Rust
Nadia and Daniel have just signed on the dotted line for a studio flat. Under a pseudonym, naturally – Mr and Mrs White. After years of school pick-ups, TV takeaways, and the day to day drudgery of married life, this is their chance to wipe the slate clean. But as much as they try and redefine the rules, and themselves, the outside world is closing in.
Price: £5
American Next Wave
Perish
By Stella Fawn Ragsdale
A son lost, a view of the mountains, a world is eroding.
The Hour of Feeling
By Mona Mansour
Faith is a passionate intuition (Wordsworth).
Bethany
By Laura Marks
fore.clo.sure def. to deprive of the right to redeem property.
Neighbors
By Branden Jacobs Jenkins
Black face, not on my doorstep, not today.
Price: £10
Bottleneck
by Luke Barnes
Liverpool, 1989. Greg is fourteen. He has just started secondary school. He earns pocket money sweeping up hair in a barbers. Girls are aliens. Liverpool FC are everything.
Bottleneck is a vibrant coming of age story about becoming a man through adventures both big and small. It is about a notorious city; Liverpool. How the outside world views it, and how it views the outside world.
Price: £4
Boys
by Ella Hickson
It’s finals day for the Class of 2011. Benny, Mack, Timp and Cam are due out of their five bedroom flat tomorrow morning: five bedrooms, five chairs, four boys and one hell of a party.
Stepping into a world that doesn’t want them, these boys start to wonder whether there’s any point in getting any older. How will they find the fight to make it as adults? Tonight marks the end of an era. It’s hot. And there’ll be girls. Predict a riot.
Price: £4
Clockwork
by Laura Poliakoff
Shut away from a world where pensioners steal in order to feed themselves and dreaming of a youth spent in the dingy corner of a seedy club, two lifelong friends are forced to say their goodbyes. When memory is fading and the past is clouded with a lifetime of drink and drugs, what is true and how to live is called into question.
Laura Poliakoff’s debut play is a powerful call to arms for a generation of twenty year olds not considering their own old age. How we care for our elderly, where we put them and the sacrifices that are made fuels this often comic yet touching play.
Price: £4
Ditch
by Beth Steel
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, the men patrol the moors for illegals. Their numbers dwindling, they struggle to retain a semblance of civilisation in the face of the inevitable onset of global war.
The debut play from Beth Steel.
Price: £4
Eisteddfod
by Luke Barnes
We value truth in this family. Carpe Diem. Seize the day. We are all just food for worms. So tell them you love them. Have fun, mount a donkey, whatever, just feel alive. Charades is fun, right, with those people, yes, your family, the ones you try to get away from at Christmas.
For the Pilgrims though it’s not simply a family affair, this is more than a game, this…. Is an Eisteddfod.
This bawdy new play from Luke Barnes is inspired by Suffolk folklore and explores the idea of family and identity.
Price: £4
Girls
By Theresa Ikoko
Tisana, Ruhab and Haleema are normal girls. But they are captive in a world of smoke, dust and gunfire. Their hometown destroyed, their families missing and their childhood friends killed, these three girls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram.
Girls explores the voices and stories behind the trending hashtags and headlines that so quickly become yesterday’s news. This is a story of an enduring friendship, of love, strength and girlhood.
Girls by Theresa Ikoko was winner of the Alfred Fagon Award (2015) and joint winner of the George Devine Award (2016).
Price: £4
Harrogate
by Al Smith
Harrogate tells the story of a father struggling to confront his obsessions head on without destroying his family. It is a play about how we perform versions of ourselves depending on what company we keep, and how we project onto others versions of the people we want to see.
Harrogate is a triptych about obsession, repression and lust.
Price: £4
Heroine
by Nessah Muthy
Harrogate tells the story of a father struggling to confront his obsessions head on without destroying his family. It is a play about how we perform versions of ourselves depending on what company we keep, and how we project onto others versions of the people we want to see.
Harrogate is a triptych about obsession, repression and lust.
Price: £4
HighTide: Plays 1
The first collected works of HighTide plays.
Ditch by Beth Steel
peddling by Harry Melling
The Big Meal by Dan LeFranc
Lampedusa by Anders Lustgarten
Price: £10
In Fidelity
by Rob Drummond
This September marks the fifteen year anniversary of Rob and Lucy’s very first date. What better way to mark this milestone than to create a show all about love? As part of his research Rob underwent an MRI scan. His ventromedial prefrontal cortex surged when looking at a picture of his wife. However, it also surged while looking at other pictures.
Equal parts TED Talk and theatrical experiment, this is the show that combines a live on stage date and evolutionary theory. Whether you’re single or attached, this is a big hearted play for those looking to find love and those wanting to celebrate it.
Price: £4
Kanye The First
by Sam Steiner
Annie’s not really a fan of herself. How did she get a life like this? While her perfect sister poses in hipster hats, she has to take care of her sick mother. And she keeps mistaking hot men for her Dad.
There must be more than this. The celebrities that fill her social media feeds are only separated by a screen, but that’s as close as she’ll ever get to someone like Kanye West. People think he’s a God. But what if everyone thought she was someone else? Someone different. Someone better.
Sam Steiner’s first commissioned play is a dazzlingly funny and original drama about identity, guilt, contemporary culture and the second coming of Kanye West.
Equal parts TED Talk and theatrical experiment, this is the show that combines a live on stage date and evolutionary theory. Whether you’re single or attached, this is a big hearted play for those looking to find love and those wanting to celebrate it.
Price: £4
Lampedusa
by Anders Lustgarten
Last year 4,000 people drowned trying to get to Europe in rickety migrant boats. The UK government responded by eliminating support for the main rescue programme.
One man’s job is to pull bodies out of the Mediterranean; the sea that gave birth to the world. And in the UK, a payday loan collector tramps from door to door hearing complaints about immigration and the jobs crisis. In a story of divide and rule, two strangers strive to find human connection in a world of separation. This is the story of two Europes: one that people are desperate to enter, and one that people are desperate to keep for themselves.
A devastatingly powerful new play from the UK’s most exciting political writer.
Price: £4
Moth
by Declan Greene
Sebastian is “that kid” at high school. He’s weird. He smells. He’s obsessed with comics, and talks to himself. But after a catastrophic fallout with his only friend, Claryssa, he wakes up with a moth in a jar by his bed, and a calling to save the souls of all humanity. And so begins the Passion of Sebastian: a journey into a terrifying and starless night.
By turns dark and shimmering, Moth is a firework of a play. Channelling Donnie Darko, Disco Pigs and Copenhagen, it is a fast, funny and heartbreaking story about two young people with nowhere to go.
Price: £4
Mudlarks
by Vickie Donoghue
On the muddy banks of the River Thames, downstream from the bright lights of London, three boys hide from the police after a night of recklessness. Over the course of the freezing night their fears, secrets and dreams emerge, collide and combust revealing the desperate frustration of lives barely led but already ravaged.
Essex born Vickie Donoghue’s powerful debut play explores how the impulse to dream is futile in the context of a reality that has no space for dreamers.
Price: £4
peddling
by Harry Melling
The earth grumbles. Growling. Rising. The city street lamps flicker up. We’re in a field somewhere in London. A pedlar boy awakes lying on the grass, in his hand a firework. How did he get here? To answer that question he must venture back to the very start via the doorsteps of privileged London and the cracks that swallow thousands of young Londoners every year.
Harry Melling’s poetic debut play is a moving exploration into family, identity and the 6000 Londoners who sleep rough every night on the Capital’s streets.
Price: £4
Pilgrims
by Elinor Cook
Dan and Will climb mountains. They long for the next big challenge, for the rush of discovering something new. When they climbed Everest aged 18 they became legends.
Rachel studies folklore. She prefers people to adventures. She thinks the world can be ruined by discovery, and people are always lost in the process.
With 16,000 feet to climb, can love conquer ambition?
Pilgrims is about adventure, betrayal, and man’s impulse to conquer the world.
Price: £4
Smallholding Playtext
by Chris Dunkley
Andy and Jen have just moved on to a new farm, returning to the village they grew up in. The plan is to plant parsnips, breed pigs and live off the fat of the land. But escaping their shared demons was never going to be easy.
While the couple try to make a fresh start, trust, responsibility and bio dynamic farming challenge their rehabilitation in this darkly comic love story.
Price: £4
Songlines
by Tallulah Brown
Stevie is sent to Suffolk, the home of doggers, folklore and Stan. The course of teenage love never did run smooth. When Stevie bumps into Stan again, she has a chance to make things right.
A brand new piece of gig theatre with beautiful original music from award winning band TRILLS, Songlines is a witty and moving coming of age love story in all its awkward teen glory.
Price: £4
The Girl’s Guide to Saving the World
by Elinor Cook
Jane and Bella are best friends. They’re starting a revolution. But they’re falling out of step. Toby dreams of babies, buggies, and home improvement. But he can’t even father his cat. And that boy keeps telling Jane to take what she wants. But what is that, exactly?
Three thirty somethings attempt to make sense of their own uncertain worlds. Even if it means losing sight of each other in the process. A frank and funny new play about friendship, feminism and what it means to be successful.
Price: £4
The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie
by Anders Lustgarten
Revolution has stirred, China has stood up and Communism reaches Rotten Peach Village. Over the next sixty years, the villagers are battered by the waves of New China, lurching from the extremes of Maoism to the extremes of Capitalism. Yet amid all the change and turmoil, one thing does not alter: their willingness to fight.
This epic story, based on almost a decade of study, is about the ambition and unity of people who didn’t know what they had to lose.
