New Connections
Plays 2009
Each year New Connections comissions established writers to produce scripts which will be performed by teenagers nationwide.
A Handbag by Anthony Horowitz Blackout by Davey Anderson Dirty Dirty Princess by Georgia Fitch Heartbreak Beautiful by Christopher William Hill Six Parties by William Boyd Success by Nick Drake The Dummy Tree by Conor Mitchell The Heights by Lisa McGee The Séance by Anthony Neilson The Things She Sees by Ben Power based on the novel by Charles Boyle The Vikings and Darwin by David Mamet Trammel by Michael Lesslie
A Handbag
by Anthony Horowitz
A group of young people rehearse a performance of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest". But the choice of play seems strange and inappropriate, the cast has almost no understanding of what they are doing and the place where they will be performing is certainly not a theatre. As they struggle to make sense of the text, we see that they are actually fighting for their own survival. This is a dark and disturbing comedy that explores crime and punishment in an increasingly vengeful world and questions whether there is a group in society that is actually beyond redemption.
Blackout
by Davey Anderson
“All I can remember is: I could hear screaming. It was like being in a dream but still being awake at the same time. And all I can hear is - please, don’t, stop it! And then… I don’t know. Next morning, I was in a jail cell. I didnae know how I got there. And I was like that - aw naw, what did I do?”
A short play about getting bullied, fighting back, trying to make a name for yourself, turning vicious, doing something stupid, losing everything, then finding your way again.
Dirty Dirty Princess
by Georgia Fitch
Stacey is 13 and all her mates think she’s well sexy.
Her mum keeps her in the latest fashion, so she always looks like a real princess.
At her cousin’s party, she ventures upstairs with Daniel Johnson, an athlete tipped to run in the Olympics, who is in his late-teens.
The events of that night lead to a spiral of events which test her trust of boys, her relationship with her mum, and lead her to seek advice from a Christian support group.
It’s a play about the consequences of silence, jealousy and trying to find a way of simply being 13.
Heartbreak Beautiful
by Christopher William Hill
AJ is the best athlete St Bart’s Comprehensive has ever seen; his brother, Dan, wants to push him to the limit. Amber has other ideas: desperate to settle down with AJ, have kids, get fat and watch daytime TV. AJ, however, has only got eyes for Ellie, a geek with a heart of gold and a lethal set of dental braces. But the course of true love never runs smooth, and Oscar is determined to pair up with Ellie himself, no matter what the cost – even if it means breeding an army of killer bird-bees. A fast-paced comedy about life, love and sport.
Six Parties
by William Boyd
As the title suggests, the action of the play takes place around six parties over a period of a few months. The setting is an African country and the time is contemporary. A group of young people, all in their late teens, two girls, four boys – white and black -- encounter each other at these parties and interact. The dynamics vary – power, sex, fun, patronage, friendship, inebriation, betrayal. But by the end of the sixth party all the fun and friendship have gone, lines have been drawn in the sand: we know who wields the real power in this group and we know who has genuine strength of character -- and who hasn’t.
Success
by Nick Drake
Tom Rakewell is a lucky man. In one mid-summer night he makes a fortune and meets Lucy, the love of his life. Suddenly he is surrounded by well-wishers, led by the all-powerful Nick Shadow. Everyone who is anyone is keen to be his friend, and to help him spend his new cash on clothes, parties and the high life. It seems he has the world at his feet, and all his dreams of success can finally come true.
But what price success? And what does success really mean if you lose the thing of greatest value in your life? Just when Tom thought he had it all, he finds himself suddenly falling into the dark heart of the city where everyone is struggling to survive. What he finds there - from the anarchic pizza delivery boys Ping and Pong, to the all-seeing Kid in the rusty shopping trolley - shows him a world that is stranger than he ever imagined. But it is also where, unexpectedly, he finds his redemption, and wins back the love of Lucy.
Inspired by Hogarth's The Rake's Progress, SUCCESS collides the 18th and the 21st centuries, to tell a story of luck, success, money, false friends and true love.
The Dummy Tree
by Conor Mitchell
A young man, on the morning of his wedding comes to a dummy tree to meet his birth mother. She wrote him a letter when he was 2 saying that if he ever got married she would meet him on that morning for the first time. He waits with some assembled others.
Also on the stage is a girl with a push chair. She is trying to get her infant to let go of his dummy...
neither sees the other.
The Heights
by Lisa McGee
Lillie Lee lives on the Heights estate. Confined to her bedroom by sickness, Lillie feels isolated and abnormal. Her bedroom window is her only connection to the outside world; she obsessively watches her neighbours from it and keeps herself occupied by making up stories about them. An unusual encounter with Dara another girl from the estate leads the two teenagers to strike up a firm friendship that may prove to be dangerous. The Heights touches on what it’s like to be different from others, it examines the idea of storytelling and the power of the imagination and looks at how the lines between fact and fiction can often easily become blurred.
The Séance
by Anthony Neilson
Five teenagers attempt to contact a dead school friend by means of a séance but the tensions released over its course are more frightening than any supernatural phenomenon. The Séance is a frank and sometimes funny drama about a group of friends on the cusp of adulthood ; and just dimly beginning to perceive that life -and love- is finite.
The Things She Sees
by Ben Power based on the novel by Charles Boyle
“Eight million people live in this city. It’s so easy to disappear, to hide. How can you possibly find one person, if they don’t want to be found?”
A young girl called Dizzy is searches across London for her missing father. She has inherited a magic power from her ancestors in Morocco, in which she can see fragments of the future, which become invaluable in her quest to re-unite her present day family.
The Vikings and Darwin
by David Mamet
It is well-known that soldiers often announce "on arising," "I dreamt I was going to die today," and then die.
A philosophical argument about whether aggression is an acceptable solution to seemingly unfathomable puzzles.
Trammel
by Michael Lesslie
The academies of English power, present day. Aron, a popular, brilliant kid from a local comprehensive, reluctantly takes on a scholarship to the single-sex public school that looms over his town. When dire home responsibilities force him to adapt to its conservative doctrines, he quickly becomes seduced by the power they can offer and is compelled to choose between his two ways of life. Soon, however, Aron’s fellow pupils see his conversion as a threat, and put to work the manipulative skills in which they have been trained in order to preserve their old system of government. A chilling insight into the institutions that shape the British elite, and the all-too-human ambition behind them, this is a tale of duty, friendship and rivalry that has resonance for all ages and backgrounds.
