The SpongeBob Musical

When the citizens of Bikini Bottom discover that a volcano will soon erupt and destroy their humble home, SpongeBob and his friends must come together to save the fate of their undersea world. 

With lives hanging in the balance and all hope lost, a most unexpected hero rises up. The power of optimism really can save the world! 

This joyous modern musical performed by over 180 youth theatre members aged 6 – 18 is sure to make a splash with audiences young and young at heart! 

The SpongeBob Musical is a joyful, fun and uplifting celebration of friendship and the power of optimism – a truly special way to bring together the whole of our youth theatre programme as you’ve never seen them before. Now, more than ever, we see the importance of creativity, self-expression and escapism for young people as they navigate the rapidly changing world around them and projects like this create life-affirming experiences to be proud of.” James Watson, Director of Communities.

The SpongeBob Musical is based on the children’s animated series created by Stephen Hillenburg and is written by Kyle Jarrow and conceived by Tina Landau, with original songs by Yolanda Adams, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Sara Bareilles, Jonathan Coulton, Alexander Ebert of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, The Flaming Lips, Lady A, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend, Panic! At the Disco, Plain White T’s, They Might Be Giants and T.I., and songs by David Bowie, Tom Kenny and Andy Paley. Additional lyrics are by Jonathan Coulton, with additional music by Tom Kitt.

Legally Blonde The Musical

New City College Ardleigh Green Campus proudly presents their production of Legally Blonde Jr. Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin. Book by Heather Hach. Based on the novel by Amanda Brown and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture.This amateur production is presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International.

All authorised performance materials are also supplied by MTI www.mtishows.co.uk. Original Production by Hal Luftig, Fox Theatricals, Dori Berinstein, James L. Nederlander, Independent Presenters Network, Roy Furman, Amanda Lipitz, Broadway Asia, Barbara Whitman, FWPM Group, Hendel/Wiesenfeld, Goldberg/Binder, Stern/Meyer, Lane/Comley, Bartner-Jenkins/Nocciolino and Warren Trepp; Produced in association with MGM Onstage, Darcie Denkert and Dean Stolber. Legally Blonde JR. is presented through special arrangement with and all authorized materials are supplied by Music Theatre International, New York, NY (212) 541-4684 mtishows.com. 

NT Connections 2024

Connections is the National Theatre’s annual, nationwide youth theatre festival. The programme is 29 years old and has a history of championing the talent of young people from across the UK. Every year, the Connections commissions ten new plays for young people to perform. The programme brings together some of the UK’s most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow. In 23/24, Connections are working with nearly 270 youth companies from every corner of the UK.

As a partner theatre, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch are thrilled to be welcoming six companies over three days to present their work. Find out more about NT Connections here

NT Connections Day 1 – Thursday 18 April

Shout by Alexis Zegerman, performed by Roding Valley High School

Back in the Day by Yasmeen Khan, performed by The King Edmund School

NT Connections Day 2 – Friday 19 April

Kiss / Marry / Push Off Cliff by Josh Azouz, performed by Shenfield High School 6th Form

Shout by Alexis Zegerman, performed by The Sydney Russell School

NT Connections Day 3 – Saturday 20 April

Age is Revolting by Abi Zakarian, performed by Ormiston Rivers Academy

Replica by Titas Halder, performed by Green Shoes Arts, Young Actor’s Club

 

The plays

Shout by Alexis Zegerman

In a world full of words, how can Dana survive when she can’t speak? Dana has selective mutism, but that doesn’t stop her vivid imagination. Shout is a funny, moving play about anxiety, celebrating difference, and finding your voice. A play that wonders what exactly it takes to overcome anxiety and mental health issues when you’re a teenager. It’s not just the noise you make, that makes you who you are. Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 14+. Play explores experiences of anxiety disorders, moments with characters struggling with poor mental health

Back in the Day by Yasmeen Khan

A group of classmates are charged with the responsibility of being their school’s well-being champions. In a freak occurrence they are transported back to the 80’s via an impromptu and heavily improvised roller disco. Here they discover they’re not the only ones with skeletons in the cupboard, and there was more to the 80s than glitterballs and strange haircuts. Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 13+. One moment of strong language

