| HighTide Festival Theatre | |
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The Cut, Halesworth, home of the HighTide Festival |
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| Address | New Cut, IP19 8BY |
| City | Suffolk, Suffolk |
| Owned by | Leased to trust (New Cut Arts) |
| Capacity | 220 main house, 80 studio |
| Type | subsidised (not-for-profit) |
| www.hightide.org.uk | |
HighTide Festival Theatre is a not-for-profit new writing theatre company in Suffolk that produces an annual festival and tours nationally and internationally.
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Under the artistic direction of Steven Atkinson, the theatre has become an engine room for British theatre by discovering and producing leading new playwrights. Playwrights premiered by HighTide have gone on to be commissioned and produced by theatres including the National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, Bush Theatre and Headlong.
Every May the company produces an annual festival in the Suffolk market town of Halesworth[1] where several new plays are premiered in a festival-programme that also includes lectures, debates, workshops and education initiatives for young people. The productions then transfer nationally and internationally, including to London with partners who have included the National Theatre, Bush Theatre, Old Vic Theatre, to the West End, to Edinburgh, and to the Australian National Play Festival.
HighTide started life as a three day festival[2], opening on March 6, 2007. Founded by Sam Hodges and produced by Lilli Geissendorfer [3] and Moss Barclay[4], the festival premiered eight short plays, including works by Tom Basden and Sam Holcroft. Directors included Polly Findlay[5] and Mary Nighy. Nighy's father, Bill Nighy became a patron of the company, along with David Hare and Sinéad Cusack.
Hodges was then joined by current artistic director Steven Atkinson and together they set up HighTide Festival Productions Ltd, a year-round operation that would produce a now annual HighTide Festival, tours and transfers of productions, and rehearsal studios for R&D work by emerging artists and education projects with young people. Mary Allen former Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House and Secretary General of the Arts Council of England became Chairman, alongside other notable board members including producer Roger Wingate and arts fundraiser Joyce Hytner.
The second HighTide Festival opened in May 2008 with a new emphasis on full length plays rather than shorts. Four plays were premiered, written by Adam Brace, Joel Horwood, Nick Payne and the fourth devised and written by You Need Me and Emily Watson-Howes. The Festival also included platform discussions with Tom Stoppard, Michael Palin, Asif Kapadia.
Nick Payne's new short played in the Theatre Tent of the 2008 Latitude Festival in Suffolk. The production was directed by Steven Atkinson and starred Alan Cox.
Joel Horwood's I Caught Crabs In Walberswick transferred from the Festival to Edinburgh Festival 2008. It then toured the UK and concluded at The Bush Theatre,[6] in co-production with Eastern Angles.
It pungently captures the edgy excitements and disappointments of youth and the atmosphere of seaside, and displays a promise one hopes will be fulfilled. Guardian
In March 2009, Stovepipe transferred to London in collaboration with The National Theatre and The Bush Theatre. The site specific production took place at The West 12 Centre, Shepherds Bush and transformed an underground basement into modern day Iraq. The production garnered critical acclaim with The Sunday Times,[7] Independent on Sunday[8] and Time Out awarding it five stars.
A rivetingly intelligent, action-packed play. This is a five-star production in power, ambition and sense of the way we live now. Sunday Times
It was later named as one of the ten best theatre productions of the decade by the Sunday Times and was nominated in the whatsonstage.com awards for Best Off-West End Production.
The third HighTide Festival in May 2009 expanded to a two week festival, at the centre of which were three world premieres by Lydia Adetunji, Lucy Caldwell and Jesse Weaver. An expanded programme saw a collaboration with the Aldeburgh Festival on One Evening, a fully staged concert of Schubert’s Winterreise and Beckett’s text, directed by Katie Mitchell, and a special performance of David Hare’s Berlin and Wall, performed by the author together for the first time and directed by Stephen Daldry. Other special events included a celebration of publisher Faber and Faber's 80th anniversary with staged readings of works by their authors John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard and David Hare. The programme also included a retrospective on Anthony Minghella, with a one-off performance of Minghella's radio play Hang Up performed by Harry Treadaway and Felicity Jones, and a screening of Shakespeare in Love followed by a platform talk with director John Madden.
