Paul Sirett

Gary McNair

Vickie Donoghue

Rikki Beadle-Blair

Amanda Verlaque

Alys Metcalf

Jane Bodie

Danusia Samal

May Sumbwanyambe

Satinder Chohan

Chloë Lawrence-Taylor

A new anthology of 10 plays written for young performers as part of the National Theatre Connections Festival 2025.

10 Plays for Young Performers

National Theatre Connections 2025

A visceral play about friendship, teenage recklessness, futile ambitions and frustrated hopes.

Mudlarks

My brother's trying to win the war. He's fighting. We should be fighting. I'm brilliant at fighting. June 5, 1944, Southsea Beach. A girl named Poppy stands on the precipice of history. Tomorrow is the biggest day of her life: D-Day. Along with her friend Evie, Poppy finds herself volunteering in a Southsea hospital, preparing for the arrival of casualties of the D-Day landings. Poppy has always wanted to be a war hero, but instead finds herself being asked to do the unthinkable – provide a German prisoner of war with compassionate and tender care. A beautifully written play about the role of women on the Home Front during the Second World War, Tender Loving Care premiered at the Square Tower Portsmouth in June 2014, in a production by The New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth.

Tender Loving Care

Mudlarks is a tragic, beautifully realised play about three young men trapped at the wrong end of the river. On the muddy banks of the Thames, downstream from the bright lights of London, three boys hide from the police after a night of recklessness. Over the course of the freezing night their fears, secrets and dreams emerge, collide and combust revealing the desperate frustration of lives barely led but already ravaged. As morning dawns, their options diminish and just two questions remain: do they have the power to determine their own fates, or are they destined to sink into the mud? Mudlarks heralds the arrival of an urgent new voice in British theatre. Essex-born Vickie Donoghue'spowerful debut exposes the culture she grew up with and sees on a daily basis. With brutal honesty she explores teenagers' impulse to dream, and its futility in a reality that has no space for dreamers.

Vickie Donoghue

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