Connections 500

Drawing together the work of 12 leading playwrights, this National Theatre Connections anthology celebrates highlights from 21 years of the Connections festival with a retrospective selection of plays. Featuring work by some of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries, and together in one volume, the anthology offers young performers between the ages of 13 and 19 an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study. Each play has been specifically commissioned by the National Theatre's literary department over the years, with the young performer in mind. In 2016, these plays were then performed by approximately 500 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional partner regional theatres at which the works were showcased. The anthology contains all 12 of the play scripts; notes from the writer and director of each play, addressing the themes and ideas behind the play; and production notes and exercises for the drama groups. This year's anniversary anthology includes plays by Snoo Wilson, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt; Simon Armitage; Jackie Kay; Patrick Marber; Mark Ravenhill; Bryony Lavery & Frantic Assembly; Davey Anderson; James Graham; Katori Hall; Carl Grose; Stacey Gregg; and Lucinda Coxon.

Snoo Wilson (1948-2013) was born in Reading, studied at the University of East Anglia and was a founding director of the Portable Theatre, Brighton and London. During his career, Wilson was script editor for the Play for Today series, BBC TV, dramaturg for the RSC, director of the Scarab Theatre and also taught film scriptwriting at the National Film School. In 1980 he was awarded a US/UK Bicentennial Fellowship and worked at Santa Cruz University and with the New York Theatre Studio in New York. In 1989 Wilson was Associate Professor, lecturing in play writing, at University College San Diego. With a writing career from the 1960s, Wilson's place as an important and distinguished playwright was confirmed in his many award-winning plays both in Britain and across America. He received the John Whiting Award in 1978 for The Glad Hand, the San Diego Theater Circle award in 1988 for 80 Days and the Eileen Anderson/Central Broadcasting Premiere Award for Best Night Out for HRH. Wilson wrote films, libretti, radio plays and two novels. His libretti include an acclaimed adaptation of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld for the English National Opera and the book for 80 Days at the La Jolla Playhouse in California.

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. She is the author of – among other books – The Adoption Papers, which won the Forward Prize, Red Dust Road, winner of the Scottish Book of the Year Award, Trumpet, and the Costa-shortlisted
Fiere. She is Chancellor of the University of Salford and Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She has served as Scots Makar, the National Poet for Scotland, since March 2016.

Patrick Marber was born in London. His first play, Dealer's Choice, premiered at the Royal National Theatre, London, in February 1995. It won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy and the Writers' Guild Award for Best West End Play. Closer premiered at the Royal National Theatre in May 1997. It won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy and the Critics' Circle Award and Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play. Closer premiered on Broadway in March 1999 where it won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. Howard Katz premiered at the Royal National Theatre, London, in September 2001. Patrick Marber has also written extensively for television and radio including After Miss Julie (BBC, 1995).

Mark Ravenhill is one of the most distinctive contemporary UK playwrights. He burst on to the theatre scene in 1996 with the huge hit Shopping and Fucking. He has continued to garner critical acclaim for plays that include Some Explicit Polaroids, Mother Clap's Molly House, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, The Cut, Product, pool (no water), Citizenship, Ten Plagues, The Coronation of Poppea, Candide, Faust is Dead, Handbag, A Life in Three Acts, A Life of Galileo and Over There.

A rounded theatre practitioner, Bryony Lavery's skills extend to performer (most notably as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan at the Drill Hall), artistic director (Gay Sweatshop and Female Trouble), writer of children's theatre (including The Dragon Wakes, Madagaskar, and Down Among the Mini Beast) and of many cabarets (including Floorshow with Caryl Churchill for Monstrous Regiment in 1977). From 1989 to 1992 she was Tutor-Lecturer on the M.A. Playwriting Course at Birmingham University. She is an honorary Doctor of Arts at De Montfort University. 'Lavery is one of the best but most consistently underrated playwrights in the country: her talent is lavish. She is a wonderful technician and always surprising: it is never possible to second-guess her.' – Kate Kellaway, Observer