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Connections 2023: The Heights

by Lisa McGee

A young person in a long t shirt stands directly in front of the camera, looking down at it from above. The image has a light blue glow. The National Theatre logo is written at the top of the image in white text. The play title and name of writer are written across the bottom of the image in white.

Performed by St Brendan’s Sixth Form College, Bristol

This is a play about stories.

Lillie is a teenager who lives on the Heights Estate. A place where nothing ever happens, except in Lillie’s head.

Lillie’s not like most people, definitely not. For starters, she never goes out, but sits in her bedroom window on the sixth floor of her tower block, watching the world and the people in it go by – though sometimes some of those same people enter her world.

As she sits, she makes up stories. Some of these stories are sad, some are happy, some are funny and some are just wonderful. However, whatever they are, they are just stories. Aren’t they?

No one would play catch in the middle of the street with a loaded gun, or use the same gun to frighten a stranger as they slept in their bed. And no one could give birth to a baby made of glass, or murder their twin brother over an argument about what they should spend their money on IF they won the lottery… would they?

Surely these are all just stories, dark, curious, beguiling figments of Lillie’s fertile imagination, aren’t they?

Wednesday 21 June 2023, 8:30pm

Tickets on sale from 11am, Friday 19 May
£5 for one performance
£8 when you book for The Heights and Is This Good Enough? by Avaes Mohammad in the same order

Book tickets

Dorfman Theatre
National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 9PX
Get directions

Suitability

Content guidance

  • Recommended for ages 13+
  • Strong language.
  • Some infrequent moments of violence – these include one character choking another,
    and a scene where a character is tied up and gagged. In a non-naturalistic scene, there
    is a description of a glass baby shattering and causing a character’s arms and legs to bleed.

Our Funders

The Mohn Westlake Foundation supports nationwide Learning programmes for young people.

Nationwide learning is supported by Buffini Chao Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation, Tim & Sarah Bunting, MFPA Trust Fund for the Training of Disabled Children in the Arts, Behrens Foundation, Cleopatra Trust, and The Andor Charitable Trust.

Connections is supported by The Mohn Westlake Foundation, Buffini Chao Foundation, The EBM Charitable Trust, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, Katie Bradford Arts Trust, Susan Miller & Byron Grote, Mulberry Trust, Tuixen Foundation, The Peter Cundill Foundation, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, The Woodward Charitable Trust and The John Thaw Foundation.

Find out more about supporting our work