NAIL BAR to Transform Disused London Shop Into Immersive Comedy-Drama
Co-written by Afsaneh Gray and Kelly Jones, the NYT production is part of STORYFEST.
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 theatrical experiment 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, riffing off classic soaps. It is being performed in a disused shop on Holloway Road which has been transformed into Well Gel Nails, the brightly-coloured environment in which the story unfolds right in front of the audience. Nail Bar is running until 24th July.
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 1 in 7 shops currently sit empty and The Centre for Retail Research counted 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.
A video has been released, in which Paul Roseby, CEO of the National Youth Theatre discusses his vision for empty spaces on our high streets. Roseby said: “Hopefully this should inspire more organisations and more people to open up those existing empty shops and fill it with culture, young people and popular stories for every single audience out there.”
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