One of the best things about Latitude is the chance to see new pieces of writing, choreography and performance. Pieces that have never been performed in front of an audience before, pieces that are still taking shape and testing out their boundaries and pieces that just have that fresh-out-of-the box newness and shimmer to them.

The Sadler’s Wells Waterfront stage is always popular, so I got down early to nab a spot in the sunshine, where I proceeded to bake and blister, sand sticking to my sweaty legs, determined to hang onto my spot to catch The New English Ballet Theatre. A modern ballet company, they’re dedicated to working with artists – choreographers, musicians and visual artists as well as dancers, from a range of disciplines. They performed three short ballets, all by female choreographers – not entirely common in the ballet world. Two, Mad Women and Lonesome Gun by Royal Ballet soloist Kristen McNally and a pas-de-deux, Wundarra, set to Australian aboriginal music, by NEBT Company Manager Daniela Cardim. The striking common thread running through the three was the strength and breadth of the female performers. Unafraid to be angular, humorous, expansive and sometimes verging on the grotesque, there was a playful freedom throughout. Lonesome Gun, a frankly quite self-consciously silly riff on spaghetti western films, saw black clad, rough and tough cowgirls wide-leg strutting like John Wayne, swaggering and posturing into angular, geometric shapes. I wasn’t convinced by the rasping voiceover, but it was certainly big, bad and bold. Wundarra was a different piece entirely, a fluid, loose-limbed expression belying the jaunty, steely control of its dancers. Confident, relaxed and appealing, its prima leading with humour and generous attitude, it was a fascinating exploration of classical movement against the thrumming Aboriginal sound. Mad Women was a striking finale. A clever, satirical peek at a group of robotic 1950s housewives, alternately servile and coquettish, frustrated and cartoonish, before a release of latent, lurking sexuality at the arrival of two panting, puppyish pizza delivery men. Seamlessly blending a contemporary approach with a classical thread, it was engaging, beautiful, funny and sharp of wit – I’ll certainly be following this company’s next moves.

Taking place in a clearing in the woods, Poleroid Theatre found themselves with the perfect setting for their evocative, oddly stirring This Must Be The Place, a new piece by award-winning playwright Brad Birch (Royal Court, RSC, Soho Theatre) and Kenneth Emson (BBC, Royal Court, High Tide). Effectively two plays in one, we find Adam, a young London-dweller wrestling with feelings of connection to his roots, and in particular his relationship with his reprobate father, who’s absence and fecklessness has left Adam struggling to accept the possibility of becoming a father himself. While Adam attempts to sever connections with the city, technology and his old life, embarking on a soul-searching journey that begins to lead him home, we meet two friends, also on the brink of transition. They’re waiting, Godot-style, for a ‘nasty cunt’, who’s promised them jobs in London and a lift there. Both looking for an escape, they clown and shuffle, nervous and trepidous, but already in too deep to change their minds. As they try and bolster each other with fake bravado, we glimpse their fears and vulnerabilities too. Four outstanding performances from Mike Noble, Feliks Mathur, Molly Roberts and Hamish Rush bring Birch and Emson’s script to energetic, frantic life, laying before us raw ponderings on life’s connections, missed and seized opportunities, identity and place. Clever, poignant, touching without ever wandering into platitudes, sometimes bleak, but never without a sense of hope, This Must Be The Place is a masterful look at life’s transitions and the connections that make us who we are.

This Must Be The Place was sweary enough to see one small child led away by their parents. Good job there were no little ears present in The Little House for Old Trunk Theatre’s fresh-out-of-the-box work in progress performance of Fran & Leni. Writer Sadie Hasler and director Sarah Mayhew have only just laid their last play, Pramkicker, to rest, following a gruelling UK tour. But the prolific pair are straight back on the road with Fran & Leni, a raw, anarchic celebration of punk, feminism, sexual exploration and the complex bonds of female friendship. Fran, a middle-class, piano-playing schoolgirl with ambitions to play classical music professionally, finds her life up-ended as friendship flourishes with the troubled, secretive but brash Leni. Just as Leni finds Fran, the pair find punk, and Fran shakes off the oppressive shackles of her parent’s expectations as the pair become punk outfit The Rips. Life is anarchic and rough yet plaintively joyful, but when tragedy strikes, the pair’s friendship is tested. Very new, and still slightly rough around the edges, Fran & Leni romps forward with a vibrant energy that sometimes struggles to contain itself. It can take a bit of roughness though, it suits its rebellious, punk-attitude. But it will be great to see it again once it’s been in front of a few more audiences, and Hasler’s electric writing, at once poetic, fluid, extremely sweary, frank and crackling with aggressive life settles into its pace.

The New English Ballet Theatre perform Quint-essential: Five New Ballets at Sadler’s Wells’ Peacock Theatre, November 9-12, 2016.

Old Trunk Theatre’s Fran & Leni is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from Suguat 4-29 at the Assembly George Square Theatre – The Box.

Latitude Festival is at Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk from July 14-17.

Image: Carys Lavin