Marking its 30th anniversary, National Theatre Connections 2025 draws together ten new plays for young people to perform, from some of the UK’s most exciting and popular playwrights.These are plays for a generation of theatre-makers who want to ask questions, challenge assertions and test boundaries, and for those who love to invent and imagine a world of possibilities.The plays offer young performers an engaging and diverse range of material to perform, read or study. Wrestling with themes like the cost-of-living crisis, activism, neurodiversity, the point and pointlessness of regret, human rights, and loneliness, this collection lays bare a rich and complex terrain in which students can fully immerse themselves, explore and discover. This 2025 anthology represents the full set of ten plays offered by the National Theatre 2025 Festival, as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production. Like candles on a 30th birthday cake, this collection is bright, striking and set to make a lasting impression – the culmination of the celebrations it also strikes a note of eager anticipation as the next chapter begins