Hightide Festival
Starting 30 April this world class Festival based at The Cut, Halesworth, features local as well as international artists and presents a festival of world premiere theatre productions, debates, talks, and films.
HighTide have curated a provocative and stimulating line-up of ancillary events, including panel debates, talks, and film screenings, inspired by the three key themes addressed in the 2010 HighTide Festival productions: global warming, abuses of power, and freedom of the press.
PLAYS
Ditch by Beth Steel
I’ve listened to all the stories of my generation, then watched ’em get sick or fade away. And it wasn’t this world that killed ’em. It was the other… the memory of it.
Britain, 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, men and woman struggle to build a community, 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, Beth Steel’s debut 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, following his triumphant Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry IV Part II as part of the RSC Histories Season, which he Associate Directed and which won Olivier Awards for Best Revival, Best Ensemble and Best Costume.
Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Every day I drive past strip malls and think about the kids we went to school with who died so we could shop and watch TV. Why was I so desperate to become a citizen of this?
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 Yale Drama Series Award for Playwriting in 2009. A work of extraordinary intelligence and finely-balanced sensibility, it marries the implacable logic of a Greek tragedy with an all-too-modern setting.
As HighTide’s Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson has produced three Seasons of acclaimed work, which have featured collaborations with the National Theatre, Bush Theatre, and Aldeburgh Music, and included Stovepipe, which the Sunday Times listed as one of the Ten Best Theatre Productions of the Decade. He directs Lidless following his 2009 production of another American premiere, Muhmah (HighTide Festival 2009)
"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, Serge Cartwright’s first play, is based on his experiences in a Moscow newsroom. A fast, funny but deadly serious look at how truth and news are rarely the same thing, and how individual motives interfere with both. Thrilling, thought-provoking and razor sharp.
National Theatre Staff Director Jonathan Humphreys (Gethsemane, The Pitman Painters, All's Well That Ends Well) makes his HighTide directing début.
PLATFORMS
Human Rights in Guantanamo
In conversation with Clive Stafford Smith
Do the universal laws of humanity apply to the world inside the ‘camp’? Should so-called ‘terrorists’ be entitled to the same rights as you or I? What happens when former guards or detainees emerge into the real world?
Clive Stafford Smith is the director and founder of Reprieve, where he has focused on achieving due process for the prisoners being held by the US in Guantanamo Bay and in the countless secret prisons around the world that were established in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre.
Awarded an OBE for ‘humanitarian services’ in 2000, Clive has also spent the last 25 years working on behalf of defendants facing the death penalty in the USA.
Climate-change Art: Does it do any good?
A panel discussion featuring Steve Waters
Can the recent movement of ‘ecological art’ really have an impact on the world we live in? Do artists have a responsibility to respond to our ever-changing environment? Is there a danger that artists climb on a ‘green bandwagon’?
Steve Waters is a playwright and author of the critically acclaimed play on climate change The Contingency Plan, which was performed at the Bush Theatre and on Radio 3 in 2009, and which he is now adapting for Film 4/Cowboy Films. Other plays include World Music (Sheffield Crucible/Donmar 2003/4), and Fast Labour (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Hampstead 2008).
Steve is currently writing a book on playwriting The Secret Life of Plays for Nick Hern books and a new play for the Donmar. He runs the MPhil(B)in Playwriting Studies at the University of Birmingham.
Russia versus the West
An interview with Owen Matthews
Has Russia been given a fair ride in the Western media? What happens to concepts such as ‘freedom of speech’ within a state-controlled media? Are journalists the best representatives of history?
Owen Matthews is the author of Stalin’s Children and currently Newsweek magazine’s bureau chief in Moscow. Owen’s extraordinary story spans three generations of his own family, all caught up with the cataclysmic events of Russia in the 20th century. In 1995 Owen moved to Moscow to work as a reporter for The Moscow Times, a daily English-language newspaper. In 1997, he became a correspondent at Newsweek magazine in Moscow where he covered the second Chechen war, as well as politics and society.
‘A Russian Wild Swans … Some of the stories will stay with me forever’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Gripping … This fascinating book is not a footnote to Soviet history: it is Soviet history, one of the millions of private tales of evil and astonishing endurance that make up the awful whole’ OBSERVER
‘Epic … extraordinary … Matthews … seems to contain an essence of a Russia that preceded the turmoils and savage inflictions that he so richly describes in his book’ Simon Callow, GUARDIAN
SECRET SHORTS
Two brand new plays by HighTide alumni, performed ONCE ONLY in TOP SECRET LOCATIONS.
