- March 2018
"Listen, Juliet.
Come here. Come close.
Press your ear to the earth
So I know you’re listening."
Verona. The heat simmering.
Sharman Macdonald’s blend of light lyricism and staccato colloquialism imagines a drama in the wake of Romeo and Juliet’s suicides.
Prince Escalus has ordered lasting peace, but the lives of the remaining young Capulets and Montagues are still governed by the same forces of love, fear, and hatred. Rosaline - once the object of Romeo’s swiftly forgotten passion - arrives on stage with venom. In the absence of Romeo, she must attempt to establish control within the Capulet family, reconciling her jealous resentment towards Juliet with the familial duty which is all that remains to her.
- February–March 2018
‘What is the city but the people?’
In the midst of battle a Roman soldier of great renown defends his city from invasion by his sworn enemy. Yet as the dust settles on his herculean victory, Caius Martius Coriolanus must face the demands of a potential famine, a divided senate, and a restless citizenry.
In this electrified atmosphere, wounds speak like tongues, mothers quell battles like soldiers, and an entire populace is sucked into the psychological struggle of one strange, remarkable warrior.
Join us as six performers build one of Shakespeare’s biggest and most restless worlds.
- February 2018
Join ex Smorgasbord hosts Bella and Alex for an evening of comedy from one of the most underrepresented groups in the Cambridge comedy scene, with a stunning line up of BME performers. There'll be laughs, and friendship, and also more laughs. And also free wine!! Who could resist!?! Not you!
[ Tickets only £3! ]
If you want to take part then just send an email to Alex (af608@cam.ac.uk) or Bella (ah914@cam.ac.uk) for a slot!
https://thefletcherplayerssoc.tessera.info/tickets/bme-open-mic-night
Did we mention free wine?
Bella & Alex x
- February 2018
Society’s winners and losers will be crowned once and for all at the biggest awards night of Lent term. Contribution to science? Best dressed in the office? Most likely to still be ID’d at 30? Food photographer of the year? Best newcomer? Worst pirate? Prize marrow? Most promising double act? Fastest runner? America’s next Miss American teen top model of the year? Best original riddle?
The results are in for all these and more - you voted for them and now they’re here! Join Footlights regulars Noah and Will for an hour of character comedy - in Cambridge's HOTTEST new venue !!
[ and tickets are just £3! ]
Previous praise:
“light-hearted, gloriously silly and really very funny”, “a mischievous delight in the absurd”, “I challenge anyone not to giggle” ★★★★★ - Varsity
“My theatregoing companion in particular almost fell out of her seat during the brilliant monologue by Noah Geelan” - TCS
“I was particularly impressed by Will Bicknell-Found and the energy he brought to the stage” - Varsity
- February 2018
Mad Padraic is hard at work torturing a drug pusher up North when the news comes through that his beloved cat, Wee Thomas, is poorly. So instead of slicing off some nipples, as planned, he heads back to the island of Inishmore. But when he arrives home, he discovers shenanigans involving shoe polish, an assassination plot, and a teenaged gun-toting admirer. Soon the bodies start piling up...
- February 2018
Join us for this evening of new writing! The Fletcher Players bring you Smorgasbord: a festival showcasing some of the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted at the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
- January 2018
''Do you think gnomes are mammals or amphibians?''
Warden Adam McDonald has been a warden for three weeks. It's alright. He does his job, it occupies him, it pays his bills. Although part of his job is being forced to interact with the prisoners, which is tiresome to say the least; especially Dember with her dumbass questions.
In this brand new comic play which tackles the relationships we make and break, and asks why we befriend the people we do, Adam questions if it matters who he helps, and whether it's worth helping people at all.
Moreover, in the back of his mind, the question still lingers; should he try and scavenge from the life he had before, or leave everything behind and start life anew?
