I opened my satchel this morning and nearly dropped half my post on the floor because this one felt like it was humming. You know when a theatre building isn’t just preparing for a show, it’s preparing for a takeover? That’s exactly what’s heading to Derby Theatre as it welcomes back the National Theatre Connections Festival from Thursday 23 to Sunday 26 April 2026.
For a few days, the place won’t belong to critics, producers or grown-ups pretending they understand lighting plots. It belongs to young people.
Connections is the National Theatre’s nationwide youth theatre programme and it’s enormous. Across the UK, over 5,000 participants from around 270 schools and companies perform new plays on professional stages. But what I love is how local it feels when it arrives. Suddenly the foyer is full of families, friends, teachers, nervous parents holding flowers too early, and young actors pacing while quietly whispering lines to themselves near the box office.
At Derby, groups performing include Allestree Woodlands School, Burton & South Derbyshire College, Inspire Coventry College, Flying High, Sydney Stringer Academy and Derby Theatre’s own Connections Youth Theatre. Before the performances even begin, the weekend opens with a free Open Mic night, giving young voices the microphone and, I suspect, at least one brave soul the loudest cheer of their life.
What makes this festival special is that it isn’t just young people on stage. The building is effectively handed over to them. Young ambassadors help run the event, technical trainees operate backstage, and the whole theatre shifts into something warmer and louder and far more alive than usual. You can almost feel the future of theatre learning how it works in real time.
Across the country, regional festivals run between March and May, and eight groups will later be invited to perform again at the Connections Festival at The Lowry in Salford in June. For many involved, this is the first time they’ve ever performed in a professional theatre, and you never forget that moment. I still remember the first time I stepped into a theatre properly as a teenager. I wasn’t even in the cast, just helping, but I walked home convinced the world had quietly grown bigger.
Derby Theatre’s Artistic Director and CEO Sarah Brigham says the building becomes a young person’s takeover both on and off stage, while Participation Producer Harry Kingscott calls it a festival created by and for young people. And that’s exactly how it feels. Not polished yet, not perfect yet, but fearless. The kind of performances where someone takes a risk and the audience leans forward instead of back.
I have a real soft spot for youth theatre. You won’t see safer acting anywhere. You’ll see bigger choices, louder laughter, the occasional forgotten line covered brilliantly by a friend and audiences who clap like it genuinely matters. Because to them, it does.
So if you’re near Derby that week, go. Don’t wait for a famous name. Go for the first bows, the proud teachers, the families in row G and the performers who are about to discover what applause sounds like when it’s meant for them.
And if you spot a postwoman in the corner scribbling notes far too enthusiastically, that’ll be me. I’ll be cheering just as loudly, probably telling strangers which performer to watch out for in ten years’ time. Nights like this are how communities grow their theatre, and I’m always happiest when I get to deliver the good news in person.
For more information and NT CONNECTIONS FESTIVAL updates, visit the Derby Theatre
website here: NT Connections Festival 2026 – Derby Theatre, visit the National Theatre
Website, or follow us on social media (Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube –
@derbytheatre).
TICKETS AND MORE INFO
Open mic is free. Standard tickets £10, Under 26s £8. Places can be booked by calling the
Box Office on 01332 593939 or online at www.derbytheatre.co.uk
Just when I thought I’d finished sorting my notes, another bundle fell out of the satchel and scattered itself across the kitchen table. Honestly, Connections isn’t a single show, it’s a whole library of stories arriving at once.
This year’s festival brings eight brand new plays written especially for young performers, and I love how wildly different they sound even on the page. The 2026 Connections Festival line-up includes:
• The Animals by Sean Buckley
• Britney’s Lock by Alexandra Wood
• Cloud Busting by Helen Blakeman, based on the novel by Malorie Blackman
• Fishville by Afsaneh Gray
• Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth by Kirsty Housley
• Ride Or Die by Florence Espeut-Nickless
• Sycamore Gap by Al Smith
• Wildfire Road by Eve Leigh
And yes, I did say Macbeth five times. I immediately checked the nearest mirror and quietly apologised to the theatre gods just in case.
One of the nicest things about Connections is that these aren’t simplified “school plays”. These are proper new scripts written by established writers and handed straight to young companies to interpret in their own way. Every school and group performs the same text differently, which means across the country hundreds of versions of the same stories are happening at once. Somewhere a joke lands perfectly, somewhere a silence hits harder than expected, and somewhere a performer realises they want to do this forever.
Behind the scenes, the programme is supported by a long list of charities and foundations who help make sure young people can actually access theatre, not just watch it from the balcony. That matters more than audiences sometimes realise. Confidence, teamwork, public speaking, even just finding your place in a room, theatre teaches all of it without ever calling itself a lesson.
Derby Theatre itself has always leaned into that idea. Formerly Derby Playhouse and now working in partnership with the University of Derby, it’s as much a learning space as a performance venue. New plays are created there, students train there, community groups meet there, and plenty of people walk through the doors thinking theatre isn’t “for them” only to leave wondering why they didn’t come sooner.
The festival is part of a nationwide programme run by National Theatre, which reaches schools, cinemas, touring venues and community spaces across the UK. Their aim isn’t only to make productions but to grow audiences and artists at the same time. Quite a few professional careers have started exactly like this, backstage on a school night, holding a prop and hoping not to drop it.
I’ll be honest, youth theatre weekends are some of my favourite assignments. There’s a particular atmosphere about half an hour before curtain up. Teachers pretending to be calm, friends promising they definitely won’t laugh if someone forgets a line, families arriving far too early, and performers discovering that nerves and excitement are basically the same feeling wearing different hats.
So if you’re wondering whether to go, do. You won’t just see a performance, you’ll see a beginning. And I’ll be there, scribbling in the corner of my notebook and probably telling anyone within earshot, “remember that name”. Because one day, one of those bows will belong to someone you’ll later see on a poster, and I quite like being able to say I delivered their first review before they even realised they needed one.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
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