2007-2019
“Over the past 12 years, HighTide has helped bring some of the UK’s most exciting playwrights to the attention of the public: Jack Thorne, Ella Hickson, Vinay Patel and many more. Without a company such as HighTide nurturing these new voices, encouraging risk-taking and experiment, the country’s largest theatres and audiences would not go on to encounter them. HighTide’s commitment to working regionally and especially to supporting new voices in the East of England is vital as funding cuts limit the support regional theatres can offer. Through HighTide, the theatre as a whole benefits from new and diverse talent, and surprising, untold stories. This small, passionate company is a force for good.” Sir Nicholas Hytner Artistic Director & CEO Bridge Theatre
Over the past 12 years, HighTide has produced 14 week-long festivals of new theatre and 42 touring productions for over 150,000 audience members on 3 different continents. HighTide has launched the careers of some of the UK’s greatest writers and collaborated with the UK’s major theatres; while delivering meaningful engagement work with young people and communities across our home region in the East of England and further afield. As we move into a new era, HighTide will continue to produce and nationally tour the UK’s most exciting new theatre. We’ll grow our provision of writer training, ensuring that the most diverse talent gets to experience the full power of our support. I’m delighted that the first artists joining me include Ben Weatherill, Dawn King, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Aisha Zia and Debris Stevenson. We will also deepen our focus on the thing that makes the company truly unique: its home in Suffolk and East Anglia. Our home is a region characterised by stunning coastal and rural beauty; but which also experiences the challenges presented by rural isolation and collapsing seaside economies. It is the part of the country that gave us Benjamin Britten and George Orwell (and more recently Ed Sheeran!), but it is now affected by some of the lowest educational attainment and literacy in the UK. At HighTide we believe that theatre really can make a difference to people’s lives; creating aspiration, conversation and celebration. As we continue to focus on the thing we do best – making world class theatre – we look forward to new partnerships with Suffolk County Council, local schools, and brilliant cultural partners across the region such as Snape Maltings, New Wolsey Ipswich, Dance East, the National Centre for Writing, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Norwich Playhouse, and the Marina Theatre and First Light Festival in Lowestoft. These new relationships will help us ensure that the incredible new work we make will encounter new and vulnerable audiences, those who might most especially need the opportunities and experiences we create. Such new relationships wouldn’t be possible without our long-term supporters. We are grateful to Arts Council England for their belief in all that we do; and to our major corporate sponsor Lansons, who have provided the company with its London office and project support for over a decade. Suba Das, Artistic Director & CEO
STAFF Suba Das - Artistic Director Francesca Clark - Executive Producer Rowan Rutter - Executive Producer (Maternity Cover) Robyn Keynes - Producer Holly White - Assistant Producer Liz Downie - Festival Producer Kathleen Smith - Marketing Consultant TRUSTEES Tim Clark (Chair), Leah Schmidt (Deputy Chair), Suba Das, Nancy Durrant, Sue Emmas, Jon Gilchrist, Liz Fosbury, Diana Hiddleston, Clare Parsons, Vinay Patel, John Rodgers With its brilliant new team, HighTide is looking to build on the achievements of the past – broadening the artistic strategy and enhancing the focus on new writing for the theatre and the East region. Embedding ourselves in the community and the heart of cultural life in East Anglia, we are hugely excited about what HighTide can achieve in the future. Tim Clark, Chair of the Board
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Suba Das Educated at Cambridge, Suba trained as a theatre director on the Birkbeck Theatre Directing programme before becoming Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio. He has directed for many of the UK’s major theatres, including the Young Vic, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Northern Stage and Nottingham Playhouse; as well as new circus for the Roundhouse and National Centre for Circus Arts; and new opera for the Royal Opera House. As Associate Director at Leicester’s Curve Theatre, Suba created and led the theatre’s artist development programmes, which saw new work made by and with artists from the East Midlands transfer to the National Theatre, Royal Court, Sadlers Wells and Southbank Centre. Suba is also trustee of the iconic Sage Gateshead and Royal Northern Sinfonia in his own hometown in the North East.
HIGHTIDE TODAY Building on the extraordinary twelve years of the company so far, from Summer 2020, HighTide‘s work will fall into three core activity strands: 1. WORLD CLASS PLAY DEVELOPMENT A flagship Summer Camp for Playwrights every September in Aldeburgh, bringing together some of the country’s best new writing talent to thrive within the first free residential programme for writers in the UK (based on world-famous US models of O’Neill Lab and Orchard Project). Exciting voices identified by HighTide or nominated by regional theatres across the UK will receive two weeks of supported space to dream, play and invent, in the stunning seaside space of Aldeburgh culminating in readings and sharings for local and industry audiences. The Summer Camp will be an engine room for the UK’s new writing ecology.
3. HIGHTIDE: FESTIVAL OF THE EAST Growing outwards from our home in Aldeburgh, the annual HighTide Festival in March/April each year will become a region-wide event. We will curate work using the entirety of the East as our canvas, placing new projects (developed at our Summer Camp and through our literary work in the East) within the communities we feel will most respond and benefit from the stories our artists are telling; and drawing on our expertise to transform rural community halls, libraries and schools into performance sites so that geography is never a barrier to access. Each year, we will also identify opportunities for leading artists to work directly with, and in, communities in the East through high quality and large-scale participatory projects, which also form part of the Festival programme. From Peterborough to Lowestoft, if you are in the East of England, a HighTide project will be near you.
2. A LITERARY DEPARTMENT FOR THE EAST OF ENGLAND Working with our partner theatres and cultural organisations in the region, we will offer rigorous support for writers and artists based in the East of England. We will raise the quality and ambition of new writing through script reading, feedback and training; and showcasing the best new works. We will also support venues in the region’s towns and rural locations to regularly receive new work, working with Suffolk County Council, Creative Arts East and the Suffolk Community Foundation to invent outreach and audience development programmes that bring new people to theatre. Amy Gwilliam in .staybless by Greta Mitchell
A NOTE FROM HIGHTIDE FOUNDER, SAM HODGES “I founded HighTide with producers Lilli Geissendorfer and Moss Barclay, with one simple principle: the best gift you could give a writer was an audience. We committed, right from the beginning, to producing the work in front of an audience, even if the work was still young, unformed and naïve. The first year featured a combination of short plays by unknown writers and talks by leading artistic figures, which together built an audience. In the second year, I was joined by producer Steven Atkinson who later became Co-Artistic Director. Over the next few years we went from a three day to a weeklong festival with regular Arts Council and Trust funding, and we championed the early work of many leading writers and directors working today, including: Nick Payne, Tom Basden, Lydia Adetunji, Sam Holcroft, Polly Findlay, Mike Longhurst, Beth Steel, and Richard Twyman. In a new era under Suba Das’ leadership, it will be exciting to see how the company supports writers to push the boundaries of theatre; and grows its commitment to sharing the transformative power of theatre with new and diverse communities in the East of England and beyond.”
Sam Hodges, Founder
SIGNIFICANT ALUMNI Writers Jack Thorne Nick Payne Ella Hickson Theresa Ikoko E V Crowe Vinay Patel Luke Barnes Directors Michael Longhurst Kate Wasserberg Natalie Abrahami
2007 First year of HighTide Halesworth short plays
2009 Guardians by Lucy Caldwell
2008 Introduction to Lansons
2010 Ditch by Beth Steel
2011 Dusk Rings a Bell by Stephen Belber
2013
2012 Mudlarks by Vickie Donoghue
Bottleneck by Luke Barnes
2014 Incognito by Nick Payne
2015 SIGNIFICANT VENUES & CO-PRODUCTION PARTNERS: Chichester Theatre The Old Vic Traverse Theatre Royal Court Watford Palace Theatre Young Vic Sheffield Theatres Trafalgar Studios Snape Maltings Arcola Theatre Nottingham Playhouse Bush Theatre Jerwood East Soho Theatre Latitude Festival National Theatre Theatr Clywd Omnibus Clapham Sherman Theatre Manchester Royal Talawa Exchange 59E59 Theater, New York New Wosley Theatre
HIGHLIGHTS
HIGHTIDE HISTORY
First HighTide in Aldeburgh
2018 Songlines by Tallulah Brown
2019 LIT by Sophie Ellerby
2016 In Fidelity by Rob Drummond
2017 Girls by Theresa Ikoko
HIGHTIDE IN NUMBERS
WHAT DO PEOPLE SAY ABOUT US? A gripping, truthful play for our times The Stage ***** Mouthpiece, Kieran Hurley
12
3
14
4
Perfectly pitched...has a bit of magic about it The Times **** Songlines, Tallulah Brown
years
HighTide Festivals
continents of performances
core staff members producing
Lit is as good a debut as I can recall in ten years as a reviewer Broadway World ***** LIT, Sophie Ellerby It’s one of the best places for artists to get their work on its feet. Michelle Barnette, Producer
150,000+
42
audience members
productions
So much of trying to write and produce new theatre is being told what can’t be done. HighTide is meant to be about what you can do: putting together complementary talents and doing the work. Lilli Geissendorfer, Producer 2007 HighTide’s ambitious plans for work across Suffolk will make a genuine contribution to our communities.
