HighTide's Lidless

Steven Atkinson is the artistic director of HighTide Festival Theatre, which won £10,000 and second place in IdeasTap’s Ideas Fund Edinburgh. They used the money to produce Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s Guantánamo prison drama Lidless at this year’s Fringe Festival.

I programmed Lidless originally for the HighTide Festival. The story appealed to me as a director and I felt we needed to produce it in such a way that the audience felt they were having an experience akin to what happens in the play.

We built a big white light box on the stage, which evokes being in a cell. Being told to place yourself in the set is a very discomfiting experience for an audience. All their bags and possessions are on the outside, they feel very vulnerable and the door is locked behind them. The play keeps them captive for the next hour.

It’s had the most amazing reaction of any play I’ve ever worked on. The audiences are being dumbfounded by it, it’s such a massive experience and the actors are so bold and brave with how big their performances are that it reaches this level of Greek tragedy towards the end. When the lights come up, it takes the audience several seconds to celebrate the end of the play.

We originally previewed Lidless as a site-specific production in a Scout hut converted in to a precise replica of a military barracks, with the performance held inside. We had barbed wire, a big American flag, grey wooden slats – it looked exactly like photographs of Guantánamo. We couldn't find a site-specific location in Edinburgh to replicate the HighTide Festival production so I thought about alternatives that would engage audiences in a similar way.

If you’re doing a new play in Edinburgh, unless you’re doing it at the Traverse, it’s difficult to get publicity. Reinventing a traditional theatre space has been a very good gimmick for not only attracting interest, but also enhancing the audience's experience and understanding of the play.

The IdeasTap backing was pivotal because at the time the project was just an idea. To know that there were people willing to fund an idea that hadn’t yet been realised, to have the trust in me as a director and my company meant we were able to get more support from other partners and stakeholders. Having IdeasTap backing encouraged more engagement from actors, the press, more marketing and publicity and as a partner IdeasTap has enhanced the identity of the whole project. IdeasTap is all about young emerging practitioners and I want this play to be seen by young audiences interested in our work.

It's tricky to produce certain types of theatre in Edinburgh, particularly our type, which has an ambitious and fully realised set, complicated sound and lighting, and technical rehearsals. On Lidless we've worked closely with the Underbelly, and being the first show on each day has given us scope to be ambitious. But the Fringe can be an unforgiving place to produce theatre - the get-in and get-out schedules are often completely unrealistic and more about fitting as many acts in as possible rather than safeguarding work.

If the reviews are strong enough then we as a company will endeavour to move it on somewhere, but that wouldn’t have been possible without doing it in Edinburgh in the first place.

Lidless is showing at Venue 300, Underbelly’s Pasture from 5th to 30th August. Tickets cost £10-12.50 and can be bought here.

Steven was talking to Miriam Zendle