Drawing together the work of 12 leading playwrights, this National Theatre Connections anthology celebrates highlights from 21 years of the Connections festival with a retrospective selection of plays.
Featuring work by some of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries, and together in one volume, the anthology offers young performers between the ages of 13 and 19 an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study.
Each play has been specifically commissioned by the National Theatre's literary department over the years, with the young performer in mind. In 2016, these plays were then performed by approximately 500 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional partner regional theatres at which the works were showcased.
The anthology contains all 12 of the play scripts; notes from the writer and director of each play, addressing the themes and ideas behind the play; and production notes and exercises for the drama groups.
This year's anniversary anthology includes plays by Snoo Wilson, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt; Simon Armitage; Jackie Kay; Patrick Marber; Mark Ravenhill; Bryony Lavery & Frantic Assembly; Davey Anderson; James Graham; Katori Hall; Carl Grose; Stacey Gregg; and Lucinda Coxon.
Gregg, Stacey: -
Stacey Gregg's credits include: Lights Out (The Site Programme); Nod If You
Can Hear Me (The Big Idea) for the Royal Court, Scorch (Prime Cut);
Choices (Royal Exchange, Manchester/WoW Festival, Southbank/
Dublin Fringe/Outburst); Override (Watford Palace/Dublin Fringe);
Shibboleth, Perve (Abbey, Dublin). Television includes: The Innocents,
Riviera, The Frankenstein Chronicles, Your Ma's a Hard Brexit. As
Performer: Everything Between Us (Project Arts Centre); Moth
(Hightide, the Bush).
Grose, Carl: - Carl Grose was born in Truro, Cornwall, and is an actor and director, having worked with Kneehigh Theatre for the past fifteen years. He also co-founded the Cornish theatre and film production company, o-region.
Hall, Katori: - Katori Hall is from Memphis, Tennessee. Her play The Mountaintop was first produced to great acclaim at Theatre503, London, in June 2009, and received a transfer to the Trafalgar Studios, London, the following month. It won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2010, and opened in Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York City, in October 2011. Her other plays include Hurt Village (Classical Theatre of Harlem Future Classics Reading Series, BRIC Studio, 2007), Hoodoo Love (Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, 2007), Remembrance (Women's Project/World Financial Center site-specific work, 2007), Saturday Night/Sunday Morning (Classical Theatre of Harlem Future Classics Reading Series, The Schomburg Centre, New York, 2008), WHADDABLOODCLOT!!!, The Hope Well and Pussy Valley. Her numerous awards include the 2007 Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, a 2006 New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting and Screenwriting, a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in 2006, and the 2005 Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting award.
Lavery, Bryony: - "A rounded theatre practitioner, Bryony Lavery's skills extend to performer (most notably as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan at the Drill Hall), artistic director (Gay Sweatshop and Female Trouble), writer of children's theatre (including The Dragon Wakes, Madagaskar, and Down Among the Mini Beast) and of many cabarets (including Floorshow with Caryl Churchill for Monstrous Regiment in 1977). From 1989 to 1992 she was Tutor-Lecturer on the M.A. Playwriting Course at Birmingham University. She is an honorary Doctor of Arts at De Montfort University. 'Lavery is one of the best but most consistently underrated playwrights in the country: her talent is lavish. She is a wonderful technician and always surprising: it is never possible to second-guess her.' - Kate Kellaway, Observer"
Ravenhill, Mark: - Mark Ravenhill is one of the most distinctive contemporary UK playwrights. He burst on to the theatre scene in 1996 with the huge hit Shopping and Fucking. He has continued to garner critical acclaim for plays that include Some Explicit Polaroids, Mother Clap's Molly House, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, The Cut, Product, pool (no water), Citizenship, Ten Plagues, The Coronation of Poppea, Candide, Faust is Dead, Handbag, A Life in Three Acts, A Life of Galileo and Over There.
Wilson, Snoo: - Snoo Wilson (1948-2013) was born in Reading, studied at the University of East Anglia and was a founding director of the Portable Theatre, Brighton and London. During his career, Wilson was script editor for the Play for Today series, BBC TV, dramaturg for the RSC, director of the Scarab Theatre and also taught film scriptwriting at the National Film School. In 1980 he was awarded a US/UK Bicentennial Fellowship and worked at Santa Cruz University and with the New York Theatre Studio in New York. In 1989 Wilson was Associate Professor, lecturing in play writing, at University College San Diego. With a writing career from the 1960s, Wilson's place as an important and distinguished playwright was confirmed in his many award-winning plays both in Britain and across America. He received the John Whiting Award in 1978 for The Glad Hand, the San Diego Theater Circle award in 1988 for 80 Days and the Eileen Anderson/Central Broadcasting Premiere Award for Best Night Out for HRH. Wilson wrote films, libretti, radio plays and two novels. His libretti include an acclaimed adaptation of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld for the English National Opera and the book for 80 Days at the La Jolla Playhouse in California.
