Nell Leyshon

This brilliant new collection of ten plays for young people will prove indispensable to schools, colleges and youth theatre groups. Specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival 2011 involving 200 schools and youth theatre groups across the UK and Ireland, each play is accompanied by production notes and exercises. The Pied Piper re-imagined, the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, witches in seventeenth century Norfolk, a giant baby on the rampage, an extraordinary day in an ordinary school are just some of subjects covered in the thrilling and varied new plays created by talented writers for young actors to perform in National Theatre Connections 2011. The plays in this anthology offer a huge variety of stories and styles to ignite the imagination of young casts and creative teams. Themes are both teenage and universal - ambition, dashed hopes, fear and confidence, loyalty and betrayal. These new plays embrace a huge range for their inspiration: they plunder classics and imagine the future.

Nominated for an Olivier Award 2022"I'll tell you one more thing. I got more songs in my head than I ever told you. I got enough to sing for days..."1903, Somerset. Rooted in the land where she has lived her entire life, Louie Hooper’s mind overflows with its songs – more than 300 of them passed down from her mother. Cecil Sharp, a composer visiting from London, fears England’s folk songs will be lost forever and sets out on a mission to transcribe each and every one. He believes Louie’s music should speak not just for this place but for the whole of England.Nell Leyshon's Olivier Award-nominated play with songs originally heard on BBC Radio before a sold-out, highly acclaimed run at London's Hampstead Theatre. The production was revived in June 2022 due to popular demand.

‘There have been many amazing projects to help people during the pandemic and Paperchains is one of the very best.’ Queen CamillaAn anthology of 30 stories of lockdown, from people with experience of prison, homelessness, addiction, and families of people in the armed forces.When the history of the Covid-19 lockdowns is written, who will be the storytellers and of whose lives will they tell? Will they tell of the prisoners spending 23+ hours each day locked in a cell, inhaling and exhaling, over and over again, the same recycled air? For months on end. With no visitors? Will they tell of those addicts who were just starting to recover and rebuild, only to find themselves back on the edge? Or the people down your street who had nowhere to live, or those whose house was never really a home? What about the families of service personnel, or young people stuck at home?These are experiences from inside the storm. From people whose stories are rarely heard. This anthology includes works of prose, poetry, drama, and art. Powerful, often irreverent, heartfelt: voices that history cannot forget. A chain of words, poetry and art that binds us all together. A chain that will survive beyond this turbulent time and stand as a testament of who we were during it.

National Theatre Connections is an annual festival which brings new plays for young people to schools and youth theatres across the UK and Ireland. Commissioning exciting work from leading playwrights, the festival exposes actors aged 13-19 to the world of professional theatre-making, giving them full control of a theatrical production - from costume and set design to stage management and marketing campaigns. NT Connections have published over 150 original plays and regularly works with 500 theatre companies and 10,000 young people each year.This anthology brings together 10 new plays by some of the UK's most prolific and current writers and artists alongside notes on each of the texts exploring performance for schools and youth groups. SaltLife is never plain sailing, but when a new government initiative comes into place offering young people the chance to train and learn skills overseas, droves of teens jump at the chance to secure their future. Once on board the transport ship, the promises of the glossy advert seem a far cry from what lies ahead. A play about generations, choices and hope.Class It’s school election time and while most of the school is busy enjoying their lunch break, a deadlock is taking place amongst the members of the school council. Bitter rivalries, secret alliances and false promises are laid bare. As a ruthless battle ensues, who will win and does anyone really care? A play about politics, populism and the ‘ping’ of a text message.The Sad ClubThis is a musical about depression and anxiety. It’s a collection of monologues, songs and duologues from all over time and space exploring what about living in this world stops us from being happy and how we might go about tackling those problems. ChaosA girl is locked in a room. A boy brings another boy flowers. A girl has tied herself to a railing. A boy doesn’t know who he is. A girl worries about impending catastrophe. A woman jumps in front of a train. A boy’s heart falls out his chest. A butterfly has a broken wing.StuffVinny's organising a surprise birthday party for his mate, Anita. It's not going well: his choice of venue is a bit misguided, Anita's not keen on leaving the house, and everyone else has their own stuff going on. Maybe a surprise party wasn’t the best idea? A play about trying (but not really managing) to help.FleshA group of teenagers wake up in a forest with no clue how they got there. They find themselves separated into two different teams but have no idea what game they are expected to play. With no food, no water and seemingly no chance of escape, it’s only a matter of time before things start to get drastic. But whose side are people on and how far will they go to survive?AgelessIn a not too distant future, Temples pharmaceutical corporation has quite literally changed the face of ageing. Their miracle drug keeps its users looking perpetually teenage. With an ever youthful population, how can society support those who are genuinely young?The Small HoursIt’s the middle of the night and Peebs and Epi are the only students left at school over half-term. At the end of their night out, former step-siblings Red and Jazz try to navigate their reunion. With only a couple of hours until morning, Jaffa tries to help Keesh finish an essay. As day breaks, Wolfie is getting up the courage to confess a secret to VJ at a party. Their choices are small yet momentous. The hours are small but feel very, very long. And when the night finally ends, the future is waiting – all of it.terraA group of classmates is torn apart by the opportunity to perform their own dance. As they disagree and bicker, two distinct physical groups emerge and separate into opposing teams. When a strange outsider appears – out of step with everyone else – the divide is disrupted. A contemporary narrative dance piece about individuality, community and heritage.VariationsThirteen-year-old Alice wishes her life was completely different. She wakes up one morning to find that her life is different. In fact, it's so different that all she wants to do is get back to normality. But how does she do that?

