Luke Barnes – författare

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?

You know sometimes when you’re drinking, you feel a bit ill and you dread every swig, but you do it anyway because you want to get drunk?He’s been let down, belittled and ignored but tonight none of that matters – it’s Friday and Joe is getting smashed. Kirsty has bought some vodka on the way home from school and is hastily shaving her legs with her friend's dad’s razor. As bottles are drained and the sun sets the two hit the town, neither aware that soon their lives will irreconcilably collide. Chapel Street is a rowdy, relentless two-hander about modern life and love on the dole. It is an acerbic yet compassionate portrait of good times gone bad for a betrayed generation.

This is a story that is true for us, you, thousands of others across the world moving across the globe and thousands of others waiting to receive them. It is a story. It’s not necessarily ours. It is not necessarily yours. But it is true.Melding lived experience with creative theatre-making, refugees Mo and Hossein share stories – both personal and global – that explore the very different journeys taken by unaccompanied minors as they leave their home countries in search of sanctuary.Honest, reflective, challenging and funny, the young performers – both long-standing participants in Leeds Playhouse’s Theatre of Sanctuary programme – combine moments of dream-like wonder with unflinching fact sharing, drawing the audience into a direct dialogue and asking them to consider what life is really like for children fleeing danger and seeking a new home in the UK. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Leeds Playhouse in September 2021.

National Theatre Connections 2024 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 the 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. Touching on themes like trans-rights, the mental health crisis, colonial history, disability activism, and climate change, the collection provides topical, pressing subject matter for students to explore in their performance.This 2024 anthology represents the full set of ten plays offered by the National Theatre 2024 Festival (eight brand-new plays, and two returning favourites), as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production.

Kenny Glynn is the world’s biggest Saints fan and for twenty-five years he has been locked in a game of football against the world. On his 26th birthday the world steps up its game and Kenny Glynn faces the match of his life as he takes on women, money and status with the help of his mates, his family and the guiding spirit of Matt Le Tissier. Can they conquer all the things the world is throwing at them? Will Southampton ever win the FA cup again? And what can we learn from the icons we hold so dearly at the club?The Saints, written by Luke Barnes and directed by one of British theatre's best directors Matthew Dunster, explores football in Southampton, the history of the club and how it has shaped our understanding of ourselves in the city.

Ten Storey Love Song follows Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, Johnnie's attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed, and Alan Blunt, a forty-year-old truck driver who spends a worrying amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school. A love song to a loveless Teesside, Ten Storey Love Song is a ferocious slab of concrete prose, peppered with beauty and delivered with glorious abandon.Middle Child returned from the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival as award winners for their production of Weekend Rockstars and Ten Storey Love Song will look much the same: part play, part house party and a truly good night out.

Meet Leah and Chris; raised on Harry Potter, New Labour and a belief that one day they would be as ‘special’ as their parents promised. But what happens when those dreams don’t become reality?Follow Leah and Chris over these twenty years as they realise the future they were promised as children hasn’t turned out as they hoped, against the backdrop of an asteroid heading for earth.Told through performance and live music on multiple stages, with support from a different Humber Street Sesh band every night, this is Welly like you’ve never seen it before.

Susie, Edwina and Lucy have moved to a new school in a new town.Three very different sisters who will do anything to fit in and yet are desperate to be noticed. But how far will they go to break out of the roles in which they've been cast and will they ever be able to truly change their lives when they're swimming against the tide?A captivating, lively and poignant portrait of the pressures of being a teenager and the fight for acceptance.

A collection of three plays for the Young Vic's participation programme Taking Part, written by award-winning playwright Luke Barnes:Men in Blue, Fable, The Jumper Factory 'This is a collection of plays written with and for people who wouldn’t identify themselves as theatre-makers. The gesture of these plays is to give platform to people who aren’t heard in the hope that anyone who sees, reads, or does these plays will either be shaped by the experiences of lives removed from their own or feel less alone in hearing stories of peoples like them. This is not a celebration of writing. This is a celebration of human resilience and the practice of using Theatre as amplifier for giving voice to those unable to speak.'Luke BarnesEveryone has a story to tell… Listening to those stories told with all the deep power of the human heart, we all add hugely to our own experience of what it means to be living today... Nothing matters more.David Lan, from his Introduction

A humorous and heartfelt look into the lives of the youth of one northern new town, where the weight of identity, place, and masculinity threaten everything they’ve ever known.

We value truth in this family. Carpe Diem. Seize the day. We’re all just food for worms. So tell them you love them. Have fun, mount a donkey, whatever, just feel alive.Charades is fun, right, with those people, yes, your family, the ones you try to get away from at Christmas. For the Pilgrims though it’s not simply a family affair, this is more than a game, this…. Is an Eisteddfod. This bawdy new play from acclaimed young playwright Luke Barnes, is inspired by Suffolk folklore and explores the idea of family and identity, stories and how they are told.