Playing Up, an OCN Level 3 accredited 10 month drama training programme, offering young people aged 19 to 24 who are not in education, employment, or training the opportunity to gain an access to higher education diploma in Theatre Arts, which is equivalent to two A Levels. In 2016, the National Youth Theatre celebrated its 60th anniversary. The celebrations culminated in a 60th Anniversary Gala performance, The Story of Our Youth, featuring alumni including Matt Smith, Gina McKee, Daisy Lewis, Jessica Hynes, and Hugh Bonneville. Barbara Broccoli succeeded Lord Waheed Alli and became the NYT's first female President in 2017. The National Youth Theatre's Royal Patron is the Earl of Wessex. 2017 marked 50 years since the staging of the National Youth Theatre's first ever commission, Zigger Zagger by Peter Terson, and to mark the occasion an anniversary production was staged at Wilton's Music Hall. NYT's first ever East End season was launched in Hackney Wick in 2017, which saw the NYT on "exuberantly good form". Autumn 2017 saw the fifth anniversary of the NYT REP West End season at the Ambassadors Theatre, featuring performances Jekyll and Hyde, Othello, and Mrs Dalloway. 2018 saw the NYT REP Season move away from the Ambassadors Theatre, to the Soho Theatre, the Garrick Theatre and the Lyric Hammersmith, with performances of Consensual, Victoria's Knickers, and a female-led Macbeth abridged by Moira Buffini, as well as a production of To Kill a Mockingbird. In 2018 the NYT REP Company's production of Macbeth was the first in London's West End to cast the lead role with a female actor, in a gender-fluid production adapted by Moira Buffini, directed by Natasha Nixon at the Garrick Theatre. In 2020, during the crisis in live performance and theatre resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, outdoor performance was reintroduced to Soulton Hall. NYT gave their first live in person performance since the restrictions following the lockdown that was brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The play was a new, specially devised work called The Last Harvest In 2021, the NYT returned to Soulton with a performance of Animal Farm. In 2021 National Youth Theatre launched a Inclusive Practice Collective creating 60 paid roles and bringing drama to young disabled people in 15 schools in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and London as part of the KickStart scheme. In November, National Youth Theatre performed at the UN’s Global Climate Conference COP26 staging