- November–December 2017
An exploration of the history of lesbianism, through the use of historical and literary sources. Using a combination of oral histories, written narratives and videos, ‘The Cambridge Companion to Lesbianism’ seeks to make visible the often invisible narratives of queer women in modern British history. This abstract, physical production will provide a starting point, a mood board, for the consideration of love, sex and gender identity in modern Britain. The piece is a kind of collage: a collection of overlapping, related, yet differing experiences.
- November–December 2017
It is one of the oldest stories on Earth: a tale of shame, of delusion, and of one man whose crimes finally catch up with him.
This November, the Corpus Playroom introduces a radical restaging of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King set in a contemporary prison.
Trapped inside the walls of a cell, there is no escaping the past. Oedipus is about to discover who he really is.
- October–November 2017
“Out. Out. What does it mean? In the closet. Out of the closet” Into the ghetto”
It is 1992, Section 28 prohibits the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools, and the age of consent for gay men is twenty-one. Sixteen-year old Steven is suffering the horrors of being a desire-filled gay teen, while his only role models are anguished, closeted men who depend on furtive sex in public bathrooms.
His teacher, Simon Hutton, the one person who could help him and a teacher at his all-boys Catholic school, is determined not to let the same reticence that limited him force Steven to succumb to the paralysis of victimhood.
Yet, the love Steven dreams of seems as far off in Hutton’s world as in his own.
TCS: 10/10
https://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/theatre/0037867-review-what-s-wrong-with-angry.html
The Tab: ★★★★
https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2017/11/01/review-whats-wrong-with-angry-2-101538
- October 2017
Join us for this evening of new writing! The Fletcher Players bring you Smorgasbord: a festival showcasing some of the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted at the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
- October 2017
CN: sexual and physical violence, homophobia and racism
Miremba, a Ugandan woman forced to leave her girlfriend and marry. Izzuddin, a Malay man who’s scholarship is removed when his sexuality is revealed. Hamed, an Iranian man who is told by the British Home Office that he is not gay. In their countries they are defined and oppressed based on their sexuality, in England their identity is denied without evidence. They are all asylum seekers, they are all LGBT+, and their stories are all true.
In Oxcam’s first venture in to Cambridge theatre, we bring you real stories from real asylum seekers. With much of the dialogue transcribed from interviews, ‘Rights of Passage’ provides an authentic and heart-breaking insight into the lives of refugees and the struggles they face. Persecuted in their countries, their oppression doesn’t end when they come to England. Their voices are taken away from them. Come, hear their stories.
- June 2017
"City dweller, successful fella
Thought to himself oops I've got a lot of money
I'm caught in a rat race terminally..." (Blur, 'Country House')
Come and see Oscar Wilde's sumptuously funny comedy staged in the decadent setting of the Corpus Master's Lodge Garden. The hedonism of the 1890s will be matched by the limitless optimism of the 1990s, as this drawing room set-piece is transposed through britpop tunes and rad fashion to the late 20th century.
- May 2017
‘Remember Steve Irwin? Steve Irwin didn’t do any of that pussying around Attenborough shit. He just shoved his hand right in the crocodile’s mouth like he couldn’t give a fuck. That’s how I’d do it.’
Harry is homeless, reckless and overly invested in the documentaries of David Attenborough. Mia has everything he doesn’t, yet still feels like she’s suffocating. Claiming she wants to taste ‘real’ life, she runs away from home, and the play begins two weeks into their experiment of living together in a squat.
Described by Tim Price (The Radicalization of Bradley Manning, National Theatre Wales, Teh Internet is Serious Business, Royal Court) as a ‘fantastic… gripping, economical two-hander,’ Spiders was longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2015. It is a witty and touching piece of new writing, and asks if your suffering is still valid, if another’s suffering is greater.
- May 2017
“Petersburg is not half what I expected – it is an amazingly quiet place; the people there seem more dead than alive…”
Three great authors. Three tall tales. Join us on this tour through an exhibition of apparitions, madness and ghosts, a gallery of human absurdity. This is a city of graveyards and asylums, where the dead hold court and where noses roam around unsupervised.
See a play that aims to thrill and entertain. See the works of Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Gogol brought to life as you’ve never seen them before.
