Helen Blakeman

This brilliant new collection of ten plays for young people will prove indispensable to schools, colleges and youth theatre groups. Specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival 2011 involving 200 schools and youth theatre groups across the UK and Ireland, each play is accompanied by production notes and exercises. The Pied Piper re-imagined, the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, witches in seventeenth century Norfolk, a giant baby on the rampage, an extraordinary day in an ordinary school are just some of subjects covered in the thrilling and varied new plays created by talented writers for young actors to perform in National Theatre Connections 2011. The plays in this anthology offer a huge variety of stories and styles to ignite the imagination of young casts and creative teams. Themes are both teenage and universal - ambition, dashed hopes, fear and confidence, loyalty and betrayal. These new plays embrace a huge range for their inspiration: they plunder classics and imagine the future.

National Theatre Connections 2026 draws together eight 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 Youth Custody Service, conspiracy, the climate crisis, exam pressure, grief and friendship, this collection lays bare a rich and complex terrain in which students can fully immerse themselves, explore and discover. This 2026 anthology represents the full set of eight plays offered by the National Theatre's 2026 programme, as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production.

Set in a Welsh seaside caravan park, this is the story of a working class Liverpool family. When Kim, 15, brings 20-year-old Mick back to the caravan she finds herself covered in ice cream, Mick's prelude to rape and an unwanted pregnancy. Then her sister, Kelly, falls for the same man.