A PIONEERING festival to promote emerging writing talent will return to Halesworth next month.The HighTide festival will take centre stage at The Cut, from April 30 until May 3 for what organisers say is its fourth and most exciting season.

A PIONEERING festival to promote emerging writing talent will return to Halesworth next month.

The HighTide festival will take centre stage at The Cut, from April 30 until May 3 for what organisers say is its fourth and most exciting season.

Three plays will receive their world and UK premieres this year.

Each will be accompanied by a platform where guests will be interviewed by HighTide's artistic director, Sam Hodges, and there will be the chance to see a classic film on a big screen chosen by the playwrights.

Before each film, HighTide organisers will speak to each writer about their play and film choice and there will be a question-and-answer session with the audience.

The play, Ditch, by Beth Steel, will premiere at the festival and is said to be a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away.

Set in Britain in the near future when much of the land is under water and the government has been reduced to a group of fascist strongmen, the men patrol the moors for “illegals” in a rural outpost of the state.

Also receiving its premiere is Lidless, the first play by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig. It deals with two people with links to Guantanamo Bay, one a former interrogator and the other a former prisoner.

The third play to be premiered at the festival is Moscow Live, by Serge Cartwright, and is based on his own experiences in a Moscow newsroom.

It is Englishman Richard Hunt's first day as acting producer on a state-run English language TV station in the Russian capital and the day Slobodan Milosevic dies...

The platforms accompanying the plays are: Climate Change Art: Does it do any good? Human Rights in Guantanamo and Russia versus The West.

Classic films chosen by the play-wrights will see Beth Steel introducing Fahrenheit 451, the 1966 film based on the novel by Ray Bradbury; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig introducing the 1974 film, The Night Porter; and Serge Cartwright introducing the 1976 satirical movie, Network.

To book tickets and for more details visit www.hightide.org.uk