Jesse Weaver, writer of Muhmah (HighTide 2009), and Adam Brace, writer of Stovepipe (HighTide 2008), return to the HighTide Festival.
Famine Diary by Jesse Weaver
In an abandoned Irish church in the dead of night, an American and Englishman argue who has been history’s worst coloniser.
Midnight Your Time by Adam Brace
Night after night, Sheila sits by her computer, trying to Skype her peace-keeping daughter abroad. Each time she doesn’t show, Sheila is left with no choice but to leave her another video message.
FILMS FOR FREE
Each of this year’s ‘films for free’ has been chosen by one of our three playwrights. Before each screening, HighTide will chat to each writer about their play and film choice, followed by a brief Q and A session with the audience.
Beth Steel introduces Fahrenheit 451
Based on the iconic dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, this 1966 film is the only English-language film by the acclaimed auteur Francois Truffaut. Starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie, the film presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic and critical thought through reading is outlawed, and is cited by Martin Scorcese as a direct influence on his own work.
Serge Cartwright introduces Network
This 1976 cult satire depicts a fictional television network and its struggle with poor ratings. Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Peter Finch, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway, Network won four Academy Awards and continues to be recognised as one of America’s greatest ever films.
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig introduces The Night Porter
This controversial and compelling 197 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani sees Dirk Bogarde playing Maximilian Theo Aldorfer, a former Nazi SS officer, and Charlotte Rampling plays Lucia Atherton, a concentration camp survivor. Thirteen years after World War II, Lucia meets Aldorfer again; he is now the night porter at a Vienna hotel. There, they fall back into their complex and troubling relationship.
WORKSHOPS
BBC Writersroom
BBC Writersroom comes to HighTide to host this session discussing new writing at the BBC.
There will be the chance to ask questions about how writers are developed and about how you can submit a script.
BBC Writersroom champions new writing talent and facilitates in-house development schemes and partnership schemes across the UK.
Pick it! Plot it! Pitch it!
A beginner’s guide to creating stories for the screen.
Learn in a day what aspiring screenwriters struggle with for years, as writer/ director James Walker from Young Film Academy introduces the basic pillars of visual storytelling structure - from the Odyssey to Lord of the Rings via Finding Nemo and Spider-man. Participants work in teams to come up with a short film storyline of their own - in time to pitch it! Members of the winning team take home a prize - and, more importantly, the tools required to take their writing to the next level.
Make a Film in a Day
Adrenaline-fuelled, live action filmmaking for up to 21 young people (ages 12-16) culminating in a screening at 4.30 pm.
The stars of tomorrow work in teams to create their story, get into costume, shoot and edit their films in time for a World Premiere screening!
TICKETS
TicketsTickets will be available to buy online from March 1st 2010. Please visit our website via HighTide Festival, Halesworth.
Telephone bookings can be made from March 1st on 0207 566 9766
FESTIVAL LOCATION
Halesworth, SuffolkHighTide Festival 2010 takes place in the Suffolk market town of Halesworth. Halesworth is close to the Suffolk / Norfolk boarder, situated south of Norwich, north of Ipswich, and is just a short drive from the costal holiday resorts of Southwold and Aldeburgh.
HighTide Festival 2010 is located in Halesworth town centre in three key venues:
The Cut - HighTide's Theatre where performances of Ditch, Moscow Live, and all Events take place. The box office and cafe are open from 10am daily. Situated one-minute from Halesworth Train Station and on-route from the Station to the Town Centre Thoroughfare.
The Scout Hut - Site-specific performance location where performances of Lidless take place. It is located on Chediston Street, which can be reached straight off the Throughfare after a four minute walk.
Festival Shop - Located on the Thoroughfare and open from 10am daily for box office sales and information on accommodation, parking, local services, and Festival information.
TRAVEL by TRAIN
National Express Trains manages the line from London Liverpool Street, via Ipswich, to Halesworth. Services also run from Cambridge and Norwich.
Journeys from London Liverpool Street take just over two hours.
For further information on rail services or to book tickets call 08456 007245 (National Express East Anglia) or 08457 484950 (National Rail Enquiries) or visit www.nationalexpresseastanglia.com
If you book your train ticket far enough in advance and travel at off peak times, there may be some fares for as little as eg £6 single London Liverpool Street – Halesworth.
