HighTide Plays: 1

Book excerpt: HighTide Theatre Festival was founded in 2006 and has since become one of the most prolific homes of new writing. It has been described by the Telegraph as "one of the little gems of the artistic calendar in Britain" and by the Daily Mail as "famous for championing emerging playwrights and contemporary theatre". 2016 marks ten years of HighTide, during which time numerous emerging playwrights and new plays have shot to prominence. This anniversary volume brings together four of the key plays that have come out of HighTide Theatre Festival's programme during this time: Ditch by Beth Steel 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. peddling by Harry Melling is a poetic monologue about a young homeless man, which confronts whether it's a good thing to turn a blind eye and let people get on with their lives, or whether that's exactly how people fall through the cracks. The Big Meal by American writer Dan LeFranc is a deeply comic and touching drama that looks at love, marriage, raising children and the general onslaught of life. Lampedusa by Anders Lustgarten follows the day-to-day life of those whose job it is to enforce our harsh new rules on immigration: an Italian coastguard and a payday lender from Leeds. All now established in their own right, these four plays demonstrate HighTide's extraordinary role in identifying and nurturing writers tackling some of the biggest issues of today. The volume was published to coincide with HighTide's 10th annual festival in September 2016 and features an introduction by HighTide Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson.