Steven Atkinson, Artistic Director of HighTide has today announced that HighTide is to start work in Lowestoft, Suffolk with the intention to launch a fourth annual HighTide festival there in 2021.
Steven Atkinson said: ‘HighTide in Lowestoft will be a platform for local artists and venues working in the easternmost town of the UK. Thanks to the Foyle Foundation, we will now start developing plans for HighTide Festival Lowestoft with local artists and audiences, and we will also start to regularly tour HighTide productions to Lowestoft, beginning with Tallulah Brown’s Songlines to The Seagull this August.’
HighTide productions have helped launch the careers of writers including Ella Hickson, Nick Payne, Vinay Patel and Jack Thorne. The HighTide Festival has been the launchpad for many acclaimed new plays, such as Al Smith’s Harrogate, which recently transferred from their Aldeburgh festival to the Royal Court in London, and received an Evening Standard Award nomination. In 2017, HighTide launched a successful second festival in the Greater London borough of Waltham Forest. And in 2018, the company announced a programme of five productions at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as their third annual festival season. At the core of these festivals are new writers demonstrating their potential through full productions and commissions provided by HighTide.
Each HighTide festival showcases local artists and HighTide Festival Lowestoft is intended to showcase the potential of emerging artists in Lowestoft and the surrounding area. HighTide’s first production in Lowestoft at The Seagull is a song-laced coming of age tale, Songlines, by Aldeburgh-based writer Tallulah Brown. Set in Reydon, it features live folk music from the award-winning band TRILLS. Songlines will be staged at The Seagull on August 29th 2018.