Kiss / Marry / Push Off Cliff by Josh Azouz

A group of friends go camping – but after only one night, one of them is ostracised by the rest of the group and cast out into wilderness for something they said…or was it something they did…? it’s strange and it’s about to get stranger as friendships are tested, new alliances formed, trusts are broken and reality is twisted out of shape…the trip becomes a rite of passage…guided by a moral compass, that isn’t entirely reliable. Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 14+. Strong language, sexual references, scenes of drug use and distribution, scenes of alcoholism, and children drinking alcohol

Age is Revolting by Abi Zakarian

Choir is for mad old people, right? When a group of school kids rebel against their boring music lesson they hit the wrong note and magically transform into their 80 year-old selves…and now live in a care home. Suddenly age, and their understanding of it, feels very relevant as they begin to confusedly navigate their way back to the present; no longer older, but maybe just a little wiser.  Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 13+. Some strong language.

Replica by Titas Halder

Something happened on the school trip. One of the class has been replaced by an exact replica of themselves. At least that’s what everyone’s saying. Once a rumour starts, it can be difficult to remember what is real – or who. Convinced that there is an impostor walking among them, a group of teenagers is determined to root out the intruder. A mystery about friendship, the nature of truth, and humanity. When it comes to it, how do you prove that you are a human? Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 16+. Strong language, some mildly violent language, used in a sci-fi context

 

NT Connections Festival 2023

Connections is the National Theatre’s annual, nationwide youth theatre festival. The programme has been established for 27 years with a celebrated history of championing the talent of young people from across the UK. Every year, the National Theatre commissions ten new plays for young people to perform, bringing together some of the UK’s most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow. Connections works with 300 youth companies and over 6,000 young people annually from every corner of the UK.

As a partner theatre, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch are thrilled to be welcoming five companies over three days to present their work.

 

NT Connections Day 1 – Thursday 20 April

Is This Good Enough? by Avaes Mohammad, performed by Eastbury Community School

 

NT Connections Day 2 – Friday 21 April

Innocent Creatures by Leo Butler, performed by New City College Epping Forest

Strangers Like Me by Ed Harris, performed by Roding Valley High School

 

NT Connections Day 3 – Saturday 22 April

The Heights by Lisa McGee, performed by Ormiston Rivers Academy

(Circle Dreams Around)The Terrible, Terrible Past by Simon Longman, performed by Store Room Youth Theatre

 

The plays

 

Is This Good Enough? by Avaes Mohammad

Young people from all over the city – the Rudeboys, the Party Girls, the Footballers, the Chess Players, the Skateboarders, the Drug Runners and the Uniformed Schoolkids – converge on the park one cold winter’s night.

They have been summoned there by the mysterious and enigmatic Cyroe. No one really knows who Cyroe is, or has ever really met him. All they do know is that when Cyroe calls, you answer.

Avaes Mohammad’s scripts have chronicled post 9/11 multicultural Britain and represented the challenges of young people in the UK. He currently seeks to engage with the heritage of Islamic and Sufi literatures, reinterpreting them for contemporary western audiences. As a performance poet, his influences range from the Sufi saints of South Asia to the dub poets of Jamaica. His essays and opinion pieces engage with topics that include integration, identity and the arts.

Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 13+. Includes references to drug use.

 

Innocent Creatures by Leo Butler

Soon, very soon, Big Ben will be underwater, surrounded by ice floes.

Enid and Mia wait to be rescued from the rising floodwaters and taken to a Holiday Inn to be reprogrammed. In this world, robots are in charge and Mia and Enid must decide whether they too want to live forever or take their chances in the icy waters.

Will they decide that Earth’s last sunset is worth hanging around for thousands of years to see?

Leo Butler is an award-winning playwright. His plays have been produced at the National Theatre, Royal Court, Almeida, Birmingham Rep and RSC. He has written many plays about young people, including Made of Stone and Redundant at the Royal Court; Boy at the Almeida; and Decades for Brit School and Bridge Theatre Company. Other work includes I’ll Be the Devil for the RSC; and Lucky Dog and Faces in the Crowd at the Royal Court; The Early Bird at Queen’s Theatre, Belfast; Woyzeck (adaptation) and All You Need Is LSD at Birmingham Rep; Cinderella at Theatre Royal Stratford East; and Alison! A Rock Opera for the Royal Court and King’s Head. For ten years, Leo Butler was Writers Tutor at the Royal Court Theatre and helped nurture a new generation of playwriting talent.

Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 15+. This is a sci-fi play set in the near and distant future, and features characters who are robots or part android. Within this context, the play features discussion of characters being “exterminated” and “gas chambers”; violence to an animal (which is revealed to be robotic); a character cutting open their wrists to reveal wires; and a character’s eyes being gouged out and replaced with implants. Strong language.

 

Strangers Like Me by Ed Harris

Elbow’s best friend, Hamster, has unexpectedly died. Everyone expects Elbow to be grieving… right? But Elbow isn’t sure how to do it.

Privately, Elbow is beginning to feel they weren’t even as close as everyone makes out. It would be better if everyone just left Elbow alone – his mum, dad, stupid big brother, Donut, but especially all those annoying kids at school pretending they really care by writing poems, singing songs and holding a vigil at Elbow and Hamster’s favourite meeting place. Who do they think they are?

Elbow doesn’t know. He just has a strange feeling inside – an absence of feeling at all.

Ed Harris is an award-winning, dyslexic playwright, poet and comedy writer based in Brighton. Before finding his feet as a writer, Ed Harris was a binman, care worker and even spent a winter as a husky trainer in Lapland. Plays include Mongrel Island at Soho Theatre and in Mexico (as Perro Sin Raza); and The Cow Play, What the Thunder Said (Writers’ Guild Award for Best Play for Younger Audiences) and Never Ever After (shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth award). He wrote his first opera, A Shoe Full of Stars (YAM Award in 2018 for Best Opera), with composer Omar Shahryar.

Radio includes Porshia, Dot, The Resistance of Mrs Brown (Sony Gold/Radio Academy Award), Troll (Writers’ Guild Award), and Billions (BBC Audio Drama Award). He is a Royal Literary Fellow and has recently been awarded an Arts Council grant to write his first children’s novel, The Night Is Large. Ed Harris will also be adapting a season of Kafka’s novels for radio and stage for both BBC Radio 4 and Oxford University’s Global Kafka Festival, commemorating the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death in 2024.

Recommended for ages 14+. Play explores responses to the death of a friend of the lead character (unseen, offstage). Strong language. In a non-naturalistic scene, one character – who is the embodiment of part of the lead character’s psyche – has their tongue ripped out. It is then reattached later in the play.

 

The Heights by Lisa McGee

Lillie lives on the Heights Estate; a place where nothing ever happens, except in Lillie’s head.

Lillie’s not like most people. For starters, she never goes out, but sits in her bedroom window on the sixth floor of her tower block, watching the world and the people in it go by. As she sits, she makes up stories: some sad, some happy, some funny. But they are just stories, aren’t they?

Lisa McGee, an award-winning screenwriter and playwright from Derry, is the creator, writer and executive producer of Derry Girls. She co-created, co-wrote and was executive producer on The Deceived with her husband Tobias Beer and was creative director, executive producer and wrote an episode of the BBC monologues on poverty Skint. Her other TV work includes London Irish, Raw, Being Human, The White Queen and Indian Summers.

Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 13+. Strong language. Some infrequent moments of violence – these include one character choking another, and a scene where a character is tied up and gagged. In a non-naturalistic scene, there is a description of a glass baby shattering and causing a character’s arms and legs to bleed.

 

(Circle Dreams Around) The Terrible, Terrible Past by Simon Longman

A recurring dream. There are fish, chickens, cows, who all look and sound like people and people who look kind of familiar.

They dream about the past mainly, a past that they don’t belong to but a past that wants to belong to them. And then there’s a butcher, killing people.

The dream circles around, going back to the start again and again; a dream they can’t get escape.

Simon Longman is a playwright from the West Midlands. His plays include Patient Light for Eastern Angles; Island Town for Paines Plough; Gundog at the Royal Court; Rails at Theatre by the Lake; White Sky at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the Royal Court; Sparks at the Old Red Lion; and Milked for Pentabus. He is the recipient of the 49th George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright and has previously won the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme. His work has been translated and produced internationally.

Suggested content guidance: Recommended for ages 14+. Strong language. A brief reference to substance abuse. One brief, mildly sexually explicit conversation. The following are seen within the context of a dream: a dead body covered in blood, and weapons including an axe, a meat cleaver and a bolt gun. 

 

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