The Royal National Theatre

Our theatres on the South Bank In 2024/25, we staged 19 plays and musicals across the globe, including 13 productions in our theatres on the South Bank, five of which were world premieres. Our three theatres remained strongly attended at 81% seated capacity and we have continued to grow new audiences, with 94% of first-time attendees rating their experience as 'excellent'very good'. River Stage drew 36,000 visitors to London's largest free outdoor arts festival with four weekends of music, theatre, dance and workshops in collaboration with The Glory, Greenwich Docklands International Festival and Rambert. Sharing work beyond the South Bank An extraordinary 770,825 people experienced a live National Theatre production in 2024/25 in the West End, across the country and internationally. Theatre Nation Partnerships (TNP) By the National Theatre working in partnership with theatres and creative organisations in 13 priority areas of England, we create more opportunities for people to engage with theatre. This year we worked with our TNP partners on touring productions, community engagement and audience development activity, in-depth school programmes, expanding access to our digital platforms, and skill and resource sharing across the network. Through the TNP network, we supported a production of "Handbagged" by Moira Buffini, produced by Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, that toured to six TNP venues where it reached 11,400 people. The show also toured to six further venues - making it the longest midscale tour delivered through TNP - reaching an additional audience of 6,000 people to date. Speak Up Speak Up is a three-year programme which launched in 2022 and will conclude in summer 2025. It was set up to support young people most affected by the pandemic and in response to challenges in schools, to help to develop young people's self-expression, wellbeing and personal skills, with an open-ended invitation to make creative projects in their local area. Through Speak Up and TNP the National Theatre has established a strong collaborative network of theatres and arts organizations across England. We are in active conversation with our partners and Arts Council England about what comes next. Generate Our Generate programme was created during the pandemic in response to a demand from national organizations coinciding with capacity in the Studio. The National Theatre currently shares the space and resources of our New Work Studio with artists developing work that is destined for stages outside of London. This support can include costs like artist fees and travel expenses, as well as offering space for workshops and writing, dramaturgical support, and introductions to potential co-producing partners. Since the outset of Generate, 1,039 actors and artists have been engaged on the programme. 93% of the projects supported either had the writer in the room or were devised as a company. This year, once again, a third of our New Work Department research and development workshops were devoted to supporting over 30 theatres and companies from outside London through our Generate programme, including Paines Plough (My Mother's Funeral), Sheffield Theatres (Dolls House), Middle Child (Biting point), Kook Ensemble (Sand), and Theatr3 (Port Talbot Gotta Banksy). Alongside these organizations, we also supported individual artists and their projects. National Theatre Live In 2024/25, National Theatre Live released seven productions to cinemas in over 50 countries, watched by an audience of over 1.8 million people across more than 250,000 screenings, with 90% watching a broadcast outside London. The 15-year-old initiative reached a significant milestone, celebrating its 100th release in April 2024 with the release of Nye, charting the life of Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan and his battle to create the NHS. National Theatre at Home A further 26 titles were added to our streaming platform in 2024/25, taking the total number of productions available to over 100. Titles added included award-winning productions from the West End such as Vanya with Andrew Scott as well as the National Theatre including Beth Steel's Olivier Award nominated play Till The Stars Come Down. In November Nye was streamed free on the National Theatre's YouTube channel for our annual 'Take Your Seats' initiative and watched by over 160,000 viewers across the globe. 51% of the YouTube audience was under 35 and it marked the first live stream with Welsh subtitles. National Theatre at Home subscribers watched over 31 million minutes of filmed theatre in 184 countries last year. All productions are available with captions, over 90% are available with audio-description, and we are building on our British Sign Language offering with monthly BSL releases of our back catalogue. INSPIRE We have provided Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to 667 teachers and youth leaders, impacting an estimated 146,500 students across the UK. Nearly 1,000 schools have taken part in our in-person learning programmes, including student conferences, bespoke school matinees, attendance at NT productions at the South Bank and backstage tours. This year saw the launch of our new NT Learning Hub on the National Theatre website, a one-stop shop for teachers and students to inspire curiosity, enhance learning and support teaching. Over the year we had 25,252 engagements, including 6,229 downloads of our learning resources. These resources include Creative activities and videos about theatre-making, free downloadable PDF resources, and short-form videos with educational content, all designed to inspire new ways of teaching English, drama, and theatre studies. Schools touring In 2024/25, we toured "The LeftBehinds" to secondary schools nationwide. Co-created by playwright Ross Willis and director Ned Bennett, this new production was set in a post-apocalyptic future, following a group of young survivors on a mission to rebuild an android and save the planet. Nearly 7,500 students from 56 secondary schools experienced this new production in their school halls. Working with our national partners, we toured the production for 11 weeks to Outer East London & South Essex, Sunderland, Wolverhampton, North Devon, Wakefield, Doncaster, Greater Manchester, Leicester, Peterborough and London. This year we paused our Primary Schools tour to allow time to evaluate its impact and ensure that it was continuing to deliver what was needed for both young people and teachers. We have now confirmed that the Programme will return in partnership with the Unicorn Theatre, the UK's leading theatre for Young Audiences, which will now reach 15,000 young people each year when it launches in 2026. The first tour will be "The Last Wild", adapted by Jude Christian from the award-winning novel by Piers Torday. National Theatre Collection In the last year we have had over 6.7 million total pupil views for the National Theatre Collection, which is now accessed in over 7,500 education institutions in 62 countries. 90% of state secondary schools in the UK are now signed up to the Collection, contributing towards our ambition for every child in the UK to experience the National Theatre before leaving school. This year we also celebrated the fifth anniversary of the National Theatre Collection by welcoming pupils to the NT for a free screening of I Want My Hat Back. Simultaneous screenings were held in two local hospital schools, with accompanying craft workshops for 250 participating children. Internationally, we secured an extension to our partnership with New York City Public Schools, now reaching 35,000 children across the five boroughs of NYC. New titles will be added to the National Theatre Collection in September 2025, in partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing and available on their digital platform Drama Online. These titles will include Blues from an Alabama Sky, The Boy with Two Hearts, Ballet Shoes and Kin, with more to be announced. Connections Connections is our annual, nationwide youth theatre festival. Each year, Connections commissions a selection of brand-new plays for young people to perform, pairing some of the UK's most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow. We work with hundreds of youth companies and several thousand young people annually from every corner of the UK. Each participating company stages a Home Performance at their own venue, before transferring their production to a Partner Theatre Festival, where they will perform on a professional stage. A select number of groups (one for each play) are then invited to perform at the Connections Summer Festival held at the National Theatre.