Simon Reade

Producers' Choice: Six Plays for Young Performers showcases some of the best plays for young people produced by the UK's leading theatre companies. The plays are ideal for young performers aged 13-25 and offer a diverse range of challenges, styles and subjects. The volume will prove essential for teachers and students of Drama and for youth drama groups. The plays include modern reworkings of classics, such as Simon Reade's witty and brilliantly inventive adaptation of Lewis Carroll's much-loved fantasy, and DJ Britton's version of Sophocles' Theban plays, the tragic Oedipus/Antigone. Contemporary teenage issues are dealt with in Megan Barker's beautiful and uplifting Promise and Sarah May's The Butterfly Club. Simon Stephens' hit-play Punk Rock set in a grammar school explores dislocation and aggression among sixth form pupils; James Graham's Tory Boyz is a fast-paced, political comedy about prejudice and ambition in Westminster. Each play features production notes and the volume is introduced by Paul Roseby, Artistic Director of the National Youth Theatre. For schools, youth theatre groups and drama colleges this anthology of thematically and stylistically diverse plays will prove an invaluable resource.

A delicious, and somewhat drunken, dinner party segues into a murder mystery game created by the hostess. However, the parlour game may hold clues about the dark truths hiding just under the surface of this genteel gathering...As suspects, clues and red herrings are sifted - it seems one of the guests has an unfair advantage: John Rebus, an ex-detective who used to do this for a living. But is he playing another game, one to which only he knows the rules, that will soon be revealed? As the tension rises, one by one, all their secrets will come out - and there is a shocking discovery that awaits them all...

Private Peaceful relives the life of Private Tommo Peaceful, a young First World War soldier awaiting the firing squad at dawn. During the night, he looks back at his short but joyful past growing up in rural Devon: his exciting first days at school; the accident in the forest that killed his father; his adventures with Molly, the love of his life; and the battles and injustices of war that brought him to the front line.

Three war plays by Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, dramatised by Simon Reade.Private Peaceful relives the short life of Tommo growing up in rural Devon before fighting the battles and facing the injustices of the First World War. In Toro! Toro! young Antonito liberates his favourite bull from the ritualised killing of the bullfight as he tries to escape the Spanish Civil War. In The Mozart Question Paolo Levi discovers the astonishing truth about his parents’ flight to Venice from the gas chambers of the Second World War.Each play is accompanied by an introduction from Michael Morpurgo.

With famine gripping Ireland, Sean and Annie have just one chance of survival - they must find their father. Leaving their dying mother behind, they travel across rough seas to America. With only the gold torch that Annie wears as a necklace to protect them, they embark on a long and dangerous journey. But will they ever be reunited with their family?Twist of Gold is an epic adventure, a classic novel by the masterful storyteller and author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." When Elizabeth Bennet first meets Mr Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited. When she later discovers that he has scuppered the relationship between his friend Bingley and her sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy that follows, the family’s lives are turned upside down as Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and pokes fun at the affectations and etiquette of provincial life.

This title presents three rites of passage plays for the young person in all of us, brilliantly adapted from the books of three best-selling authors. In Michael Morpurgo's moving tale of youth cut short, seventeen year-old Tommo Peaceful relives his innocent rural past as he spends his last night in the trenches of World War One. In Philip Pullman's "Aladdin", this ancient magical tale is retold as a story of ambition and self-advancement, a young man's journey from lazy good-for-nothing to great wealth and power. And in Jill Tomlinson's delightfully witty classic, a fledgling Barn Owl conquers his fears through a series of eye-opening encounters. These plays are for all ages.