- November 2017
A vivacious, feisty comedy about three sisters processing the death of their mother.
On the eve of their mother’s funeral, Teresa, Mary and Catherine come together to remember and misremember their childhood. Huge personalities, wild spirits and opposing ways of life clash and entwine as the women co-exist back in their mother’s home. As partners arrive on the scene, the secrets of the women’s new lives surface, while flashbacks to their memories of their mother’s life reveals the hidden and clouded past.
Full of tension, emotion and fun, Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, is an explosion of brilliant drama.
- November 2017
Every payday, garbage collector Troy Maxson holds court in the backyard of the Pittsburgh home he shares with his wife, Rose, and their son, Cory. By Troy’s side are his two best friends, Bono and a bottle of gin. Both are very good listeners, and there’s nothing Troy enjoys more than a captive audience. When his tales spin too wildly into fiction, Rose steps outside to playfully call him on his nonsense. As the evening progresses, Troy is sometimes joined by his eldest son, Lyons, who borrows money, or his disabled war veteran brother, Gabe, who has just moved from Troy’s home in a defiant display of his independence.
Life is a series of routines culminating in death.
Fences has a scope and impact far bigger than that of a simple family drama.The most accessible of August Wilson’s cycle of 10 plays, Fences manages to blend laugh-out-loud humor and tragedy in a deeply affecting combination that will add up to a thrilling evening at the Corpus Playroom
- October 2017
Watergate has passed, Richard Nixon has fallen. Having gone from being one of America's most popular presidents to being utterly disgraced, virtually overnight, he spends his retirement out of the limelight, playing golf and wheeled out at expensive dinners like an exhibit, utterly dissatisfied.
David Frost has also fallen. The British talk-show host, having once broken America, has lost most of the notoriety he once had, and feels like his career has stagnated on the B-list.
In 1977, these two great personalities came together, to clash in four interviews where everything was at stake. For Nixon, it was the chance to regain his reputation, for Frost, fame would come from getting the former President to apologise for his actions. Only one could come out victorious.
In a thrilling and nail-biting play from the award-winning writer Peter Morgan ("The Queen", Netflix's "The Crown"), later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Frank Langella and Michael Sheen in the title roles, we discover the nature of truth, the art of journalism, and how far two men will go in order to win back their lost reputations.
- October 2017
New to Cambridge?
Not new to Cambridge, but new to theatre?
Not new to Cambridge OR theatre?
Audition Workshops will take place this Saturday 7th October at 17:00 and Sunday 8th October at 16:00 in the ADC Larkum Studio (just ask at the bar or the front desk if you are unsure of where to go). The workshops are open to anyone and everyone, regardless of your level of experience!
Come along to have a chat to Ellie and Adam, the CUADC Actors' Reps, about how auditions in Cambridge tend to work. We'll be on hand to answer any questions, and (hopefully) allay and fears you might have. Tea and biscuits will also be making a cameo appearance...
You don't have to come on the dot at 5 or 4, we'll be in the Larkum Studio for an hour on each day, so pop in at any point with a question or just to say hi!
Please send any accessibility concerns or pressing questions to Adam and Ellie at actors@cuadc.org.
- August 2017
For 13-year-old Maklena, the Soviet Union is the best fairy tale yet. She imagines life in ‘the land of the Soviets’ and dreams of joining the revolution.
Her landlord Zbrozhek has a different ambition: to buy the local factory and see his name in golden letters.
When their dreams are put on the line, reality and fantasy become confused and communist and capitalist ideals are taken to the extreme.
This will be the world premiere of the English translation of Kulish’s masterpiece - written just before his execution by the Soviet authorities.
- August 2017
Blood dries darker than you think
It's the moment of darkness into deeper darkness
Are those my only options?
Congealed red on the glass
A mouse in your cereal box
A noise up ahead
A scratching between the wall
As they shot them right through the wing
Are you going to kiss me back?
Are you going to?
