HighTide Festival Theatre and Lucy Jackson Productions present Mudlarks in association with the Bush Theatre
“Stunning…unforgettable”, **** The Times
“This exhilarating three-hander … a drama played with real vigour and subtlety by its young cast” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian.
“Tension which keeps us fully focussed from beginning to end … remarkably assured in the writing, the production and the acting ” ***** What’s On Stage
The water looks sort of angry, don’t it? Racing across the mud. Like it’s coming for us! Haven’t got long. We have to move soon.
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 thrilling 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 exposes the culture she grew up with and sees on a daily basis. With brutal honesty interspersed with flashes of humour she explores how the impulse to dream is futile in the context of a reality that has no space for dreamers. A sell-out show at Theatre503 and HighTide Festival, Mudlarks heralds the arrival of an urgent new voice in British theatre.
Age guide 14 +
Photograph by Alexander Henderson
Hayley Kaimakliotis’s theatre include Girl’s Guide To Saving The World (HighTide), Stuart: A Life Backwards (Edinburgh, Watford Palace Theatre, Sheffield Crucible), Neighbors (HighTide/Nuffield Southampton), Mudlarks (Bush Theatre/HighTide/Theatre 503), The Tempest Suitcase Shakespeare (RSC), Pitcairn Workshop (Out of Joint/RSC), The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (Southwark Playhouse), Firewatchers (Old Red Lion), Amphibians (The Bridewell) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Wirksworth Festival/Riverside Studios)
As Casting Director for the Finborough productions include Facts, the award winning Accolade and FoxFinder, Don Juan, Crush, Rigor Mortis, Fanta Orange, Drama at Inish, Me and Juliet, Miss Lilly Gets Boned, The Northerners and numerous Vibrant seasons.
Casting assistant credits include Shakespeare in Love (Noel Coward Theatre), BBC – Very Few Fish, Watson and Oliver Series 2, Autumn Leaves, Doctors, Casualty, Holby City, EastEnders. For the RSC – Troilus and Cressida, Forests, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Mouse and His Child, Boris Godunov, Life of Galileo, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well and Hamlet.
Hayley is a probationary member of the CDG.
New theatre for adventurous audiences.
‘It’s hard to believe that HighTide has only been running its annual theatre festival for six years. It’s already punching far above its weight.’ The Guardian, April 2012
HighTide Festival Theatre are proud to be collaborating with the Bush Theatre for a third time following productions of Stovepipe by Adam Brace (named one of the ten best plays of the decade by The Sunday Times) and I Caught Crabs in Walberswick by Joel Horwood.
HighTide Festival Theatre is a national theatre company and engine room for the discovery, development and production of exceptional new playwrights.
Under Artistic Director Steven Atkinson, the annual HighTide Festival in Suffolk has become one of the UK’s leading theatre events. HighTide’s productions premiere at the festival and then many have toured nationally and internationally in partnerships with co-producers including the Bush Theatre (2008 & 2009), National Theatre (2009), Old Vic Theatre (2010), Ambassador Theatre Group / West End (2011), Headlong Theatre, Soho Theatre, Nuffield Theatre Southampton, BAC, People’s Palace Projects and Theatre503 (2012), to the Edinburgh Festival (2008, 2010, 2011 &2012) and internationally with the Australian National Play Festival (2010) and Public Theater, New York (2012).
HighTide receives, considers and produces new plays from all around the world. Every play is read and the festival is an eclectic mix of theatre across several venues in Halesworth, Suffolk. Our artistic team and Literary Department are proud to develop all the work we produce and we offer bespoke development opportunities for playwrights throughout the year.
HighTide Festival Theatre is a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.
Theatre includes Fanta Orange and Don Juan Comes Back From the War at the Finborough Theatre, where she also produced all of the theatre’s Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals (2009, 2010 and 2011). For Offstage Theatre Jackson produced Amphibians (Bridewell Theatre), for Misshapen Theatre she producedPhillipa and Will are Now in a Relationship and The Sexual Awakening of Peter Mayo (Pleasance Edinburgh and Theatre503) and Blast Off (Theatre503), and for Rogues’ Gallery she produces The Folk Contraption (Heritage Arts Company VAULT Festival/Priceless London Wonderground/Latitude Festival). She was producer at Old Vic New Voices for The 24 Hour Plays, The TS Eliot US/UK Exchange (The Old Vic) and Time Warner Ignite 4(Waterloo East). She has produced and managed at six Edinburgh Festival Fringes including White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (Volcano Theatre) and Thom Tuck Goes Straight-to-DVD (Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Award Nominee for Best Newcomer). She has worked as a Production Assistant for TEG Productions/Jeremy Meadow Ltd.
Mudlarks is Vickie Donoghue’s first full length play for the stage. She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Plays and Screenplays) from City University in September 2009. A rehearsed reading of her MA piece Talk for England took place at RADA in March 2010. Her first short play One Last Wave was one of the three finalists of the 2005 Windsor Fringe Marriott Award. She was Dramaturg for The Caroline Carter Show by Flick Ferdinando which premièred at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2011. She is currently writer in residence at If You Dare Productions.
Wrightson has produced and directed nationally and internationally. In 2010 he was Associate Director and Producer of the world première of Peter Nichols play Lingua Franca, that began in London and transferred to New York. In the same year he was the Associate Director and Producer of Threshold for 19:29 Theatre Company which was nominated for a Total Theatre Award. Earlier in 2010 he directed a night of performance and poetry in the Sir John Soane Museum. He then went on to direct Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Opera Integra. He recently assisted Christopher Morahan on his revival of The Caretaker with Jonathan Pryce, which is currently on a US tour after performances at the Adelaide Festival. He was HighTide’s 2010 Resident Assistant Director.