The fourth HighTide Festival in May 2010 premiered three productions written by Serge Cartwright, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and Beth Steel. The Old Vic Theatre co-produced Steel's play Ditch, with Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey causing a sensation when he visited Halesworth to open the production. Cowhig's Lidless was produced in a found space in Halesworth; the local Scout Hut and surrounding land was transformed into a Guantanamo Bay barracks. The Festival also previewed works-in-progress by Jesse Weaver, performed by Bernard Hill and Sam Hodges, and Adam Brace's Midnight Your Time, performed by Diana Quick, which went on to be fully produced the following year.
In partnership with the Genesis Foundation, Atkinson and Hodges founded the Genesis Laboratory, HighTide's year-round development studio situated in London. Atkinson appointed director Natalie Ibu as Associate Director (Warehouse) to programme the studio.
Ditch transferred directly from the Festival to the Old Vic Tunnels as the opening production of the Old Vic Theatre's new second space. Olivier Award winner Richard Twyman's production, which starred Danny Webb and Dearbhla Molly, gained critical praise including being named ‘Best Play’ in The Independent (5 June 2010).
What's impressive about Steel's play – and Richard Twyman's compelling production – is the expert control of mood... Dearbhla Molloy is outstandingly good as Mrs Peel The Independent (28 May 2010).
The play went on to be shortlisted for the prestigious 2010 John Whiting Award along with Serge Cartwright's Moscow Live.
In July, HighTide returned to Suffolk's Latitude Festival with The Theatre Ep, conceived and directed by Natalie Ibu and written by Dominic Mitchell.
Lidless transferred from the Festival to the 2010 Edinburgh Festival as part of Escalator East to Edinburgh, where it won a Fringe First Award and received 97% capacity across the run. In addition, actress Penny Layden was nominated for Best Actress in The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence.
If Henrik Ibsen had been alive in the era of Guantanamo, he'd surely have written a play every bit as scintillating as Lidless The Scotsman (21 August 2010).
Steven Atkinson's production later transferred to Trafalgar Studios in London's West End, with the director winning a second bursary award from the Society of London Theatre to support the production.
The fifth HighTide Festival was open to critics for the first time, with the event attracting wide-spread national and local print, radio, television and online coverage for the first time. The Festival premiered it's first small-scale musical, Nicked, by Richard Marsh and Natalia Sheppard, about the formation of the UK's coalition government. Former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion made his playwriting debuet with Incoming, American playwright Stephen Belber's play Dusk Rings A Bell received its European premiere, and Adam Brace's Midnight Your Time was fully produced after being workshopped at the previous year's Festival.
To mark the company's fifth birthday, it was joined by five new patrons, each of whom had supported HighTide in its founding years. They were Richard Eyre, Nicholas Hytner, Stephen Daldry, Juliet Stevenson and Sam Mendes.
Rob Drummer succeeded Natalie Ibu in the new position of Literary Manager.
In March 2011, Arts Council England announced that they would start regularly funding HighTide Festival Theatre as a National Portfolio Organisation from April 2012[9]
In July 2011, Sam Hodges stepped down from HighTide to join the Criterion Theatre in London's West End.
Andrew Motion's Incoming toured throughout 2011, with performances including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and the Theatre Tent of the Latitude Festival[10].
Absolutely credible and ultimately very moving.Whatsonstage (7 May 2011).
Dusk Rings A Bell transferred from the Festival to the Edinburgh Festival with a cast change in Abi Titmuss playing Molly when Katherine Kingsley was no longer available. Steven Atkinson's production played in the prestigious Assembly Rooms before transferring to Watford Place Theatre.
Both actors inhabit their characters with flawless conviction... A show not to miss. The Herald (12 August 2011).
Stovepipe writer and director Adam Brace and Michael Longhurst reunited to stage Midnight Your Time, first at the HighTide Festival and then transferring it to the Assembly Rooms for the Edinburgh Festival. The production has some outstanding reviews and the performance of Diana Quick was universally praised.
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HighTide have been recognised for their artistic excellence and entrepenurial approach business. Lidless won a 2010 Fringe First Award and the play was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Meyer-Whitworth Prize. Fixer has also been nominated for the Meyer-Whitworth and the John Whiting Award, along with Moscow Live. Stovepipe and Lidless have both won producing bursaries from the Society of London Theatre and Stovepipe was nominated in the Whatsonstage.com Awards for Best Off-West End Production. HighTide has won two Corporate Engagement Awards and has been nominated for an Arts & Business Award for its partnership with Lansons Communications.