Clare Slater Announces Her Final Season as High Tide Artistic Director

Artistic Director/CEO of HighTide, Clare Slater has announced her final season, completing her tenure which has seen a huge transformation for the East of England company.

Clare Slater said today, “My last season at HighTide is a true celebration of what makes the company, our writers and our region so vital. New writing is the lifeblood of theatre and I’m proud of the part HighTide plays in championing it.  Our new mission of developing playwriting talent in the East is working - evidenced by the many, many brilliant writers we’ve commissioned over the last three years including this season’s Rosa Torr, - a Norwich-based writer who came up through our Writers’ Group and whose ghost story will shortly be touring across the UK.

The work we have done in establishing the artistic practice of climate dramaturgy, led by our Associate Artist Zoë Svendsen, has also been an industry game-changer. 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. Created in partnership with the University of Cambridge and the National Trust, this ‘audio landscape’ piece - geolocated on one of the UK’s most atmospheric nature reserves - gives food to the soul and hope to the heart.”

The season opens with Ness: an audio landscape, situated on the desolate shingle spit of Orford Ness off the Suffolk coast. It runs in partnership with the National Trust from 5 July - 28 October 2025. It is an immersive sound adaptation of the critically acclaimed prose poem by leading East of England writer Robert Macfarlane and Radiohead artist Stanley Donwood. Designed by HighTide Associate Artist Zoë Svendsen and Tony-award winner Carolyn Downing, in collaboration with creative technologist Orange, the piece invites visitors to walk the ex-military testing site - now a nature reserve - listening to fragments of the poem through geolocated sound.  A version of the project you can experience remotely will be made available later this year. Tickets for Ness: an audio landscape are now on sale via the company’s website. 

The season will include Even More… Ghost Stories by Candlelight - the final part of HighTide’s successful, spooky-season trilogy. This year, in a co-production with Pentabus Theatre, ghostly tales from the East of England meet the West with brand new stories written by Florence Espeut-Nickless, Simon Longman, Anne Odeke and Rosa Torr. Directed by BAFTA-winning Pentabus Artistic Director, Elle While, it will tour over the Halloween period.

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