The first night of NT Connections 2026 at Pitlochry Festival Theatre with a double-bill performance by Lyceum Youth Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre Young Company.

Wildfire Road by Eve Leigh
Performed by Lyceum Youth Theatre
A story about a generation whose future has been hijacked. The whole play takes place on a flight from London to Tokyo. There’s a hijacker on board and the flight is re-directed to Siberia and in the process saving the lives of all 416 people on board, as the rest of the world is engulfed in a massive wildfire. It’s metaphorical, prophetic and a tale for the most important question of our times – are we going to wake up and address the climate emergency before it’s too late?

Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth by Kirsty Housley
Performed by Pitlochry Festival Theatre Young Company
When an alarm is deliberately set off during their GCSE drama exam, a group of students find themselves in detention. As they struggle to navigate the seemingly endless tasks they’ve been set as punishment, questions are raised. Who set off the alarm and why? Will they ever get out of this detention? Will it cost them their GCSE? And why is Shakespeare still so popular? So begins a meta deconstruction of the play as we move from classroom to theatre, artifice to reality. The performers switch between their characters and their real selves as they interrogate Shakespeare, the canon, the education system, the nature of theatre, and the world itself. They begin to wonder whether the classics really are that classic, or whether we might need to tell a different story altogether….

Pitlochry Festival Theatre want everyone to enjoy their experience of NT Connections. With that in mind, they share the following content guidance about these plays which feature some strong language, mild sexual references, scenes of peril, themes of the climate emergency, themes the cost of living crisis, depictions of anxiety and references to colonialism.

There will be a short interval between each performance at which point they will kindly ask you to leave the auditorium.