Nature is revolting! London struggles against an animal infestation - or does it? In the midst of the chaos, six characters endure a restrictive, claustrophobic existence: as curfews are enforced, roads closed and parks burned to the ground, their humanity is reduced to one alarmingly similar to their animal companions. Smith’s play presents a twisted version of natural selection that interrogates how far society will go to protect itself. As animal instincts kick in and civility is discarded, characters must choose between fight or flight. Should they bare their teeth and bite back, or roll over compliantly?
- August 2017
“I used to think I could just replant myself – that exile was a new garden in which to grow. But now my roots are rotting. I’ll stop being a tree and turn into sand.”
Six women meet in exile. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know when, or who, or why. Stuck in this place of placelessness, enclosed and without borders, they search in the sand for memories of home as their identity slips through their fingers. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Medea feels entitled to the last drop. Antoinette is trapped in the attic. Agave is haunted by the image of her son’s severed head. Samasti just got her period. Abhita thinks this is a joke. And Elaheh wants to write down the desert. As tensions run high and the water runs out, the women are forced to unearth their stories.
- August 2017
“I can make… impossible things happen”
Jude Beringer thinks she’s going mad. Then she meets Leon, a young card magician who can make people disappear. What follows is a wildly entertaining journey through the minds of two young people surviving against the odds in the big bad city.
A Sudden Burst of Blinding Light is at once a delirious game-show, a witty and inventive exploration of mental illness, and a powerfully compassionate play about family, friendship and illusion.
- June 2017
“Take it back. If she couldn’t hear it, surely she must be able to see it - the words running like ticker tape through the whites of my eyes.”
George is a brilliant linguist who spends his days cataloguing and studying dying languages. Meanwhile, his marriage is crumbling and his wife Mary is leaving him. Yet despite being fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Cantonese, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Esperanto, he doesn’t have the words to ask her to stay.
Alta and Resten claim to have fallen out of love, despite being the last speakers of Elloway, they barely converse and only in English - 'the language of anger'. Emma is madly in love with George, she has been for a while now. For them, language is both excessive and inadequate.
As each character navigates the fault lines between communication and connection, we discover that love like language, must be learned and practiced, or else it too will falter and expire. But unlike language, it carries a universal and unspoken quotient.
Julia Cho’s 'The Language Archive' is a poignant meditation on love, loss and all that gets lost in translation.
- May 2017
‘I have holes in my shoes
I have holes now even in my feet
there are holes everywhere
even in this story.’
Layal is the only artist who can paint nudes. The Girl enjoys listening to N’Sync and can distinguish between different weapons by hearing them fired. Umm Ghada mourns for her family, who were killed in the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing by the United States.
Inspired by a trip to Baghdad in 2003, this play is a beautiful exploration of the lives of nine Iraqi women that span the decades between the first and second Gulf Wars and occupation. Raffo brings hundreds of interviews to life in this moving, raw and intimate examination of the effects of war on women living both in Iraq and elsewhere.
The Tab: ★★★★1/2
https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2017/05/18/review-nine-parts-desire-94458
Varsity: ★★★★★
https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/12997
- May 2017
"They've forgotten when they were young.
And the way they yearned to be free
All they say is the young generation
Is not what they used to be."
Dean Street. Soho. 1958.
The Atlantic club is the heart of seedy, claustrophobic, dirty, drug infested, pill-popping clubbing. Fevers are running high as a gang of misfits sweat it out over the kidnapping of Silver Johnny, a rock star on the road to stardom. Then, when their manager is brutally murdered, the club is placed under siege.
Behind the doors of Ezra’s Atlantic, the visceral dialogue and destructive wit of the characters creates an atmosphere of anarchy and despair.
Butterworth’s blackly comic masterpiece explores dynamics of power, gender and personality. This is a play about damaged people who live life recklessly and without purpose, yet when their world comes crashing down they must come to terms with their loneliness, insecurity and the emotions they’ve been repressing for years.