Bringing together five plays commissioned specially for the RADA Elders Company, this anthology provides a selection of dynamic and thought-provoking works for elders companies anywhere.The RADA Elders Company began in 2013 in order to provide opportunities for older people to experience the academy’s training at its best. Each year, a playwright is invited to create a new piece for the company, encompassing a wide range of theatre disciplines and skills.This collection features five pieces that showcase the breadth and diversity of RADA Elders commissions:Broken Pieces by A. C. SmithOur Father by Deborah BruceThe Word by Nell LeyshonDown the Hatch by Frances PoetOf Blood by Christopher William Hill

'A reading experience that hums with an electric energy that never gets boring and feels shockingly, painfully real.' - The Times 'There's different ways to do it: I can slowly move closer step by step, or I can do it in one movement and bump into them. Easiest is in a pub then I can put my drink too close to theirs. Move my stool near theirs. Anything to cross the line.'Gary is a dipper, a burglar, a thief. He is still at junior school when his father first takes him out on the rob, and proves a fast learner: not much more than a child the first time he gets caught, he is a career criminal as soon as he is out again. But Gary is also fiercely intelligent - he often knows more about the antique furniture he is stealing than the people who own it, and is confident in his ability to trick his way out of any situation, always one step ahead. But all that changes when he falls for Mandy...

You think you have everything. A happy marriage. Children you love. A job you enjoy. A house you've made into a home. Then, almost in the blink of an eye, you lose it. All. When Rachel decides things aren't working and asks Andrew to move out, she thinks she knows what she's doing; she thinks she knows how it will be, how Andrew will react, how the children will cope. After all, relationships end all the time, and everyone survives -- don't they? But Rachel is wrong, and her decision has consequences no one could have foreseen. 'A compelling study of a family cast adrift. Written with subtlety and sensitivity, this deceptively simple tale pulls the reader closer with each page' Catherine O'Flynn, author of What Was Lost 'Detailed and free-flowing; the shocking, emotional ending will leave you gasping for air' Easy Living

The Colour of Milk is a literary tour de force of power, class, and fate, told in the fierce, urgent voice of the irrepressible Mary, a character as indelible as The Color Purple's Celie and Margaret Atwood's eponymous Alias Grace.Set in England in 1830, The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon is an emotionally haunting work of historical fiction -- hailed as "charming, Bront -esque...and hard to forget" (Marian Keyes) -- about an illiterate farm girl's emotional and intellectual awakening and its devastating consequences.Mary, the spirited youngest daughter of an angry, violent man, is sent to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife. Her strange new surroundings offer unsettling challenges, including the vicar's lecherous son and a manipulative fellow servant. But life in the vicarage also offers unexpected joys, as the curious young girl learns to read and write -- knowledge that will come at a tragic price.

The Colour of Milk is the new novel by Orange longlisted author and playwright Nell Leyshon.'this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand'The year is eighteen hundred and thirty one when fifteen-year-old Mary begins the difficult task of telling her story. A scrap of a thing with a sharp tongue and hair the colour of milk, Mary leads a harsh life working on her father's farm alongside her three sisters. In the summer she is sent to work for the local vicar's invalid wife, where the reasons why she must record the truth of what happens to her - and the need to record it so urgently - are gradually revealed.'Haunting, distinctive voices... Mary's spare simple words paint brilliant pictures in the reader's mind . . . Nell Leyshon's imaginative powers are considerable' Independent'Brontë-esque undertones . . . a disturbing statement on the social constraints faced by 19th-century women' FT'A small tour de force - a wonderfully convincing voice, and a devastating story told with great skill and economy' Penelope Lively'I loved it. The Colour of Milk is charming, Brontë-esque, compelling, special and hard to forget. I loved Mary's voice - so inspiring and likeable. Such a hopeful book' Marian Keyes'Brilliant, devastating and unforgettable' Easy LivingNell Leyshon's first novel, Black Dirt, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize. Her plays include Comfort me with Apples, which won an Evening Standard Award, and Bedlam, which was the first play written by a woman for Shakespeare's Globe. She writes for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and won the Richard Imison Award for her first radio play. Nell was born in Glastonbury and lives in Dorset.

Frank lies in bed, his dying dreams haunted by memories of one long-ago summer, the sticky heat of night, and the stories his father told about Christ, the red-breasted robin, and kings Arthur and Alfred. But other images also rise to the surface, unbidden and unwanted, and Frank finds himself forced to recall his older sister, Iris, whose existence – and terrible crime – he has spent long years struggling to forget.

Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name, Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl.

Late August heat, still and heavy, down on the Somerset Levels. A land of water and silt and mud and eels. Something is moving. Unfurling...During a heady hot summer, a young girl's sexual awakening is coloured by shadows of her early childhood. Written with Leyshon's characteristic stark lyricism and suffused with the austere poetry of the West Country, "Glass Eels" dramatises the unconscious world of instinct where the lives of humans, plants and eels are all ruled by the primal rhythms of the wetlands. It opens at the Hampstead Theatre in June 2007.

Autumn, and the orchard is full of cider apples: "Beauty of Bath", "Kingston Black", and "Glory of the West". Inside the farmhouse, the rule of matriarch Irene is challenged when her estranged daughter returns and her middle-aged son, beginning to tire of being tied to the unprofitable farm, grows restless. This is a richly evocative tale about life in our changing rural landscape. "Comfort me with Apples" premieres at the Hampstead Theatre in October 2005.

"Nothing I do has changed. I'm doing what's always been done on this piece of land" The farm is running at a loss, but Vic is determined to keep it going. He'll do anything he can, work day and night, but he won't admit that his small farm has no future. As the rural crisis deepens the family's three generations look for ways to save the farm. But tensions between the old and new worlds threaten to tear the family apart.