HighTide Announce New Wave of New Writing for their 10th Anniversary

Steven Atkinson, Artistic Director, has today announced HighTide’s season of new plays for their 10th anniversary year. Internationally renowned for discovering new playwrights and producing new plays, HighTide Festival 2016 will include four brand new commissions: Anders Lustgarten’s epic The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie which charts the transformation of a rural Chinese village from the Communist revolution through to modern commercialism directed by Steven Atkinson; Girls, exploring girlhood and enduring friendship against the backdrop of extremism in Nigeria, written by Theresa Ikoko and directed by Elayce Ismail (JP Morgan Award, National Theatre); Elinor Cook’s Pilgrims, a psychological battle of the sexes about ambition, colonialism and man’s impulse to conquer the world directed by Tamara Harvey, and In Fidelity, equal parts inspirational presentation and theatrical experiment, combining a live on-stage date with evolutionary theory written by Rob Drummond and directed by Steven Atkinson.

The Festival will also premiere The Path, a promenade production of eight short new plays created especially for HighTide’s anniversary by HighTide Alumni Playwrights and directed by Jude Christian (Lela & Co, Royal Court). The 10th Anniversary season also includes Al Smith’s Harrogate at the Royal Court Theatre, transferring from HighTide Festival 2015, and the sixth production of this special anniversary year will be announced this summer.

Atkinson said: ‘We’re thrilled to be producing such a range of plays and playwrights in our 10th anniversary year…. We’re lucky to be presenting our writers in partnership with a number of brilliant theatres: the Traverse, Soho Theatre, Talawa, Theatr Clwyd, Vicky Graham Productions, the Royal Court, House and the Arcola Theatre.’

The HighTide Festival 2016 brochure can be accessed online here and contains full listings of other events and readings at the festival.

Further programming is still to be announced – check back for more information here!