“You won’t find much better ensemble acting than this, nor a play that so effectively punches the pretentions of a hermetic gangland culture.”
Our production of MOJO will be created entirely by an ENSEMBLE of actors and production crew, working alongside associate directors. We will discover the play together, as a collective, through a fun and intense process of collaborative ensemble work. All actors will be required to attend all rehearsals and production crew will also be brought on board throughout the process.
- March 2017
"Now let us assume that you are young, healthy, clear-eyed and eager, anxious to rise quickly and easily to the top of the business world. You can!"
A sharp satirical musical from the writers of the hit "Guys and Dolls", telling the story of window-cleaner J. Pierrepont Finch. Finch discovers the titular book and begins his rise through the World Wide Wickets Company until he becomes an executive of the company. He is sly, manipulative and loveable all at once. A number of other familiar office-types crop up throughout the show, from the big boss' desperate nephew, to a wide range of brainy and seductive secretaries.
A fabulous, all-singing, all-dancing parody of 60s business, fun for all ages.
- March 2017
“You stepped over the line.”
Shy, awkward, gentle Adam meets experienced, analytical Evelyn. Together they embark on an intense relationship which sees Adam go to extraordinary lengths to improve his appearance and character. Under Evelyn’s subtle and insistent coaching, we witness the gradual reconstruction of Adam’s fundamental moral character. At every step, we wonder how far Adam will go to prove his love for Evelyn, how far he is willing to stray from himself and his friends to mould himself into an ideal shape. Meanwhile, his best friends’ engagement crumbles. ‘The Shape of Things’ forces us to ask ourselves; how much of yourself would you change for love? How far would you go for your art? And is there a line between the two that cannot be crossed? Love. Art. Manipulation. ‘The Shape of Things’ brings all three together and asks where the boundaries between them lie.
- February–March 2017
The fens, east of Cambridge, have been underwater, drained, and reclaimed. They say its earth is so fertile that if you scoop up a handful you’ll grow three fingers before you throw it down again. Real people make their lives here, but the wild is always close at hand. The stories passed around are of daughters, fathers, lovers, foxes, twins, women, fishers, men.
Fen is a new devised piece based on stories by Daisy Johnson, created in the eery landscapes and dingy rehearsal rooms of Cambridge. It incorporates nature and technology into an immersive, uncanny exploration of the indelible marks a landscape can leave on its people.
- February 2017
https://vimeo.com/202564794
'I haven’t seen you in years, I don’t even know who you are any more but, fuck, yes I’m here for you, Ray, and I put that in writing we go through a whole procedure and you don’t… appear to give a shit.'
Ray has been discharged from mental hospital. The play charts his attempt to rejoin the wider world, under the care of his sister, who, busy running a restaurant and short on sympathy, can’t stop her brother from drifting into old habits, especially not when his best friend is a drunken old man prone to apocalyptic rages. Relationships grow, patience shortens and long-silenced voices start talking again as Ray and his new life hurtle towards breaking point.
“The most thrilling playwriting debut in years ... The writing is razor-sharp, sensitive, quietly eloquent, full of the touchingly drab poetry of lost lives.” - Sunday Times
- January–February 2017
"During the eight years of our mourning, not even the wind from the street shall enter this house!"
Andalusia, 1936.
In the wake of her husband's death, tyrannical matriarch Bernarda imposes eight years of mourning upon her five adult daughters: for eight years, they are not to leave the family home.
But Bernarda's blinkered puritanism cannot account for the desires of her daughters, and soon unrest begins to swell in the house as each seeks to assert a sense of self and their own place in the world.
Interpreted by an entirely female cast, this is a tale of generations at odds with one another, of the assertion of identity above conformity and of the drive to be human.
Often grouped together with The Blood Wedding and Yerma as a “rural trilogy”, The House of Bernarda Alba is Garcia Lorca’s final and greatest work. He was shot by the fascist authorities of Granada two months after it was completed.
