National Theatre Connections is an annual festival which brings new plays for young people to schools and youth theatres across the UK and Ireland. Commissioning exciting work from leading playwrights, the festival exposes actors aged 13-19 to the world of professional theatre-making, giving them full control of a theatrical production - from costume and set design to stage management and marketing campaigns. NT Connections have published over 150 original plays and regularly works with 500 theatre companies and 10,000 young people each year. This anthology brings together 10 new plays by some of the UK's most prolific and current writers and artists alongside notes on each of the texts exploring performance for schools and youth groups. Salt Life is never plain sailing, but when a new government initiative comes into place offering young people the chance to train and learn skills overseas, droves of teens jump at the chance to secure their future. Once on board the transport ship, the promises of the glossy advert seem a far cry from what lies ahead. A play about generations, choices and hope. Class It's school election time and while most of the school is busy enjoying their lunch break, a deadlock is taking place amongst the members of the school council. Bitter rivalries, secret alliances and false promises are laid bare. As a ruthless battle ensues, who will win and does anyone really care? A play about politics, populism and the 'ping' of a text message. The Sad Club This is a musical about depression and anxiety. It's a collection of monologues, songs and duologues from all over time and space exploring what about living in this world stops us from being happy and how we might go about tackling those problems. Chaos A girl is locked in a room. A boy brings another boy flowers. A girl has tied herself to a railing. A boy doesn't know who he is. A girl worries about impending catastrophe. A woman jumps in front of a train. A boy's heart falls out his chest. A butterfly has a broken wing. Stuff Vinny's organising a surprise birthday party for his mate, Anita. It's not going well: his choice of venue is a bit misguided, Anita's not keen on leaving the house, and everyone else has their own stuff going on. Maybe a surprise party wasn't the best idea? A play about trying (but not really managing) to help. Flesh A group of teenagers wake up in a forest with no clue how they got there. They find themselves separated into two different teams but have no idea what game they are expected to play. With no food, no water and seemingly no chance of escape, it's only a matter of time before things start to get drastic. But whose side are people on and how far will they go to survive? Ageless In a not too distant future, Temples pharmaceutical corporation has quite literally changed the face of ageing. Their miracle drug keeps its users looking perpetually teenage. With an ever youthful population, how can society support those who are genuinely young? The Small Hours It's the middle of the night and Peebs and Epi are the only students left at school over half-term. At the end of their night out, former step-siblings Red and Jazz try to navigate their reunion. With only a couple of hours until morning, Jaffa tries to help Keesh finish an essay. As day breaks, Wolfie is getting up the courage to confess a secret to VJ at a party. Their choices are small yet momentous. The hours are small but feel very, very long. And when the night finally ends, the future is waiting - all of it. terra A group of classmates is torn apart by the opportunity to perform their own dance. As they disagree and bicker, two distinct physical groups emerge and separate into opposing teams. When a strange outsider appears - out of step with everyone else - the divide is disrupted. A contemporary narrative dance piece about individuality, community and heritage. Variations 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?

Nominated for an Olivier Award 2022 "I'll tell you one more thing. I got more songs in my head than I ever told you. I got enough to sing for days..." 1903, Somerset. Rooted in the land where she has lived her entire life, Louie Hooper's mind overflows with its songs - more than 300 of them passed down from her mother. Cecil Sharp, a composer visiting from London, fears England's folk songs will be lost forever and sets out on a mission to transcribe each and every one. He believes Louie's music should speak not just for this place but for the whole of England. Nell Leyshon's Olivier Award-nominated play with songs originally heard on BBC Radio before a sold-out, highly acclaimed run at London's Hampstead Theatre. The production was revived in June 2022 due to popular demand.

The Colour of Milk is the new novel by Orange longlisted author and playwright Nell Leyshon. 'this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand' The year is eighteen hundred and thirty one when fifteen-year-old Mary begins the difficult task of telling her story. A scrap of a thing with a sharp tongue and hair the colour of milk, Mary leads a harsh life working on her father's farm alongside her three sisters. In the summer she is sent to work for the local vicar's invalid wife, where the reasons why she must record the truth of what happens to her - and the need to record it so urgently - are gradually revealed. 'Haunting, distinctive voices... Mary's spare simple words paint brilliant pictures in the reader's mind . . . Nell Leyshon's imaginative powers are considerable' Independent 'Bronte-esque undertones . . . a disturbing statement on the social constraints faced by 19th-century women' FT 'A small tour de force - a wonderfully convincing voice, and a devastating story told with great skill and economy' Penelope Lively 'I loved it. The Colour of Milk is charming, Bronte-esque, compelling, special and hard to forget. I loved Mary's voice - so inspiring and likeable. Such a hopeful book' Marian Keyes 'Brilliant, devastating and unforgettable' Easy Living Nell Leyshon's first novel, Black Dirt, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize. Her plays include Comfort me with Apples, which won an Evening Standard Award, and Bedlam, which was the first play written by a woman for Shakespeare's Globe. She writes for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and won the Richard Imison Award for her first radio play. Nell was born in Glastonbury and lives in Dorset.

Mary and her three sisters rise every day to backbreaking farm work that threatens to suppress their own awakening desires, whether it's Violet's pull toward womanhood or Beatrice's affinity for the Scriptures. But it's their father, whose anger is unleashed at the slightest provocation, who stands to deliver the most harm. Only Mary, fierce of tongue and a spitfire since birth, dares to stand up to him. When he sends her to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife in their house on the hill, he deals her the only blow she may not survive.

Within walking distance of her own family farm, the vicarage is a world away-a curious, unsettling place unlike any she has known. Teeming with the sexuality of the vicar's young son and the manipulations of another servant, it is also a place of books and learning-a source of endless joy. Yet as young Mary soon discovers, such precious knowledge comes with a devastating price as it is made gradually clear once she begins the task of telling her own story.

Reminiscent of Alias Grace in the exploration of the power dynamics between servants and those they serve and The Color Purple's Celie, The Colour of Milk is a quietly devastating tour de force that reminds us that knowledge can destroy even as it empowers.

Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name, Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl.

Late August heat, still and heavy, down on the Somerset Levels. A land of water and silt and mud and eels. Something is moving. Unfurling...During a heady hot summer, a young girl's sexual awakening is coloured by shadows of her early childhood. Written with Leyshon's characteristic stark lyricism and suffused with the austere poetry of the West Country, "Glass Eels" dramatises the unconscious world of instinct where the lives of humans, plants and eels are all ruled by the primal rhythms of the wetlands. It opens at the Hampstead Theatre in June 2007.

Following the death of their young daughter, John and Laura visit Venice to try and escape their grief. But when the couple meet two aged sisters, one of them claims to have psychic visions of the dead girl. Tension mounts as John and Laura are led through a maze of canals and alleyways towards a dark and terrifying climax. Lucy Bailey, director of "Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare's Globe", and award-winning playwright Nell Leyshon join forces again following the acclaimed "Comfort me with Apples" to bring a new adaptation of this cult supernatural thriller to the stage. A Sheffield Theatres production, "Don't Look Now" opens at the Lyric Hammersmith in March 2007.

Autumn, and the orchard is full of cider apples: "Beauty of Bath", "Kingston Black", and "Glory of the West". Inside the farmhouse, the rule of matriarch Irene is challenged when her estranged daughter returns and her middle-aged son, beginning to tire of being tied to the unprofitable farm, grows restless. This is a richly evocative tale about life in our changing rural landscape. "Comfort me with Apples" premieres at the Hampstead Theatre in October 2005.

Bringing together five plays commissioned specially for the RADA Elders Company, this anthology provides a selection of dynamic and thought-provoking works for elders companies anywhere. The RADA Elders Company began in 2013 in order to provide opportunities for older people to experience the academy's training at its best. Each year, a playwright is invited to create a new piece for the company, encompassing a wide range of theatre disciplines and skills. This collection features five pieces that showcase the breadth and diversity of RADA Elders commissions: Broken Pieces by A. C. Smith Our Father by Deborah Bruce The Word by Nell Leyshon Down the Hatch by Frances Poet Of Blood by Christopher William Hill