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. Ruckus in the Garden by David Farr - Riverdale Comprehensive and St Nectan's Grant Maintained find themselves in the Garden of Cecil Fortescue on a school trip. A ruckus is inevitable, as is customary when these two schools meet. Magic waits amongst the topiary in the form of ‘Cupid’, who brings about transformations romantic, revealing and hilarious! Show and Tell by Laline Paull - Students become obsessed with the secret life of their new supply teacher, who they are convinced is involved in the world’s oldest profession. In between trying to get off with each other, shaking off weird parents and making an earth-shatteringly important documentary: they find there's hi-jinx to be had in a gang that gets it completely wrong... and is the hamster still alive? Scary Play by Judith Johnson - 10 year old Kal and his mates are having a sleepover to celebrate his birthday. As the night draws in, they indulge in an age old pastime; scaring the living daylights out of each other! Kal tells the story of a local house, said to be haunted by the ghost of a man who once lived there with his ageing mother and his pet monkey. Scary Play follows the children as they creep into the haunted house and each faces up to their own unique fear... A Year and a Day by Christina Reid - A traveling Storyteller and A Girl meet in a land devastated by war and famine. The Storyteller remembers and conjures a long-long-ago land of peace and plenty – a beautiful garden inhabited by The Kritters of the land, the trees and the water. And then the humans come to the garden – Two tribes who worship different Gods. The Storyteller’s tale of the corruption and loss of the ancient garden is a love story that becomes a never-ending story of old ghosts who still haunt the earth. The Black Remote by Glyn Maxwell - Polly find herself left alone with a brand new enormous sleek plasma-screen TV and four remote controls – a white one that does this, a grey one that does that, a silver one that does the other, and a black one – well no one knows what that does. Enter her curious friend Norman, who picks up the forbidden Black Remote and starts rapidly surfing the channels. Little does he know that the TV will explode and strange winged creatures will appear. But what will using the Black Remote mean for the outside world.

Creatives/Company

Author(s): David Farr (Ruckus in the Garden), Laline Paull (Show and Tell), Judith Johnson (Scary Play), Christina Reid (A Year and a Day), Glyn Maxwell (The Black Remote)
Company(s): Manor College of Technology, Newcastle College Performance Academy, Nunthorpe School Youth Theatre, Sacred Heart High School, Shotton Hall School, Stokesley School, St Mary's School, Washington School