Fresh Air

by Vickie Donaghue

performed by Spotlights Community Youth Theatre

Students from a Pupil Referral group are made to go orienteering in what they discover is England’s most haunted woods. Stalked by eery ghost children determined to keep them there forever, they must learn to confront the here and now to unlock the key to their futures.

Vickie Donoghue is a writer from Essex working across stage, screen and radio. Her plays include Mudlarks at The Bush Theatre; Tender Loving Care at the New Theatre Royal Portsmouth; Aperture at the Royal Court Theatre; The Path at the HighTide Festival; The Electric for Paines Plough and The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama; The Witch Finder’s Sister and The Flood at The Queens Theatre, Hornchurch; The Gift for BBC Radio 4; The Piper, a 10 part Podcast drama co-written with Natalie Mitchell for BBC Sounds.
Vickie was an Associate Artist at The Mercury Theatre and a Paines Plough playwright Fellow. She was longlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards as Most Promising New Playwright and was shortlisted for the Royal National Theatre Foundation Playwright Award.

YOU 2.0

by Alys Metcalf

performed by Crieff High School

Strangers Martha and Isaac find themselves forced into playing YOU 2.0, a new therapy video game designed to help players access their better selves. As they tackle the levels in two player mode, the pair form an unlikely friendship behind the anonymity of their gaming avatars, but their impact on each other’s lives goes much deeper than the game.

Alys Metcalf is a Welsh writer (with strong links to The Isles of Scilly) who works across TV, Theatre and Film. She’s an alumni of BBC Cornish Voices, BBC Comedy Room and trained under the Royal Court Young Writers and Criterion New Writers programmes. As a playwright, Alys’s play Leopards opened the new Artistic Director’s season at Rose Theatre, co-produced by Francesca Moody Productions, Rose Theatre and Kater Gordon. Other theatre includes sell-out hit, You Only Live Forever at SOHO Theatre; Reel Life at Ustinov Studio Theatre Royal Bath; and Unearthed (UK Tour). She is currently under script commission with BBC for a new TV drama and is developing her debut feature film, Little Rock with Ffilm Cymru and Blue Horizon Productions. She has written several online viral Beginner’s Guides for popular TV shows, including Peaky Blinders, as well as interactive AI story The Act for the BBC.

About National Theatre: Connections

The National Theatre Connections festival is a celebration of young people, theatre-making and the importance of access to the arts. Each year we commission ten new plays for young people to perform, bringing together some of the most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow.

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