The National Youth Theatre’s new writing festival, StoryFest, has returned for a third year, and central to this year’s showcase of brand-new storytelling is a bold theatrical experiment, Nail Bar, taking place in a disused space near the NYT’s headquarters in north London.
Nail Bar, co-written by Afsaneh Gray and Kelly Jones, is an immersive, episodic comedy-drama that riffs on classic soaps. It is being performed in a disused shop on Holloway Road, which has been transformed into Well Gel Nails, a brightly coloured environment in which the story unfolds right in front of the audience.
Well Gel Nails is a space where those on the run can hide – including the owners themselves – who will do anything to protect what they’ve built.
Recent stats show that 1 in 7 shops currently sits empty, and the Centre for Retail Research recorded 17,349 store closures and over 200,000 retail redundancies in 2025 alone. Footfall across high streets and shopping centres continued to decline in December (-2.9% year on year). Nail Bar presents a bold solution to this problem – turning over these empty spaces to young people as a playground for storytelling.
Paul Roseby, CEO of the National Youth Theatre said, “Hopefully this should inspire more organisations and more people to open up those existing empty shops and fill them with culture, young people and popular stories for every single audience out there.”
Nail Bar is running until 24th July – book tickets.
StoryFest 2026 is sponsored by Studiocanal and Urban Myth Films and supported by Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a Donor Advised Fund, held at The Prism Charitable Trust, White Light and ODEON Luxe Holloway.
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