- November 2016
Teams of writers, directors and actors must write, rehearse and put on plays on a theme in the space of just 24 hours. This is theatrical collaboration on a scale not seen anywhere else, pushing the whole team to the limit and creating unforgettable performances.
- November 2016
Welcome to the sleepy alpine village of Alpenberg; there’s beer, snow, semi-constructed gold castles, and the Christmas tree market is in full swing.
But when a careless offhand comment by the local landlord gets his daughter into trouble, it sparks a chain of events that resurrects Alpenberg’s darkest secret.
Meet our heroine Frieda, our lumberjacking Dame, and mad King Bruno for a snow-capped, gold-plated, schnitzel-covered tale of revenge, greed and love.
Cambridge’s finest offering of comedians, actors, technicians and musical talents present this year’s CUADC/Footlights Pantomime 2016: Rumpelstiltskin.
Come down to the ADC this Christmas and join us for a bit of rumpy pumpy.
- November 2016
Seven friends in their twilight years share a vast bed. Through an exhilarating sequence of abstracted monologues, expressive movement and spectacle, they dream, remember and reflect together on a long past. Acclaimed at the Royal National Theatre, Jim Cartwright’s Bed is a surreal exploration of life and dreams, of old age and death, an “odd, harrowing and hilarious piece, entirely without sentimentality, sturdy but moving”.
- November 2016
Everyone creates their own coping strategies or rules for living. But what happens when an extended family gathers in the kitchen for a traditional Christmas and they each follow those rules, rigidly?
In Sam Holcroft's theatrically playful dark comedy a family does just that. And when the instructions are there for all to see, audience included, there's really no place to hide. As long-held mechanisms for survival are laid bare, even Mum, who's been preparing this lunch since last January, becomes embroiled. Long-held rivalries and resentments will out.
Accusations fly, relationships deconstruct, the rules take over.
- November 2016
"A job is a wage and a wage is a cage in a town like mine."
Carl doesn't fit in at home. He doesn’t fit in anywhere. When he signs up for the army, he sees it as a chance to escape the grim reality of life in his hometown. But the army takes him to Afghanistan. And when he comes home, it’s not as a war hero but as a changed man. Winner of a 2011 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Britannia Waves the Rules is an arresting look at conflict and its effect on soldiers returning home to a world they no longer know how to cope with, and a society that doesn’t know how to cope with them.
- November 2016
“I used to think I could just replant myself – that exile was a new garden in which to grow. But now my roots are rotting. I’ll stop being a tree and turn into sand.”
Six women meet in exile. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know when, or who, or why. Stuck in this place of placelessness, enclosed and without borders, they search in the sand for memories of home as their identity slips through their fingers. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Medea feels entitled to the last drop. Antoinette is trapped in the attic. Agave is haunted by the image of her son’s severed head. Samasti just got her period. Abhita thinks this is a joke. And Elaheh wants to write down the desert. As tensions run high and the water runs out, the women are forced to unearth their stories.
- October 2016
“Show Political Restraint”
We invite you to come and traverse the turbulent history of early twentieth-century China in the first ever English performance of China's most famous play.
Teahouse is the revolutionary tale of the Chinese revolution: the fall of a dynasty, the establishment of the republic, and bloody civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists.
Follow history as told from within the iconic Beijing 'Yu Tai' teahouse between 1898 and 1948 as it struggles to survive in turbulent times. In its lifetime China transforms: it is a dying Qing empire overrun by foreign aggressors and rampant with human trafficking; a republic devastated by anarchy; a state saturated with oppression and corruption.
Is the hope of a new tomorrow real, or is it only an illusion crushed again and again under the wheels of history? Teahouse showcases Lao She's brilliant social and cultural commentary through a three dimensional depiction of the common and the grotesque, an international classic that remains eerily relevant today.
- August 2016
Fresh out of a critically-acclaimed run in Cambridge, a highly talented troupe of student dancers and performers bring you a contemporary circus interpretation of the family classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Meet a break-dancing caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat dangling from a trapeze, and the Mad Hatter's tea party transforming into an even crazier juggling routine.
