Daniel Craig, India Amarteifio and Rose Ayling-Ellis were among those reading letters to their younger selves at Letters to My Younger Future Self, the National Youth Theatre’s seventieth-birthday gala at the Royal Festival Hall.
The National Youth Theatre marked its seventieth year on Sunday evening with Letters to My Younger Future Self, a one-night gala at the Royal Festival Hall built on a single device: performers, writers and public figures reading letters addressed to the people they used to be. It is the third time the show has been in the news this month, after the casting was filled out over the summer and rehearsal images went out last week, and it is the evening the company had been building towards all year.
Reading on the night were Daniel Craig, NYT patron Adeel Akhtar, the BAFTA Breakthrough alumnae Susan Wokoma and Rose Ayling-Ellis, India Amarteifio, Fehinti Balogun, Jessica Henwick, Jack Thorne, James Graham, Daniel Ings, Calam Lynch, Rob Rinder, Fay Ripley, Rhea Norwood, the 2026 Roundhouse Poetry Slam winner Takunda Muzondiwa and the comedian Megan Bolton. They shared the stage with a company of seventy drawn from the current generation of National Youth Theatre members.
Watching from the house were the actors Lolita Chakrabarti, Monica Dolan and Philip Glenister, the writer Steven Moffat, the presenters Katherine Ryan and Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the designer Bob Crowley and the MP Chris Bryant.
The letter Daniel Craig read was written by James Graham, and it made an unfashionable argument: that “the most important invention in the history of civilisation [...] was stopping, standing still”. “I don’t want any future that’s inevitable,” it went on, before dedicating itself to “those here who stopped, who stayed, who planted seeds, and grew things…”.
Rose Ayling-Ellis used her letter to describe how hard her younger self had worked to fit a world that was not built for her. “No matter how hard you tried, you never quite fitted in. Until one day, you just stopped trying. You allowed yourself to be Deaf. The silence forced you inward. You learnt to love the quietness of outside and listen to the loudness of inside. And in that loudness, you found your community. Your language, Your culture.”
Jack Thorne took the lighter route. His first piece of advice was “Enjoy your hair,” on the grounds that “in thirty one years time even the idea of a quiff will be an ancient bitter memory.” He finished by asking his younger self to “be kind to others” and to “try to do better than you do”.
The evening was introduced by Paul Roseby OBE, artistic director of the National Youth Theatre and creative director of the gala, who used the platform to argue the organisation’s case as much as to mark its birthday, citing a nomination for Excellence in Inclusivity at this year’s UK Theatre Awards. “Tonight, thanks to stand out support from Netflix, we celebrate 70 years of championing young voices and their stories,” Roseby said. “As you’ll see on stage we’ve nurtured some world-leading storytellers over the last 70 years and are proud to have started a global youth theatre movement. And we don’t rest on our laurels - just this week we were nominated at the UK Theatre Awards for Excellence in Inclusivity. With critical youth unemployment outside of London, students in deprived areas three times less likely to take GCSE drama and A level drama down 50%, the National Youth Theatre is more important than ever. We are the positive story that Britain needs more of.”
Netflix was the headline sponsor, with further backing from EON Productions and Arts Council England. “Tonight was a brilliant reminder of what’s possible when you invest in young talent and the National Youth Theatre has spent 70 years nurturing young people into the storytellers who go on to shape our screens and stages,” said Anne Mensah, vice president of UK content at Netflix. “We’re proud to support them through Generation N and IGNITE Your Creativity, because backing the next generation isn’t just about opening doors, it’s about making sure the industry we love keeps being fed by fresh voices, fresh perspectives and fresh ambition.” The partnership dates from 2023 and has created more than 4,000 free opportunities for young people so far.
Josie Baxter directed, with Paul Roseby as creative director and dramaturgy by Krishna Istha and Sophie Ellerby. Video design was by Will Duke, lighting design by Prema Mehta, sound design by Nicola T. Chang and the movement director was Matthew Wells. On stage, backstage and on screen the show was staffed by young people who came through IGNITE Your Creativity, the programme Netflix runs with the company.
Letters were also written for the occasion by Dame Joan Collins, Dame Judi Dench, NYT patron Chiwetel Ejiofor, Richard E Grant, Lashana Lynch, Matt Lucas, Sharon Horgan, Lennie James and Joanna Lumley, among others. Those, with the letters read on the night, will be collected in a commemorative book due later this year.
Seventy years of alumni is the argument the company keeps returning to, and it runs from Craig and Dame Helen Mirren through Regé-Jean Page, Andrea Riseborough and Matt Smith to the comedians Tom Allen and Joel Dommett, the writers Miriam Battye, Sarah Solemani, Graham and Thorne, and the musicians Ed Sheeran and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. The National Youth Theatre works with 15,000 young people a year, aged 11 to 25, and up to 30 for those who are disabled or neurodivergent.
