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.
Sam Adamson is a London-based Australian playwright. His plays include
Clocks and Whistles (Bush Theatre, 1996),
Grace Note (Old Vic, 1997),
Drink, Dance, Laugh and Lie (Bush, 1999),
Southwark Fair (National Theatre, 2005),and
Some Kind of Bliss (NT, 2006). He has written many adaptations, including
A Doll's House (Southwark Playhouse, 2003),
The Cherry Orchard and
Three Sisters, and
All About My Mother (from the Almodóvar film) which premiered at the Old Vic in 2007. His
Frank and Ferdinand was programmed as part of 2011's National Theatre Connections Plays for Young People.
Alia Bano studied English at Queen Mary, University of London, and taught A Level and GCSE English in Haringey. She joined the Royal Court's Young Writers' Programme in 2004. Her early work was read at Theatre Royal, Stratford East during the BritAsia Festival in 2005. She was subsequently invited to join Soho Theatre's Core Writing Group, and took part in the Royal Court's Unheard Voices programme in 2008. Her verbatim play
Behind the Image, developed with Nina Raine, was presented during the Royal Court Rough Cuts season in 2008. Her work for the stage includes
Gap, Hens, Rough Cuts, and
Shades.
Helen Blakeman is a British playwright and screenwriter from Liverpool. Her first play,
Caravan (1997), won the George Devine. In 2008, she wrote the screenplay for the award-winning TV film
Dustbin Baby, for which she won the British Academy Children's Award for best writer. Other plays include:
Normal (2000) and
The Morris (2005).
Noel Clarke is the creative mind behind the British film hit Kidulthood and the sequel Adulthood. He has starred in TV programmes such as Doctor Who and was the winner of the 2009 Orange Rising Star BAFTA. Noel is one of the most dynamic and inspired people working in British film today.
Noel lives in West London in the area in which the story of Kidulthood is set.
The feature film, 4.3.2.1, in which he stars, directs and produces, was released on 2nd June 2010. Bloomsbury published a novelization of this film using the same name, 4.3.2.1 in May 2010.
Molly Davies, born in Norfolk, won the Westminster Prize for her ten-minute play
No Fairy Stories (Soho Theatre). For young audiences, she has written
Day One (National Youth Theatre),
The Best Team Since the A Team (Southwark Playhouse) and
My Days (Soho/Company of Angels). She is a graduate of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme and
A Miracle was her first full-length play. Molly won the 2015 Harold Pinter Playwriting Award for her play
God Bless The Child.