After witnessing such a variety of impressive performances, you will believe that six impossible things can happen before breakfast.
“A visual feast” - Cambridge Theatre Review (☆☆☆☆☆)
“Rapturous applause... Never has it been so well deserved” - The Tab (☆☆☆☆☆)
"Spellbinding" - Varsity (☆☆☆☆)
- August 2016
‘Three friends, knee deep in the weekend.’ And it’s time to make a change. This is it.
Rapid prose and rap-style poetry spin the story of three twenty-somethings seeking something more.
This electrifying, bittersweet play provides an offbeat take on the classic tale of youthful disillusionment. Written by award-winning performance poet Kate Tempest.
‘a strong, slick refreshingly new piece of theatre’ **** (The Tab)
‘a rare mixture of honesty and humour. Well worth a watch’ (The Cambridge Student)
- August 2016
New York City, 1955. Angie and her friends are having a dinner party. Their Mafioso husbands are off on another job, but the real story is unfolding in Angie’s living room.
Chronicling the violent and duplicitous events of one evening, ‘The Wives of Others’ (☆☆☆☆☆ TCS) promises foul-language, bloodshed and a lot of spaghetti. With an all-female cast and original script by one of Cambridge University’s most prolific playwrights, Tom Stuchfield (writer of ‘And The Horse You Rode In On’ ☆☆☆☆☆ The Tab ☆☆☆☆☆ EdFringeReview) this is a brutally stylish, Tarantino-esque, pitch-black comedy unlike anything you’ve seen.
Contact Rebecca (rsc45) and Rebecca (rt422) if you need any further details about applications or auditions.
- August 2016
The newly-divorced Harry Horner has spread a rumour of his own impotence around the country club. The reason? To seduce his way across the affluent, leafy town of Blandford, New England, come hell, high water or jealous husband. Relocated to suburban America by the team that ‘masterfully adapted’ (The Tab) Tristram Shandy for the stage, William Wycherley’s Restoration classic has never been funnier.
- May 2016
Alice travels across Europe with a battered Russian watch trying to track down her estranged father. On the mountains of the Italian-Austrian border, hikers descending a 3000 metre peak stumble on Otzi the Iceman, preserved there for 5000 years. In London, Virgil is piecing together memories of a fractured relationship, and waiting for Alice’s call.
First devised by pioneering theatre company Complicite, Mnemonic catches and entangles the memories it finds as it criss-crosses characters, places, and history. In its web of fragmented stories, the past blurs with the imagined as it is remembered and retold. It is beguiling, hallucinogenic, and hilarious.
An intimate and epic examination of memory, the original storyteller.
- May 2016
Inspired by a treatment method for psychosis in Finland, this experimental play explores the nature of schizophrenia by dividing the Corpus Playroom in two. Each side of the audience will view a different storyline but experience auditory hallucinations from the other side of the wall. We meet a mother and her two sons on the 'domestic' side, and the psychiatrist on the 'public'.
With a small cast and a lot of potential for creativity with staging, costume and unique dialogue, this darkly comic, deeply inventive and honest play will be the most exciting play next term!
- May 2016
When King Leontes suspects his wife of being unfaithful, he seeks his revenge, unaware of the consequences of such dramatic action. As the kingdom of Sicilia falls into chaos, Leontes laments his choice, and spends the next 16 years of his life in mourning. Meanwhile, far away in the distant land of Bohemia, a young shepherdess by the name of Perdita falls in love with a young Prince, and the two make plans to elope. Little do they know of their connection to the grieving King…
Shakespeare’s tale of grief and redemption stands as the most human of his works, deftly blending psychological tragedy with charming comedy. Bear witness to a host of colourful characters, several foot-stomping folk ballads, and the most surprising story The Bard ever told.
[Exit, pursued by a bear.]
