PACE Youth Theatre is staging a new production of Crusaders by award-winning Glasgow playwright, Frances Poet as part of the prestigious National Theatre Connections – a nationwide celebration of new plays for young people.
This year a company of 22 young actors, ranging in age from 14 to 19 years, will perform one of ten brand new plays written especially for Connections by a selection of the best playwriting talent in the UK. It will open at The Wynd Auditorium, Paisley on 13 & 14 March, before transferring to the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh later in the month. After this, they will hear if they are one of 10 companies selected to perform at the National Theatre in London in June.
A group of teens gather to take their French exam but none of them will step into the exam hall. Because Kyle has had a vision and he’ll use anything, even miracles, to ensure his classmates accompany him. Together they have just seven days to save themselves, save the world and be the future. And Kyle is not the only one who has had the dream. All across the globe, from Azerbaijan to Zambia, children are dreaming and urging their peers to follow them to the promised land. Who will follow? Who will lead? Who will make it?
National Theatre Connections is one of the UK’s largest celebrations of youth theatre. Plays are commissioned for and about young people, from some of the best contemporary playwrights, and performed by schools and youth theatres all over the UK and Ireland. Young people have the opportunity to get involved in all aspects of creating and staging the play both on and offstage, from set design to costume, lighting and stage management.
In 2020, National Theatre Connections is working with up to 300 youth theatres and schools to stage ten newly commissioned plays, adding to the 150 + plays the National Theatre have commissioned for young people since 1995. All the companies performing will transfer their production to one of 31 Connections Partner Theatres across the UK.
PACE participates in National Theatre Connections on alternate years and when they last performed in 2018 their production of Dungeness by Chris Thompson was one of only 10 companies selected to perform at the NT Connections Festival in London.
Jenni Mason, Artistic Director of PACE, said: “Being involved in the National Theatre Connections festival is a thoroughly rewarding and positive experience. It is always refreshing to create new work with young people at its core. Frances’ writing is really exciting and already we can see how this opportunity has created an opportunity for the our young people to consider and question the wider, global themes that it addresses, as well as seeing them grow in confidence, find their voice, develop collaboration skills, learn to lead, listen and work together, form lifelong friendships and believe that what they have to say matters.
“For this generation of young people life is even more complicated as they navigate their way around the pressures of social media and spend less time interacting and more time in ever in front of a screen. Promoting the importance and the benefits of being creative and having access to arts experiences is perhaps more important now than ever before.”