We’re delighted to exclusively announce Season 2010, HighTide’s fourth year of work.
But first, we’d like to recap on a magnificent Season 2009, and thank you for your support. In March, Stovepipe opened in London as a site specific production with the National Theatre and Bush Theatre. The Sunday Times listed it as one of the Ten Best Theatre Productions of the Decade, and it is currently nominated for Best Off-West End production with WhatsonStage.com. In May we premiered Lucy Caldwell’s Guardians, Jesse Weaver’s Muhmah, and Lydia Adetunji’s Fixer in the 2009 HighTide Festival. Both Fixer and Stovepipe will open in Australia in March 2010 as part of the National Playwriting Festival.
Ditch by Beth Steel
Britain in the near future. Much of the country is underwater and the government has been reduced to a group of fascist strongmen. In a rural outpost of the state, the men struggle to control their women prisoners, and to retain a semblance of civility in the face of the encroaching wilderness.
Stark and unforgiving, but shot through with a sense of humanity, Ditch is a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away, and a frightening vision of a future that could all too easily be ours. Richard Twyman directs.
Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Fifteen years ago, Alice was an interrogator in Guantanamo. The pills she took at the time mean she can’t remember what she did. Fifteen years ago, Bashir was a prisoner there. Dying of liver failure, he can’t forget what she did. One day, he visits her.
Lidless, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s devastating first play, won the 2009 Yale Drama Series Award for Playwriting. A work of extraordinary intelligence and finely-balanced sensibility, it marries the implacable logic of a Greek tragedy with an all-too-modern setting. Steven Atkinson directs.
“Lidless is an extraordinary and original attempt to show the enduring strain on the victims of the U.S.’s deployment of torture at Guantanamo.” David Hare
Moscow Live by Serge Cartwright
A state-run English-language TV station in Moscow. On Richard Hunt’s first day as acting producer, Milosevic dies. A simple story of an evil man dying unmourned may not be so simple after all.
Moscow Live is based on Serge Cartwright’s experiences in a Moscow newsroom. A very funny but deadly serious look at how truth and news are rarely the same thing, and how individual motives interfere with both. It is a thrilling, thought-provoking and razor-sharp debut. Jonathan Humphreys directs.
They will premiere as part of HighTide Festival 2010, in Halesworth, Suffolk from April 29th to May 3rd. The full programme will be announced March 1st on www.hightide.org.uk when tickets go on sale online and through our box office: 0207 566 9767.
Next month we look forward to announcing the HighTide Genesis Laboratory and our Research and Development Studio, and the HighTide Ensemble. In the meantime, please do visit our brand new website.
We do hope to see you at the festival and best wishes for the New Year,
Steven and Sam
Artistic Directors
HighTide