- March 2016
This year's Lent Term Musical needs no introduction. West Side Story has enthralled audiences worldwide since it opened on Broadway over 50 years ago. The timeless appeal of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is carried into 1950s New York City, as star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria begin their narrative against the background of the rivalry of their respective gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.
This collaboration between three of musical theatre’s most iconic figures, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, features some of the most well known musical numbers of all time, including ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘America’.
- March 2016
‘Do they always do that?’
‘Who?’
‘The birds.’
‘No. It’s unusual. It’s the marsh. The marsh calls them. They’ve been coming a thousand years.’
Wattmore and Griffin are ex-Cambridge college gardeners, living with secrets and darkness in the bleakness of the Fens. A £2000 pound poetry prize run by the university could be the blessing they’re after to clear Wattmore’s mysterious debt, if only they knew anything about poetry. As bird-watchers flock to the marshes near their cabin to catch a glimpse of the elusive night heron, the arrival of ex-convict Bolla to this strange family brings an unexpected female force and their lives unravel before us.
Haunting and poetic, Butterworth’s second play brims with absurd humour and symbolic imagery. This Week 7 Lent show lays humanity bare in a setting we know well, but have not seen like this before.
Prepare for shock, for laughs and underscoring it all, the urgent howls of the freezing Cambridgeshire wind.
- February 2016
“I hear those voices that will not be drowned.”
It is 1912 in Walberswick and a young boy has died at sea. Peter Grimes is to blame, or so his fishing village thinks. Sentenced to isolation, Peter rebels against his community and takes a new apprentice, the sixteen-year-old son of his fiancée. Rumour spreads quickly on the wind and gossip rules the waves. A storm is coming for Peter Grimes…
Based on the beloved poem by George Crabbe, then made famous by Benjamin Britten’s opera, this new telling of the Grimes myth uses the death of a child to explore the dark and primal side of humanity, focused through an individual whose vicious isolation has troubled generations of writers.
- January 2016
‘They never asked about the women.’
When a city falls, its people must bear the wreckage. A live news crew will film the destruction but not the aftermath. It does not capture a mother looking for her lost boys, a fallen woman trying to keep up appearances, a young girl’s duty to pay off a bargain she’d never been participant to. They are merely numbers, tallied up figures for the television reports. They are not human. They are mere dolls.
Darkly humorous and epically tragic, Trojan Barbie is an exhilarating play. Placing characters of antiquity within the very real world of a military occupied refugee camp, the play explores how, after over two millennia, we are still no closer to solving the consequences of war and the people it leaves behind. Hecuba, Polyxena, Cassandra, Andromache, Helen of Troy and Lotte of Reading all hurtle towards their fate in this electric modern spectacle about war, its reverberations, and its women. Whether it's ancient myth or a vivid reality...
‘They never asked about the women.’
- January 2016
‘The worlds’s going to be a different place in ten years, everything’s that’s stopping us, what we’re told to do, what we’re told is the way to live, it’ll all be different, you can feel it.’
Sandra and Kenneth know the world is changing. Through the dope haze they grasp at the promised new tomorrow. As idealistic teens are hurtled into mid-life parenthood, it feels as though something has gone terribly wrong. The change has escaped somewhere with the smoke and empty wine bottles. Divorce, old age and retirement creep up just as quick and the 21st century offers our pair the rewards of the baby boom generation. Their children look on, bitter and angry. Generation X rails at the laissez-faire attitude of their parents that has condemned them. Olivier award winning playwright Mike Bartlett draws us into the generational debate and leaves us to make our minds up.
- November 2015
Creativity. Determination. Caffeine. These are just a few of the elements that go into a 24 Hour Play festival. 24 Hour Plays is a fast-paced, mad, and extremely fun gallop through the theatrical process, for both the participants and the spectators! 5 teams have 24 hours to write, rehearse, and perform short plays, which will be voted on by the audience. The results are completely unpredictable, but predictably fantastic. To the winner goes the glory -- and a good night's rest!