% OF £ INCOME IN 2019 A breakdown of our funding and income streams in 2019. Full financial information can be found on our website
Jayne Knight, Suffolk County Council
FROM OUR AUDIENCE
34% statutory from Arts Council
44% trusts & major sponsors and individuals
22% earned income
I was genuinely BLOWN away. Made me laugh and cry! Fantastic work and I will definitely be attending more HighTide productions for sure! I was totally stunned by that play…quite extraordinary. It reverberated in me, and clearly the whole audience, in more ways than I can describe.
CASE STUDY: VINAY PATEL Vinay’s debut play, True Brits, made in association with HighTide, opened at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014. His first piece for television, Murdered By My Father, won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Single Drama and was nominated for three BAFTAs. Vinay has gone on to write for major TV series including Dr Who and Good Karma Hospital. Further theatre Image by Helen Murray includes An Adventure (Bush Theatre) which receives its regional premiere at Bolton Octagon in 2020. How did you first become involved with HighTide? The 2012 HighTide Escalator scheme was an initiative that gave promising early career writers a funded opportunity to develop a play. I heard of it while I was still studying at Central School of Speech and Drama. The Escalator scheme gave a boost to my self-confidence as a writer. To join the scheme, we had to submit a ten-minute extract and then go in and talk about the unwritten play and face challenging questions. I had never had that experience before and it continues to be a valuable skill to this day. From there, I was helped with creating a bid for an Arts Council grant which is - again - another career-long skill. The money that came from that bid allowed me to focus on my writing with an intensity that I had previously never been able to achieve. Then I worked with HighTide and their partners to produce the play, which both gave me opportunities from the exposure of the work itself but also taught me a great deal about how the practicalities of theatre worked. This was my very first production and it was useful to have the safety of an established company to help me through it.
My career as a writer has taken me to some incredible places, working with the very best people in theatre and television, and that first opportunity with HighTide was the catalyst for it all. How would you describe HighTide? For me, HighTide is a company that is primarily interested in compelling, humane stories from places and people you might not expect. It exists to both bring work to the East of England and platform theatre makers from there. At its best, HighTide is daring in form and content and works to dismiss the common, lazy stereotype that there is no appetite for such work outside of the major cities. The company’s eye for talent is proven by how a company of this size has had a hand in the early work of some of the mainstays of British drama across every medium. In your position as a Trustee, what would you like to see HighTide achieve in the future? Yes, from writer-on-scheme to Trustee! I am enthused by the direction of travel that the Executive Team has laid out, which is clear-eyed, considered and exciting in its approach towards working with new writers and makes the best of the capacity and structures that already exist in the East. The company has so much potential through its connections in the East of England, through its productions and also in how we make the work itself. As a Board we are wholly invested in that. And in our capacity as a new writing company we will champion writers from this region more loudly, as well as developing work in proper and sustained collaboration with partners, bringing brilliant work to new and existing audiences. And that’s on everyone – the excellent team that are HighTide, the Board, the incredible Alumni and all our friends. It’s exciting! HighTide is an incredible company that should be supported not only for the work that they do but the opportunities that they give new voices coming into the industry….I can now stand in front of you all and say I AM A WRITER. Sophie Ellerby, Writer
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CASE STUDY: SUMMER CONNECT In addition to our performance and production programme, HighTide is proud to have led a number of community participatory projects in the East of England, focussing on introducing young people to theatre.
Thank you to HighTide for not only allowing us to be a part of something so special, but for also playing a role in changing some of these young women’s lives. Senior Youth Worker, Porch Project, Hadleigh
In 2019, HighTide worked with 4YP (The Suffolk Young People’s Health Project) and local schools to create the Summer Connect programme, with funding support from the Suffolk Community Foundation. This programme saw 45 young people create their own creative responses to HighTide productions, building literacy, confidence and team-working skills before sharing this work with family audiences. It also enabled a further 300 young people from deprived backgrounds to see work for free at the week-long Aldeburgh festival.
The most exhilarating performance they had ever experienced. Primary School Feedback Made me feel like I belong. YP Drama Day Feedback
HIGHTIDE FUTURE
PRODUCTIONS 2020-2021 HighTide’s first East-wide Festival will celebrate female voices and includes the following projects:
The Light by Dawn King Directed by Suba Das Ben, a young man accused of a terrible crime arrives at the rural home of his estranged mother, Hanna. As family secrets emerge, the play asks what are the limits of a parent’s love? This timely new play is a tense thriller and an exploration of toxic masculinity written by one of the UK’s most important new writers.