HighTide have curated a provocative and stimulating line-up of ancillary events, including panel debates, talks, and film screenings, inspired by the three key themes addressed in the 2010 HighTide Festival productions: global warming, abuses of power, and freedom of the press.
PLAYS
Ditch by Beth Steel
I’ve listened to all the stories of my generation, then watched ’em get sick or fade away. And it wasn’t this world that killed ’em. It was the other… the memory of it.
Britain, 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, men and woman struggle to build a community, 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, Beth Steel’s debut 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, following his triumphant Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry IV Part II as part of the RSC Histories Season, which he Associate Directed and which won Olivier Awards for Best Revival, Best Ensemble and Best Costume.
Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Every day I drive past strip malls and think about the kids we went to school with who died so we could shop and watch TV. Why was I so desperate to become a citizen of this?
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 Yale Drama Series Award for Playwriting in 2009. A work of extraordinary intelligence and finely-balanced sensibility, it marries the implacable logic of a Greek tragedy with an all-too-modern setting.
As HighTide’s Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson has produced three Seasons of acclaimed work, which have featured collaborations with the National Theatre, Bush Theatre, and Aldeburgh Music, and included Stovepipe, which the Sunday Times listed as one of the Ten Best Theatre Productions of the Decade. He directs Lidless following his 2009 production of another American premiere, Muhmah (HighTide Festival 2009)
"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, Serge Cartwright’s first play, is based on his experiences in a Moscow newsroom. A fast, funny but deadly serious look at how truth and news are rarely the same thing, and how individual motives interfere with both. Thrilling, thought-provoking and razor sharp.
National Theatre Staff Director Jonathan Humphreys (Gethsemane, The Pitman Painters, All's Well That Ends Well) makes his HighTide directing début.
PLATFORMS
Human Rights in Guantanamo
In conversation with Clive Stafford Smith
Do the universal laws of humanity apply to the world inside the ‘camp’? Should so-called ‘terrorists’ be entitled to the same rights as you or I? What happens when former guards or detainees emerge into the real world?
Clive Stafford Smith is the director and founder of Reprieve, where he has focused on achieving due process for the prisoners being held by the US in Guantanamo Bay and in the countless secret prisons around the world that were established in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre.
Awarded an OBE for ‘humanitarian services’ in 2000, Clive has also spent the last 25 years working on behalf of defendants facing the death penalty in the USA.
Climate-change Art: Does it do any good?
A panel discussion featuring Steve Waters
Can the recent movement of ‘ecological art’ really have an impact on the world we live in? Do artists have a responsibility to respond to our ever-changing environment? Is there a danger that artists climb on a ‘green bandwagon’?
Steve Waters is a playwright and author of the critically acclaimed play on climate change The Contingency Plan, which was performed at the Bush Theatre and on Radio 3 in 2009, and which he is now adapting for Film 4/Cowboy Films. Other plays include World Music (Sheffield Crucible/Donmar 2003/4), and Fast Labour (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Hampstead 2008).
Steve is currently writing a book on playwriting The Secret Life of Plays for Nick Hern books and a new play for the Donmar. He runs the MPhil(B)in Playwriting Studies at the University of Birmingham.
Russia versus the West
An interview with Owen Matthews
Has Russia been given a fair ride in the Western media? What happens to concepts such as ‘freedom of speech’ within a state-controlled media? Are journalists the best representatives of history?
Owen Matthews is the author of Stalin’s Children and currently Newsweek magazine’s bureau chief in Moscow. Owen’s extraordinary story spans three generations of his own family, all caught up with the cataclysmic events of Russia in the 20th century. In 1995 Owen moved to Moscow to work as a reporter for The Moscow Times, a daily English-language newspaper. In 1997, he became a correspondent at Newsweek magazine in Moscow where he covered the second Chechen war, as well as politics and society.
‘A Russian Wild Swans … Some of the stories will stay with me forever’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Gripping … This fascinating book is not a footnote to Soviet history: it is Soviet history, one of the millions of private tales of evil and astonishing endurance that make up the awful whole’ OBSERVER
‘Epic … extraordinary … Matthews … seems to contain an essence of a Russia that preceded the turmoils and savage inflictions that he so richly describes in his book’ Simon Callow, GUARDIAN
SECRET SHORTS
Two brand new plays by HighTide alumni, performed ONCE ONLY in TOP SECRET LOCATIONS.
