National Theatre Connections 2023 draws together ten new plays for young people to perform, from some of the UK's most exciting and popular playwrights. These are plays for a generation of theatre-makers who want to ask questions, challenge assertions and test the boundaries, and for those who love to invent and imagine a world of possibilities. The plays offer young performers an engaging and diverse range of material to perform, read or study. Touching on themes like climate change, politics, toxic masculinity and gang culture, the collection provides topical, pressing subject matter for students to explore in their performance. This 2023 anthology represents the full set of ten plays offered by the National Theatre 2023 Festival, as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production.

Fans of The Power will love this addictive novel' Stylist A masterful speculative novel exploring the fine lines between faith, conspiracy, and mania in contemporary America. While lying in bed next to her husband one night, Claire Devon hears a low hum that he cannot. And, it seems, no one else can either. This innocuous noise begins causing Claire headaches, nosebleeds, insomnia, gradually upsetting the balance of her life, though no obvious source or medical cause can be found. When she discovers that a student of hers can also hear the hum, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of neighbours who also perceive the sound. What starts as a neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something far more extreme and with far-reaching, devastating consequences. The Listeners is an exhilarating and erotic novel exploring the seduction of the wild and unknowable, the human search for the transcendent, the rise of conspiracy culture in the West, and the desire for community and connection in our increasingly polarised times.

Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer-gut he'd become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendence that kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of 'risk aversion' paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill's wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he's dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre one that apprehends the value of 'liveness' in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. '[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.' J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail 'Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.' Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award winning playwright (Fault Lines)Jordan Tannahill is a playwright, theatre director, and filmmaker. His plays and short films have been presented in theatres, festivals, and galleries across Canada and internationally. He received the 2014 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama for his book Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays. In collaboration with William Ellis, Jordan runs the alternative art-space Videofag, out of a defunct barbershop in Toronto's Kensington Market.

They're going to kill you. They're going to worship you, don't get me wrong. But they are going to kill you. Playboy Sandro Botticelli has it all: talent, fame, good looks. He also has the ear - and the wife - of Lorenzo de Medici, as well as the Florence's hottest young apprentice, Leonardo. But whilst he is at work on his breakthrough commission, The Birth of Venus, Botticelli's devotion to pleasure and beauty is put to the ultimate test. As plague sweeps through the city, the charismatic friar Girolamo Savonarola starts to stoke the fires of dissent against the liberal elite. Botticelli finds the life he knows breaking apart, forcing him to choose between love and survival. Jordan Tannahill's hot-blooded queering of Renaissance Italy questions how much of ourselves we are willing to sacrifice when society comes off the rails. Botticelli in the Fire made its European premiere at Hampstead Theatre, London, in October 2019.

From award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill comes a masterful and moving novel in the tradition of Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station and Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be. At 11:04 a.m. on January 21st, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother's bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself. From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son's enduring love for his mother.

Three of Jordan Tannahill's fresh and riveting works are featured in this collection, including "Get Yourself Home Skyler James," "Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes," and "rihannaboi95."
Based on a true story, "Get Yourself Home Skyler James" follows the harrowing journey of a young lesbian who defects from the army when she is outed by fellow soldiers. "Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes" chronicles the last hour of Peter Fechter's life, a teenager in East Berlin shot while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall in 1962 with his companion. Finally, the award-winning "rihannaboi95" centers around a Toronto teen whose world comes crashing in when YouTube videos of him dancing to songs by his favourite pop heroine go viral. Together these solo plays explore the lives of three queer youth and their resilience in the face of violence and intolerance.
..".one of Canada's most promising young independent theatre artists."--Alison Broverman, "Toronto Star"
Jordan Tannahill is a Toronto-based playwright, director, and filmmaker. Through his company Suburban Beast, he has developed and presented plays at theatres including Buddies in Bad Times, Canadian Stage, Theatre Passe Muraille, and the Theatre Centre. Jordan is the 2011 recipient of the Inside Out Film Festival's Emerging Canadian Artist Award, the 2011 Ken McDougall Award for Emerging Directors, and the 2012 Enbridge playRites Award. He runs a storefront theatre called Videofag in Toronto's Kensington Market with his partner William.