PLAYWRIGHT Bryony Lavery has no doubt about one of the joys of writing for the NT Shell Connections - the chance to write a new play with a large cast. That's something usually denied writers in these times of cash-conscious theatres.

She's one of the eight writers commissioned to provide new plays for schools and youth groups to stage in regional festivals.

York Theatre Royal is hosting one of the showcases for the first time this year. Newcastle Theatre Royal is also taking part in the scheme.

Other writers include Patrick Marber, Philip Ridley, Snoo Wilson and April de Angelis. Schools and youth theatres from York, Middlesbrough, Scarborough and Newcastle are among those taking part.

By coincidence, Lavery's piece, Discontented Winter: House Remix will be performed by York Youth Theatre. It continues Lavery's association with the city. She adapted local author Kate Atkinson's bestselling novel Behind The Scenes At The Musuem for the Theatre Royal several years ago.

"This is the third play I've written for the NT Shell Connections festival and it's pot luck which group performs it. You just do whatever you want and a company chooses the play it wants to do," she explains. "The only thing you have to bear in mind is that it's for young people. That's literally it. One of the joys is that it's really nice to write a big play."

Discontented Winter - an updated remix of the story of nasty monarch Richard III - marks a departure because it's a comedy. "I'd done two plays before and they'd been rather serious. The person commissioning the play said, 'Do you fancy doing a comedy?'," she recalls.

"I thought it would be nice to start with a villain. I thought of the princes in the tower and I'd been to see an all-female production of Richard III with the actress getting huge laughs from just being villainous.

"I was great fun writing the play, an opportunity to do something I didn't know much about - the technology and the way music is about remixing things. I do the words, then each group that does the play remixes it in their own way."

Yorkshire-born Lavery hopes to get to York to see the production, although the transfer to Broadway of her play Frozen, premiered at the National Theatre in London, continues to occupy her time.

She's back in New York now for the opening and has enjoyed working on the award-winning play again. "It's been taking up quite a bit of my time because I've been away from home. But I like New York. You can walk places, which is good for someone who doesn't drive, and taxis are much cheaper than here," she says.

Once Frozen and Discontented Winter are open, she has other writing projects to finish, including a version of Dracula for a tour and Angela Carter's Wise Children for the National Theatre. And an adaptation of Precious Bane, performed in the open air in Shrewsbury, is being done again this summer.

* NT Shell Connections runs in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, from Tuesday to May 8 (tickets 01904

Published: 24/04/2004