The National Theatre Connections Festival is a celebration of young people, theatre and the importance of access to the arts. Each year the National Theatre commissions a collection of new plays for young people to perform, bringing together some of the UK’s most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow.
Royal & Derngate hosts the largest and most diverse of the regional festivals that take place across the country. Groups from across the region will perform a host of exciting new plays, including Brain Play by Chloë Lawrence-Taylor and Paul Sirett, YOU 2.0 by Alys Metcalf, Fresh Air by Vickie Donoghue, No Regrets by Gary McNair and The Company of Trees by Jane Bodie.
As part of the festival, the theatre’s own Young Company will be reprising their production of Saba’s Swim, by Danusia Samal, on Saturday 5 April at 6.15pm and Sunday 6 April at 3pm.
Other organisations from the county taking part include Kettering Science Academy, Wollaston School Theatre Company, Kingsthorpe College, St Peter’s Pathway and Corby’s Pegasus Performing Arts, while other groups come from as far afield as Reading, Peterborough, Milton Keynes, Hertfordshire and south Birmingham.
A full schedule of performances for the National Theatre Connections Festival, which runs at Royal & Derngate from Monday 31 March to Sunday 6 April, can be found at www.royalandderngate.co.uk/national-theatre-connections-festival. Tickets – priced from £6 – can be booked online or by calling Box Office on 01604 624811. Audiences should be aware that National Theatre Connections plays contain some swearing and themes of an adult nature.