Download National Theatre Connections 2015 JCG Youth Theatre The

National Theatre Connections 2015
JCG Youth Theatre
The Accordion Shop by Cush Jumbo
“National Theatre Connections is the biggest youth theatre festival on the planet”
Connections is the National Theatre’s annual festival of new plays for youth theatres and
schools. The 2014 Connections involved 10 Writers, 230 Youth Theatre Companies, 5,000
Young People, 684 Performances, 26 Partner Theatres and 25,000 Audience Members.
Connections aims to inspire 13-19 year olds with high-quality new playwriting, give
companies the knowledge, skills and confidence to bring the plays to life, involve a wide
range of young companies and encourage young people to get involved in all aspects of
theatre making. Connections gives young people the chance to create marketing campaigns,
design sets and costumes, operate lighting and sound and to stage-manage their
performances. They also act! Each company also has the experience of performing in a
leading regional theatre at one of the Connections festivals around the country. Each year
the Connections team travels the length and breadth of the country to support and
encourage the participants – the drama teachers and youth theatre directors who take on
the challenge of staging a new play and the young actors, designers and technicians who
work alongside them.
This year members of the JCG Youth Theatre will meet professional writers, performers,
producers and directors. They will perform their piece at school in front of their family and
friends in Jersey. In that performance they will also be watched by a director from the
National Theatre and receive feedback from her on their performance. The chance to
receive expert National Theatre feedback is likely to be a massive boost for the girls
involved. After this they will also perform The Accordion Shop in the Bristol Old Vic Studio at
the end of March. If our play is selected, the JCG Youth Theatre will get the chance to show
it at the National Theatre in London.
So what is the The Accordion Shop about?
The Accordion Shop is a play about the riots that took place in the UK in the summer of 2011
and centres on a London street called The Road. It is written in the style of documentary
drama and physical theatre. There are a range of speaking roles and the play is very
thought-provoking.
The Summer Riots of 2011
‘The world we live in might be different but kids don’t change, not really.’
Between Saturday 6 and Thursday 11 August 2011, thousands of people rioted in several
London boroughs and in cities and towns across England. The riots are sometimes referred
to as the "BlackBerry riots" due to the use of mobile devices and social media to organise
them. Disturbances began on 6 August after a protest in Tottenham, north London,
following the death of Mark Duggan, a local who was shot dead by police on 4 August.
Several violent clashes with police ensued, along with the destruction of police vehicles, a
double-decker bus, and many civilian homes and businesses, thus rapidly gaining attention
from the media. The following days saw similar scenes in other parts of London, with the
worst rioting taking place in Hackney, Brixton, Walthamstow, Peckham, Enfield, Battersea,
Croydon, Ealing, Barking, Woolwich, East Ham and Lewisham.
It is in Lewisham that The Accordion Shop is set.
There were a total of 3,443 crimes across London linked to the disorder. There were five
deaths and at least 16 people were injured as a direct result of related violent acts. An
estimated £200,000,000 worth of property damage was incurred. Investigations after the
riots have attributed the events to factors such as racism, classism and economic decline, as
well as cultural factors like criminality, hooliganism, breakdown of social morality, and gang
culture.