When The Long Trick Is Over by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm Directed by Nicole Charles Her sister’s dream was to swim the Channel, but her sister isn’t here anymore. A swimmer battles her mind, memories and body to try and join the list of those who’ve successfully made it all the way. This heart-warming, defiant new play celebrates the power and strength of the ordinary woman and reunites the team behind the West End hit Emilia.
Herring Girls - A community chorus Every summer for decades Suffolk beaches thronged with Scottish fishermen trawling the herring all down the East Coast, driving one of the region’s major economies. Each summer, those fishermen were followed by hundreds of Scottish girls who gutted the fish. In 1938, those girls staged a mass walk-out on Lowestoft beach, demanding equal pay. In our season of female voices we celebrate one of the most extraordinary episodes of the region’s history, working with Snape Maltings to bring together over a hundred local women of all ages and backgrounds to recreate that protest in a thrilling performance led by music and song.
FUTURE PRODUCTIONS Benjamin Britten Play by Ben Weatherill Suffolk’s most famous son, Benjamin Britten discovered his genius as a teenager in Lowestoft while also discovering his sexuality at a time where gay men lived on the fringes of society. Focussing on Britten’s relationship with his mother Edith, and her dreams for her son to have a life that surpassed her own, Ben Weatherill explores what it means to be special and different. Ben Weatherill is one of the UK’s most exciting new voices, with his second play Jellyfish recently transferring from the Bush to the National Theatre. Jellyfish told the story of a young woman with Down’s Syndrome, and her right to a romantic life and starred Sarah Gordy MBE, who became the first actor with a learning disability to star in a National Theatre production.
Margaret Catchpole Play by Debris Stevenson Adventuress, chronicler, convict. In the late 1700s, Margaret Catchpole was Suffolk’s real life Moll Flanders; a young working class girl who refused to be constrained by convention. When sentenced to death for the theft of a horse she stole to ride to see her lover one last time before he was sent to sea, Margaret escaped Ipswich jail on a 20 foot clothesline. Exile to Australia saw her become the first woman to record the lives of the Aborigine people. Spoken word artist, dancer and poet Debris Stevenson (Evening Standard Best Newcomer Award nomination in 2018 for Poet In Da Corner, Royal Court), will tell the tale of a thoroughly modern woman.
SUPPORT THE FUTURE OF HIGHTIDE HighTide is run by a small team of passionate people. We are supported by Arts Council England within their National Portfolio, and by an array of Trusts and Foundations. Corporate support is given by Lansons, and a group of generous individuals give us large gifts that mean we can champion artists and maintain our record of producing the best new work for audiences nationwide. We are truly grateful to our supporters and friends, without whom we wouldn’t be able to make the artistic ideas happen; or to work with young people; or to put on our festivals; or to give away theatre tickets to people who wouldn’t have access to them otherwise. This support is invaluable. Below are three strands of giving which directly support and impact our work. All come with a range of benefits which will bring you close to the art and the artists at the heart of everything we do.
PRODUCTION SPONSORS
£5K + above (for 12 months from donation) Production Sponsors are an essential part of the creative process of staging new work. Your generosity breathes life into new HighTide productions, from conception through to staging. As a Production Sponsor, you can choose a production that you believe in, and witness it come to life over the course of the development, whilst enjoying a unique & personal relationship with the creative team.
PATRONS CIRCLE
1K + above (for 12 months from donation) The Patrons Circle is a vital network of support around HighTide as it continues to champion new and exciting playwrights and directors.
PLAY DEVELOPMENT FUND (£100pa +)
Donations are fundamental to bringing new work to life, and supporting individual plays as they go through development is a brilliant way to support our circle of artists.
MAJOR SPONSORS & FUNDERS HighTide has benefitted from the support of statutory trust and foundations over the twelve years. Thanks to our current funders. Leading partner: Lansons Funders Aldeburgh Town Council Backstage Trust The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust The Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation The Sumner Wilson Charitable Trust National Lottery Awards For All The Parham Trust Royal Victoria Hall Foundation The Mackintosh Foundation The Martin Bowley Charitable Trust Scarfe Charitable Trust Suffolk Community Foundation Foyle Foundation The Sylvia Waddilove Foundation Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation The Lord Belstead Charitable Trust
Best Friends of the Festival Tim and Caroline Clark John Rodgers Leah Schmidt David Kogan Friends of the Festival Francesca Clark Liz Fosbury Jon Gilchrist Vinay Patel Graham and Sue White Elizabeth Downie Nancy Durrant
HighTide is a leading theatre company and part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio. We produce and nationally tour bold new writing by the country’s most exciting voices, and support communities in our home region of the East of England to access theatre as audiences and artists in their own right. Registered Charity No. 1124477. Arts Council NPO