Connections (also referred to as New Connections and formerly Shell Connections and BT Connections) is the Royal National Theatre in London's annual youth theatre festival. [1] It was founded in 1995 and sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell until 2007 when the Bank of America took over the sponsorship. The plays are also published by the National Theatre each year.
The National Theatre annually commissions ten plays from established playwrights which are performed by youth theatre groups across the UK. Groups are invited to perform at Connections Festivals held at a professional theatre in their area. A random performance group from each play is then performed at the end of the Festival at the National Theatre. [2]
Several of the specially commissioned Connection plays have been professionally produced at the National Theatre. In 1999 Sparkleshark was performed. In 2006 three were produced; Burn by Deborah Gearing, Chatroom by Enda Walsh and Citizenship by Mark Ravenhill were performed in 2006; [3] the latter two were revived in 2007 when they also toured. [4] In 2008 Baby Girl by Roy Williams, DNA by Dennis Kelly and The Miracle by Lin Coghlan also received professional productions in the Cottesloe. [5]
2023
Source - [6]
Source - [7]
DNA
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Patrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, actor, and screenwriter.
Bryony Lavery is a British dramatist, known for her successful and award-winning 1998 play Frozen. In addition to her work in theatre, she has also written for television and radio. She has written books including the biography Tallulah Bankhead and The Woman Writer's Handbook. She taught playwriting at the University of Birmingham.
Closer (1997) is a dramatic play by British playwright Patrick Marber. It premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London in 1997 and made its North American debut at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway on 25 January 1999.
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Sparkleshark is a stage play by Philip Ridley that was originally commissioned for the BTNational Connections, the UK National Theatre's youth theatre scheme in 1997. Sparkleshark had a professional run at the Royal National Theatre in 1999 followed by a tour in 2001.
The King's Head Theatre, founded in 1970 by Dan Crawford, is an off-West End venue in London. The original venue was the oldest operating pub theatre in the UK. In 2024, the pub theatre, and the King's Head Theatre now operates from a purpose-built 220-seat space next door to the original venue. The theatre focusses on producing LGBTQ+ work that is joyful, irreverent, colourful and queer. It is currently led by Executive Director and Acting CEO Sofi Berenger.
The Storyteller Sequence is a series of one act dramas written for young people by Philip Ridley. The plays, all set in east London, use fairytale stories and theatrical conventions to reveal the traumas of their young protagonists. To date there are five plays in the sequence, although Ridley has intimated there will eventually be seven. The five written to date are Karamazoo, Fairytaleheart, Moonfleece, Sparkleshark and Brokenville; note that although this is not the order in which the plays were written and performed chronologically, it is the order Ridley intends the finished "sequence" to run.
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