For its second year, the Chrysalis Festival brought even more exceptional talent from across Europe with a three-day showcase of ambitious performance and works-in-progress by emerging young theatre-makers.

Who performed at Chrysalis 2016?

The Island, by Platform Young Company (Glasgow): A group of misfits, stragglers and dreamers roam across an apocalyptic wasteland trying to find out what happens after the end of everything.

Phenomena: A Beginner’s Guide to Love and Physics by Sounds Like Chaos and the Albany (Deptford): We want to know it all, the whole universe and everything in it. Contrasting physics facts with the uniqueness of experience, young people question how we learn to love.

Sheep, by Tron Young Company (Glasgow): A spotlight on modern war looks at media propaganda, gender roles in conflict and what happens when war arrives on your doorstep.

Club, by Teatru Manoel Youth Theatre (Malta): How does a group of young people deal with the death of a friend? Some get angry, some bargain, some sink into depression – but all of them club.

Other aspects of the programme

Chrysalis Too: Running alongside the main performance programme, Chrysalis Too offered a curated series of workshops and talks focusing on current trends and challenges in contemporary youth theatre practice.

Emergence: New for 2016, the Chrysalis Emergence strand presented three 20-minute experimental and risk-taking new works-in-progress by emerging young theatre-makers. This presented the audience with a chance to experience not only a variety of original voices and fresh perspectives, but also to contribute thoughts and ideas on how each piece could develop.