Connections is the National Theatre's annual, nationwide youth theatre festival. Each year the National Theatre commissions ten new plays for young people across the UK to perform.
All tickets are £5 for one show and £8 for both shows on a single day.
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday 20 May.
Bringing together the work of leading playwrights, as well as exciting collaborations with top choreographers and composers, National Theatre Connections 2022 features work by brilliant artists.
Ten young companies will come to the National Theatre to perform their productions of plays by Miriam Battye, Belgrade Young Company with Justine Themen, Claire Procter and Liz Mytton, Tim Crouch, Lisa Goldman, Katie Hims, David Judge, Fionnuala Kennedy, Ayeesha Menon with choregoraphy by Hofesh Shechter, Stef Smith, and Abbey Wright, Shireen Mula and Matt Regan in association with Tackroom Theatre.
All the 7pm performances will be captioned.
Performed by Winstanley College, Wigan
28 June 2022, 7pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 14+
Cable Street is about two girls growing up in London’s Jewish East End in the 1930s.
Leah and Kitty are blood sisters, best friends and more – but what happens when they get caught up in the political turmoil caused by Oswald Mosley’s fascist Blackshirts?
Performed by On Point Theatre Company, Leyton Sixth Form College, London
28 June, 8:30pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 13+
Antler steps out of her front door and throws her phone on the ground. She stamps on it. She then climbs the tallest tree in the park.
She doesn’t want to be found, not by anyone.
Performed by Bristol School of Acting
29 June, 7pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 13+
Set in an imagined city now, the people are choking on the fumes from the cars and the factories, produced by the slavish commitment of the masses to mass consumerism and mass consumption and yet they still vote for more and more – more cheap clothes, more cheap travel and more disposable goods in a fast, ephemeral life.
Performed by LORIC Players - South Wirral High School, Merseyside
29 June, 8:30pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 15+
Chat Back is about the underclass – all those young people who are so ‘bad’, disempowered, alienated, ostracised and abandoned that even on the last day of school they still find themselves in detention.
Performed by TheatreWorks Deal
30 June, 7pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 13+
Thirteen-year-old Alice wishes her life was completely different. She wakes up one morning to find that her life is different. In fact, it’s so different that all she wants to do is get back to normality. But how does she do that? A play about family, string theory and breakfast.
Performed by Kensington Arts, Isle of Man
30 June, 8:30pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 14+
Hunt is about a group of teenagers playing their version of hide and seek. Their version entails ‘borrowing’ objects from their neighbours’ back gardens, and dumping them at the ‘box’ without being caught, by either the official pursuers or the neighbours whose gardens they are infringing upon – hence the chances of being caught are twofold.
Performed by Best Theatre Arts, St Albans
1 July, 7pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 14+
Find a Partner! is about the sometimes catastrophic methods we use to find that elusive thing, love.
This is Love Island scrutinised through a Black Mirror-style lens as a group of young people compete to publicly couple up and fall in love forever, or die – quite literally.
in association with Tackroom Theatre
Performed by Suffolk New College Performing Arts, Ipswich
1 July, 8:30pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 15+
You don’t need to make a Big Song and Dance out of it is about young people’s attitudes towards, experiences of, access to, feelings about and opinions on pornography, love and connection.
Performed by Mayflower Youth Theatre, Southampton
2 July, 7pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 13+
The Ramayana Reset is about Zara, a young teenage woman who has a decision to make: to like or not to like the latest Instagram post by her friendship group; a post about the new girl, who happens to be Zara’s best friend from primary school.
Performed by Everyman Youth Theatre, Cardiff
2 July, 8.30pm, Dorfman Theatre
Recommended for ages 13+
Superglue tells the story of a group of climate activists gathering at a woodland burial ground to say goodbye to a friend who died during a protest.
