Clare Slater has announced her final season as Artistic Director and CEO of HighTide, marking the culmination of a transformative tenure at the East of England theatre company.
Slater’s final season is a celebration of HighTide’s core values—new writing, regional storytelling, and climate-conscious theatre.
“My last season at HighTide is a true celebration of what makes the company, our writers and our region so vital,” said Slater. “New writing is the lifeblood of theatre and I’m proud of the part HighTide plays in championing it.”
The season opens with Ness: an audio landscape, an immersive sound experience set on the haunting shingle spit of Orford Ness. Running from 5 July to 28 October 2025 in partnership with the National Trust, the piece adapts Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood’s prose poem into a geolocated audio journey.
Designed by HighTide Associate Artist Zoë Svendsen and Tony Award-winning sound designer Carolyn Downing, the project invites audiences to explore the ex-military site—now a nature reserve—while listening to fragments of the poem through headphones.
“Climate dramaturgy runs through all our work and this season it’s particularly showcased in Zoë’s mesmerising adaptation of Robert Mcfarlane’s prose poem about nature rising up at a time of crisis,” said Slater. “Created in partnership with the University of Cambridge and the National Trust, this ‘audio landscape’ piece… gives food to the soul and hope to the heart.”
A remote-access version of Ness: an audio landscape will also be released later in the year.
The season continues with Even More… Ghost Stories by Candlelight, the final instalment of HighTide’s popular spooky-season trilogy. Co-produced with Pentabus Theatre, the show features new ghost stories by Florence Espeut-Nickless, Simon Longman, Anne Odeke, and Rosa Torr.
Directed by BAFTA-winner Elle While, the production will tour across the UK from 6 October to 8 November 2025, with press performances in Peterborough, Bristol, Prescot, and London.
Also announced are the seven playwrights selected for the 2025 Jerwood HighTide Writers Group: Louis Catfliff, Hazel Fattorusso, Julie Mayhew, Sonny Nwachukwu, Aisling Towl, Katie Trollope, and Grace Waga Glevey. Chosen from over 230 applicants, they will take part in a year-long paid programme led by playwright Kelly Jones.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
