with only one drunken sheri for protection. That is until handsome bandit Jack Cannon swaggers up to the town's saloon, looking for a place to hide from the bounty hunters on his tail. Armed with whiskey and a wink, and a gun by their side for good measure, Jack's explosive arrival inspires a gender revolution, and starts a fire under the petticoat of every one of the town's repressed inhabitants. The production originally premiered at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon- Avon, presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

This book is for the 'others'. For anyone who's ever felt othered. For us lot. Who deserve celebration and opportunity. Each one is written with love, with the actor in mind. I hope they make your body feel fizzy, I hope they get you all the jobs, I hope your flowers bloom.

Bitch Boxer was the winner of the Holden Street Theatres Awards 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Meet Chloe, 21 from Leytonstone. She likes the simple things in life: cherry sambuca, hairbrush-in-the-mirror karaoke with Rihanna and winding her Dad up. Oh, and she’s a boxer. London, 2012. Women will step into the Olympic boxing ring for the very first time. And it’s in Stratford. Down the road. As Chloe trains for the fight of her life, she is left winded by two life-changing events. In a man’s world, can she prove she’s still worth the title?

‘She just needs to understand that it's not her fault, that she's not to blame, that she's not a slut’Three women and two men swim in shame. Everyone's exposed. Everyone wants revenge. No one's talking about it. Five candid stories about revenge porn and all its many victims. Blush is a slap in the face and a call to arms. Written by Charlie Josephine and presented by Snuff Box Theatre – the team behind award-winning Bitch Boxer.

They’re trying. Despite everything. They’re really trying. They almost work together, beautifully. Looking at what is inherited and who is responsible, award-winning writer Charlie Josephine’s new play Pops follows a father and daughter caught in a vicious cycle of addiction, and the self-inflicted shame around mental health.