Connections 500

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.

SNOO WILSON was one of a handful of playwrights who reinvented British theatre in the 1970s and 80s. Together with Howard Brenton, David Hare and Tony Bicât he founded Portable Theatre Company, which presented his early work, including the still-performed Pignight. His other plays include The Pleasure Principe, The Glad Hand (Royal Court), The Soul of a White Ant, Vampire, The Number of the Beast, More Light, Darwin's Flood (Bush Theatre), The Beast (RSC), Orpheus in the Underworld (ENO), Bedbug, a musical (with Gary Kemp & Guy Pratt) based on Mayakovsky's 1929 satire (NT Connections 1995, 2016), and Reclining Nude with Black Stockings (Arcola Theatre). Following his sudden death in 2013, the many obituaries honouring both the man and the playwright confirmed that, at their exuberant, inventive and utterly original best, Snoo's plays deserve their place in the country's history of post-war playwrighting. "He encouraged audiences to go on a rollercoaster ride into the beyond, albeit with engaging and recognisable characters. It was not whimsy. He was a one-off, quite unlike any other dramatist." Dusty Hughes, Guardian. An archive of Snoo's work will soon be available at the University of East Anglia. His plays are published by Methuen Drama and represented by Micheline Steinberg Associates info@steinplays.com

Blackout by Davey Anderson Eclipse by Simon Armitage What Are They Like? by Lucinda Coxon Bassett by James Graham I'm Spilling My Heart Out Here by Stacey Gregg Gargantua by Carl Grose Children of Killers by Katori Hall Take Away by Jackie Kay It Snows by Bryony Lavery, Steven Hoggett & Scott Graham The Musicians by Patrick Marber Citizenship by Mark Ravenhill Bedbug by Snoo Wilson, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt