In its 25-year history, NT Connections has never seen a year like it. When lockdown happened in March, the previous year's work was just about to come to fruition, with ten productions created by young people from all over the UK poised to take to the stage.
‘None of them went ahead’, explains Connections director Kirsten Adam. Live and in-person, she means, as many of them did go ahead online.
For all of us it has been The Year of the Zoom, in which ‘virtual’ events, gatherings, seminars, and tutorials have had to stand in for face-to-face encounters. Luckily for Adam and her Connections team, virtual connections have proved to be as workable, in most respects, as the real thing. (No doubt helped by the fact that the thousands of young people involved in NT Connections are far more digitally savvy than their older counterparts.)
An annual festival
Each year since 1995, ten companies selected from schools, performing arts academies and youth theatres, comprising young people aged 13 to 19, have put on new plays at the National Theatre, with the opportunity of going on to produce them at one of 30 partner venues around the UK, including the Lyric Belfast, London's artsdepot, Nottingham Playhouse, and the Traverse, Edinburgh.
The Connections year normally starts in November – after all the submissions are in – with a directors’ weekend, which is an opportunity for all the drama teachers and youth theatre leaders to participate in a workshop, focusing on the play they're producing, with the playwright and a facilitating director in attendance. This would normally happen at the National's HQ on the South Bank, but this year it was all done virtually via Zoom.
The plays are commissioned from both established and emerging playwrights. The eight new 2020 commissions have been rolled over to 2021 – and will be supplemented by two plays from the latest round of submissions – in the hope that they will get to have live productions next year.
‘We've had to be fairly flexible with our forward planning because things change on a daily basis,’ says Adam. ‘Doing things virtually requires a different skill set, and we're very lucky at the National to have lots of expertise on that front. We've all been working together on how to deliver effective learning programmes online.’
Trying to organise live performances in 2021 has also been fraught with difficulty because the partner venues, mostly locked down since March, all have different reopening schedules.
Benefits for all
In happier, less complicated times, those who have benefitted from the work of NT Connections include actors Keira Knightley, David Oyelowo and John Boyega – known for the Star Wars films – who describes his participation as ‘the breakthrough moment for me’.
Drama teacher Jenny Cameron, talking to The Stage last year, said that one of the bonuses of Connections is that all ten plays are published afterwards. ‘Every school drama teacher should have a collection of Connections anthologies,’ she said. ‘They are a brilliant resource and I've used them over and over.’
Student Miranda Mufema says she felt ‘free to be creative, to experiment and to be part of a group collaboration, rather than just being told what to do by the director.’
Another teacher, Annabel Venn, from the Sir Robert Woodward Academy in West Sussex, referring to recent events, described Connections as ‘a lifeline, a candle in the dark for schools and kids who, without it, might have missed a whole year of performing.’
Actor Laura Carmichael, of Downton Abbey fame and a big fan of NT Connections, says: ‘Youth theatre builds your confidence and gets you working in teams. For me that is so much a part of why I love theatre and why I love acting.’
National Theatre director Rufus Norris says the idea behind NT Connections was ‘to inspire more young people in the art of theatre-making, as well as the huge variety of backstage and offstage roles involved in creating a production.’
Complementing NT Connections, which is more of a showcase, is the more competitive New Views programme, which also emanates from the National's education and learning department, and is aimed at encouraging secondary school students to put pen to paper. Teachers are given access to online professional coaching from established playwrights, this year including Andrew Muir and Molly Taylor. The teachers should then feel confident to lead a group of students in creating their own plays.
Of the hundreds of plays submitted, eight plays are showcased as rehearsed readings and one play is selected for a full production in July. There are more than 80 schools taking part this year, and obviously the organisers are hoping things will have improved enough by next July to enable a live performance.
To find out more about NT Connections visit www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/learning/connections
The 2020 NT Connections anthology is available from the NT Bookshop www.shop.nationaltheatre.org.uk