Greater Manchester’s youth theatres, schools and colleges perform here at HOME in the National Theatre’s Connections festival, a celebration of young people, theatre-making and the importance of access to the arts.
Please note, this show will begin at 19.00. Which group performs first will not be decided until the date of the performance.
Fri 29 April 19.00
Oldham College: Chat Back by David Judge
Chat Back is about the underclass – all those young people who are so ‘bad’, disempowered, alienated, ostracized, and abandoned – that even on the last day of school they still find themselves in detention. We watch a snapshot of the lives of each individual (across a summer holiday of Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday mornings) as they negotiate their way around the obstacles en route to discovering their identity, their economic power or lack of, their lyrical dexterity or lack of, and the meaning of in their lives, revealed through their desires, hopes and fears. The words in this play come thick and fast, in rhythm and rhyme, delivered like a paintball machine gun painting a multi-coloured landscape from a palette that is bleak, honest, raw, exciting, energised and unwavering in its intention to talk truth to power.
Winstanley College: Cable Street by Lisa Goldman*
Cable Street is about two girls growing up in London’s Jewish east end in the 1930s. Leah and Kitty are blood sisters, best friends and more… but they get caught up in the political turmoil caused by Oswald Mosley’s fascist Blackshirts. At the iconic Battle of Cable Street in 1936, hundreds of thousands of working-class people come together to fight the police to defend the Jewish East End from fascism. Kitty and Leah are torn apart politically, their love for each other ensnared, like a rabbit in a trap. As their passion and the political tensions grow stronger and stronger, pulling each of them every which way, the snare can only get tighter and tighter until something snaps.
*Content warning: this play includes some examples of characters using antisemitic language and stereotypes.
Want to know more about NT Connections?
- Follow @NTConnections on Twitter
- Visit the NT Connections webpage on the National Theatre website
