High tide

hings I find difficult: maths. Boiling eggs to the correct consistency. Praising Leeds theatre company Slung Low highly enough.

It was over a decade ago that I first met Alan Lane, the leader of this innovative, inspirational really quite extraordinary theatre company.

Under the name Slung Low, a reference to the way the young upstarts used to wear their trousers around their backsides in that manner that so aggravates older generations, Lane and his cohorts staged an immersive piece of work in an abandoned shop in Bradford in 2005. A year later they were in Bradford’s Lister Park with Time, staged outdoors at the park’s beautiful Mughal Gardens.

It was in 2006 when I saw the company’s work They Only Come at Night, a vampire story performed in a Bradford multi-storey car park, that I began to understand what they, and Lane, were doing.

They were creating, and this isn’t to overstate things, a new kind of theatre. It was a theatre in which the audience is put at the heart of the action. It was, Lane told me on several occasions, a theatre for a generation who curate their own culture with themselves at the centre of the story. Using headphones, found spaces and epic stories, it has been one of the great joys of my 15 years writing about theatre in Yorkshire to watch Slung Low fulfil its ambition and seemingly unlimited potential.

Each time I think the company has reached its apotheosis – blowing up a tanker in a car park outside the Lowry in Salford seemed a pretty high high point – Lane takes them over the top of a higher peak. Throwing actors off huge buildings in Hull, bringing Moby Dick to a dock in the centre of Leeds, each time Lane and Slung Low up the stakes and increase the spectacle.

This year the company reaches what is surely its personal Everest with Flood, a Slung Low-created response to Hull winning the title of UK City of Culture. A story in four parts, Lane has spent huge chunks of this past year in the East of the county creating the different elements that make up the quartet that is Flood.

Now, the epic undertaking has reached its third quarter: a BBC Two broadcast of a play tomorrow at 10pm.

It might seem odd that a theatre company has incorporated a TV show into its offerings, but this is the great continuing joy of Slung Low: how they do what they do is not the important thing, what they do is all, and that is simply telling great stories with more wit, panache, imagination and fire (metaphorical and literal) than most other companies out there.

Martin Green is the director of Hull 2017. He says: “We are very excited to be working with the brilliant Slung Low and the BBC on the latest installment of Flood, which is one of the most ambitious commissions for Hull 2017. Having the BBC on board means many more people across the country will be able to experience the company’s work. I hope it will be an exhilarating theatrical event.” So what is this theatrical event exactly?

Flood began in early 2017 with Part One, a short film called From the Sea. It told the story of a girl raised from the depths of the sea and can be seen online now.

Part Two was Abundance, a play performed at Hull’s Victoria Dock in April by a vastly talented cast, it recounted the story of the apocalypse approaching the city.

In October, Slung Low will return to Victoria Dock for the grand finale with Part Four, New World, a play telling what happens when life begins again.

The overarching narrative of Flood is to look, and force audiences to look, at the growing refugee crisis in Europe and across the world and reframe the discussion to bring more humanity into the way we approach the appalling situation in which displaced people find themselves. As Lane says, displacement is like a disease in that deep down we think it only happens to other people. On Saturday night, Part Three: To The Sea, will be screened nationally on BBC2. Being shown as part of the BBC Arts strand called Performance Live, the TV production is an enormous step up for Slung Low and will bring the company’s work, deservedly, to a much wider audience. The executive producer for Part Three, Emma Cahusac, says: “It’s incredibly exciting to be working with Slung Low to bring Flood to network TV. This ambitious production challenges the audience and asks some important questions. I’m proud that the BBC is enabling audiences around the UK to experience it.”

That, I think, is the most significant thing about this project. Lane will say that it is spreading the message at the heart of Flood – essentially, what if the refugees we see on TV spoke with English accents? – and that will be his primary drive for this project, but what’s also very exciting is that this brilliant Yorkshire company is about to receive well deserved national recognition. “We’ve been overwhelmed by how the first half of Flood has been received by audiences. The chance to take a part of the epic to the rest of the country through Performance Live is something we’re incredibly excited about,” says Lane. “For an adventure to be made here in Hull’s Victoria Dock and seen throughout the nation is one of the many opportunities Hull’s City of Culture has delivered.”

At the start of this article I listed some things I find difficult. I have an addition: seeing just where Slung Low goes next to top this latest epic achievement. Wherever it is, they can be sure I – and many, many others – will follow.

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Flood Part One: From the Sea: A short film funded by The Space that supports artists to make the most of digital technology. Available at www.hull2017.co.uk/flood

Part Two: Abundance. The first live element of the project was performed April 11 to 15 at Victoria Dock in Hull.

Part Three: To The Sea: A story set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event which sees England engulfed by water. BBC2, Saturday August 12.

Part Four: New World: A play in which the world is begun again performed at Victoria Dock in October.