Jesse Weaver, writer of Muhmah (HighTide 2009), and Adam Brace, writer of Stovepipe (HighTide 2008), return to the HighTide Festival.
Famine Diary by Jesse Weaver
In an abandoned Irish church in the dead of night, an American and Englishman argue who has been history’s worst coloniser.
Midnight Your Time by Adam Brace
Night after night, Sheila sits by her computer, trying to Skype her peace-keeping daughter abroad. Each time she doesn’t show, Sheila is left with no choice but to leave her another video message.
FILMS FOR FREE
Each of this year’s ‘films for free’ has been chosen by one of our three playwrights. Before each screening, HighTide will chat to each writer about their play and film choice, followed by a brief Q and A session with the audience.
Beth Steel introduces Fahrenheit 451
Based on the iconic dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, this 1966 film is the only English-language film by the acclaimed auteur Francois Truffaut. Starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie, the film presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic and critical thought through reading is outlawed, and is cited by Martin Scorcese as a direct influence on his own work.
Serge Cartwright introduces Network
This 1976 cult satire depicts a fictional television network and its struggle with poor ratings. Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Peter Finch, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway, Network won four Academy Awards and continues to be recognised as one of America’s greatest ever films.
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig introduces The Night Porter
This controversial and compelling 197 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani sees Dirk Bogarde playing Maximilian Theo Aldorfer, a former Nazi SS officer, and Charlotte Rampling plays Lucia Atherton, a concentration camp survivor. Thirteen years after World War II, Lucia meets Aldorfer again; he is now the night porter at a Vienna hotel. There, they fall back into their complex and troubling relationship.
WORKSHOPS
BBC Writersroom
BBC Writersroom comes to HighTide to host this session discussing new writing at the BBC.
There will be the chance to ask questions about how writers are developed and about how you can submit a script.
BBC Writersroom champions new writing talent and facilitates in-house development schemes and partnership schemes across the UK.
Pick it! Plot it! Pitch it!
A beginner’s guide to creating stories for the screen.
Learn in a day what aspiring screenwriters struggle with for years, as writer/ director James Walker from Young Film Academy introduces the basic pillars of visual storytelling structure - from the Odyssey to Lord of the Rings via Finding Nemo and Spider-man. Participants work in teams to come up with a short film storyline of their own - in time to pitch it! Members of the winning team take home a prize - and, more importantly, the tools required to take their writing to the next level.
Make a Film in a Day
Adrenaline-fuelled, live action filmmaking for up to 21 young people (ages 12-16) culminating in a screening at 4.30 pm.
The stars of tomorrow work in teams to create their story, get into costume, shoot and edit their films in time for a World Premiere screening!
TICKETS
TicketsTickets will be available to buy online from March 1st 2010. Please visit our website via HighTide Festival, Halesworth.
Telephone bookings can be made from March 1st on 0207 566 9766
FESTIVAL LOCATION
Halesworth, SuffolkHighTide Festival 2010 takes place in the Suffolk market town of Halesworth. Halesworth is close to the Suffolk / Norfolk boarder, situated south of Norwich, north of Ipswich, and is just a short drive from the costal holiday resorts of Southwold and Aldeburgh.
HighTide Festival 2010 is located in Halesworth town centre in three key venues:
The Cut - HighTide's Theatre where performances of Ditch, Moscow Live, and all Events take place. The box office and cafe are open from 10am daily. Situated one-minute from Halesworth Train Station and on-route from the Station to the Town Centre Thoroughfare.
The Scout Hut - Site-specific performance location where performances of Lidless take place. It is located on Chediston Street, which can be reached straight off the Throughfare after a four minute walk.
Festival Shop - Located on the Thoroughfare and open from 10am daily for box office sales and information on accommodation, parking, local services, and Festival information.
TRAVEL by TRAIN
National Express Trains manages the line from London Liverpool Street, via Ipswich, to Halesworth. Services also run from Cambridge and Norwich.
Journeys from London Liverpool Street take just over two hours.
For further information on rail services or to book tickets call 08456 007245 (National Express East Anglia) or 08457 484950 (National Rail Enquiries) or visit www.nationalexpresseastanglia.com
If you book your train ticket far enough in advance and travel at off peak times, there may be some fares for as little as eg £6 single London Liverpool Street – Halesworth.