- May 2017
The night after their grandfather's funeral, three cousins engage in a verbal (and sometimes physical) battle. In one corner is Daphna Feygenbam, a "Real Jew" who is volatile, self-assure and unbending. In the other is her equally stubborn cousin Liam, a secular and entitled young man, who has his shiska girlfriend, Melody, in tow. Stuck in the middle is Liam's brother, Jonah, who tries to stay out of the fray. When Liam stakes claim to their grandfather's Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.
- April 2017
What happens to the women that men can’t write? In this showcase of Strong Female Characters, a group of Cambridge’s finest lady and non-binary comics will endeavour to find out. Fresh from every screen and stage ever, the cast-offs, the sidekicks, the non-specific love interests and the straight-up plot-devices come together to stick it to The Man. Specifically, one man in particular. Their writer.
With multiple women actually allowed on stage at once, who knows what might happen? We wager it will be something very, very funny.
This is Good Girls, Written Bad(ly).
- February–March 2017
“Most people's lives—what are they but trails of debris, each day more debris, more debris, long, long trails of debris with nothing to clean it all up but, finally, death.” Mrs. Venable’s son, Sebastian, died last summer while on holiday with his cousin Catherine. Who was he really, and what actually happened? Mrs. Venable’s illusory idea of Sebastian must be shattered in what has come to be appreciated as one of Tennessee Williams’s most poetic pieces. Sexuality, shame, family: come and be totally immersed in the stifling atmosphere of one of Williams’ best one-act plays.
- February 2017
Anna is a teacher at a sixth form college. The death of Jack, an old
boyfriend, has finally stopped troubling her, until one night she begins
receiving texts from the number of his phone. As the texts grow more
sinister, she becomes obsessed with the idea that they are being sent by
Luke, a boy in her class. Paranoid, and feeling unsafe in her own
classroom, she searches for answers, and finds that her life and Luke’s
are entangled in ways that lead her to question: which of them is really
obsessed?
Closer is an original psychological thriller, written by Charlotte Gifford and
directed by Bret Cameron.
- February 2017
A Taste of Honey is set in Salford in the 1950s. It tells the story of Jo, a seventeen-year-old working class girl, and her mother, Helen, who is presented as flighty and uncaring. Helen leaves Jo alone in their new flat after she moves in with Peter, a rich, younger lover. Jo begins a romantic relationship with Jimmy, a black sailor. He proposes to Jo but ends up going to sea, leaving Jo pregnant and alone. She finds lodgings with a gay man, Geoffrey, who takes on the role of surrogate father. This play pushes so many boundaries way before its time making it exciting and entirely appropriate for today's audience, particularly in our current political climate. Wonderful characters, wonderful writing - this play is a real treat.
- February 2017
“Maybe there’s someone out there who won’t let you die. Maybe he has something planned for you…”
Two wandering con-artists arrive in an unfamiliar town, their eyes peeled for just one prize idiot.
Worming their way into the mayor’s confidence, this histrionic narcissist and his long-suffering companion have soon bamboozled the townsfolk into submission. Events rapidly escalate as the charlatans settle upon the ultimate scam: tricking a young citizen into believing she’s a fictional character.
A Fool to his Folly is a play exploring immortality, power and the dangers of allowing oneself to be consumed by fiction.
- February 2017
- January–February 2017
“You can’t explain me. Spagger. Victim. Attacker. Addict. Lover. Priest. I am one of those sorts who is impossible to explain.”
Stuart is an alcoholic, drug addicted, violence-loving, “chaotic homeless”. Alexander is a middle-class, Cambridge graduate and volunteer at the local homeless shelter who decides to write Stuart’s biography. As their friendship blossoms, he peels back the layers of a troubled past and discovers just as much about his own along the way.
Working in partnership with local homelessness charities, this is a production which seeks to challenge your pre-conceptions and transform the Corpus Playroom into a site of social activism.
Hilariously funny, yet shockingly tragic. This is their story, told backwards.
