Details

NT CONNECTIONS commissions new plays for and about young people from some of the best contemporary playwrights, for performance by schools and youth theatres from all over the UK and Ireland, both in their home venues and at sixteen regional partnership theatres. The NT Festival showcases an example of each play. Frank and Ferdinand - A village in a war-ravaged country wakes to find that one hundred and thirty children have vanquished. Only four are left: Otto, Aloysius, Sarah and Flora. Interviewed by a Military Inquiry, each child tells the events of the night before. But their accounts seem to differ. Who is the elusive Sebastian and why does the Inquiry’s depiction of him keep changing from delinquent to charmer and back again? What’s real and what’s fairy-tale? It’s just... if we had peace... I wonder what colours I’d see with you. If all we had was the normal things I long for, just sky and school and music, like in stories, then who would you be, Sebastian? A short, satirical mystery about the suppression of truth, the making of myths, and how we see what we want to see, not what’s there. Gargantua - Mr and Mrs Mungus have just had a baby. Unfortunately, it isn’t the bouncing blue-eyed boy they were hoping for… After a two-and-a -half year pregnancy, Mini Mungus has birthed a monster - one with an accelerated growth rate and an insatiable appetite for anything that moves (including joggers). But when a gaggle of sinister military scientists intent on cloning an army of giant babies extract Little Hugh’s DNA, he breaks his chains and escapes. The world can only watch in horror as he embarks on a) learning how to walk and b) rampant destruction. Who will stop this freak of nature? Who will decide his tragic fate? And who, more importantly, will change his nappy? Inspired by Rabelais’ equally enormous novel (and from watching too many bad Japanese monster movies), Gargantua is an absurd comedy that combines the epic with the domestic, high concept with low comedy and the grotesque with the heart-felt. Suitable for ages: 13+

Creatives/Company

Company(s): Warwick Arts Centre Senior Youth Theatre (Frank and Ferdinand), Talisman Youth Theatre (Gargantua)
Author(s): Samuel Adamson (Frank and Ferdinand), Carl Grose (Gargantua)