- January 2017
The average person will speak 123,205,750 words in a lifetime. But what if there were a limit? Oliver and Bernadette are about to find out.
'Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons' is a dystopian rom-com about a young couple, Bernadette and Oliver and their developing relationship in the face of a new censorship law that bans all British citizens from speaking more than 140 words a day.
When every word is sacred, how do we say the things we really feel to those we care about?
- November–December 2016
Lily is dead. Who was she?
It seems even her friends don’t know.
As they gather in Eleanor’s living room after the funeral, Lily’s friends attempt to remember and celebrate her life, but their discussion soon turns inwards. Though they talk about Lily, they actually say very little, and end up revealing more about themselves than about her. In the wake of death, they think of their own jobs, children and love affairs; their own life forces are brought to the fore as they deal with the idea of death. They take chances, and take trust in each other. Tangled relationships unravel and quiet sufferings find voice in this strange afternoon of grief and false smiles. In the limbo space of the living room, they express their desires and confront their demons. Love and death meet head-on.
Jack seems to be the only person truly focussed on mourning. Unlike the others, he has no trouble in remembering Lily, but how will he ever let go?
- November 2016
Scenes from A Void is a work for incurable insomniacs, people who are completely unsure, people who wake up with their brain in a whirl. Perec’s original text was written without using the letter E, this absence becomes an intense metaphor for loss, distraction, and nothingness - it is the invisible backbone of his dizzying, swirling novel.
Scenes from A Void is a modern opera / musical theatre piece. I have set to music responses by 8 different poets. These poets are responding to a substantial portion of the tenth chapter of Gilbert Adair’s translation of Perec’s A Void. My opera is comprised of six musical events in total: ridiculous, violent, amorous, introspective re-writings of famous, wonderful works of poetry including Milton, Shelley, and Poe. The subject matter of each very different poem drives the narrative of the work and the emotional subject matter moves quickly and heavily. Each half, lasting roughly 25-30 minutes, contains 3 arias.
Scenes from A Void is currently scored for a small chamber ensemble of flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, clarinet in Bb, bassoon, a percussionist (vibraphone, glockenspiel, some cymbals and small drums), an electric guitar, two violins, a viola, a ‘cello, and a piano. The singing cast would consist of two tenors and a soprano, these would operate a two small percussion batteries set either side of the stage. The singing cast steps in and out of center stage to operate these batteries and in doing so act as a type of chorus. These percussion batteries consist of found objects amplified with contact microphones to make unusual, sometimes ridiculous, sounds. I am able to receive help from of a number of musicians and directors who have been involved with ADC productions. In viewing these texts in an abstract manner I hope to find and dialogue with new methods of expressive engagement
The development of the material- physical movement, auxiliary percussion, and more standard music into more unusual, unsettling realms is central to this work. I want to create a real sense of upset, distress, and searching in response to the crushing feelings of absence that pervade the text. One way I hope to take the music in this direction is by manipulating the microtonally-tuned strings of an electric guitar to literally create rhythm from harmony by constantly altering the fixed pitches of differently-tuned strings. I want to purposefully cause the critical bandwidths of two or more complex sounds to interact in changing ways over periods of time, this causes pulsations of changing rates – the audience will perceive the actual physical movements of these sounds interacting and the cast will have a visceral musical world to react and engage with. Pushing the cast to respond to these particularly visceral sounds is a further example of my interest in engaging with new modes of expression – navigating spaces between choreographed movement and musical sound in service of blurring expressive boundaries. New methods of artistic expression should become apparent in the spaces that separate different forms of artistry. Above all, however, these ideas work together to create an ambitious, performable, expressive, exciting work of musical theatre.
Scenes from a Void immerses its audience in distraction, indulgence, and emptiness - an exhausting exploration of being without identity in this plural age.
http://scenesfromavoid.wixsite.com/scenesfromavoid
https://www.corpusplayroom.com/whats-on/musical/scenes-from-a-void.aspx
- October 2016
Join us for this evening of new writing! The Fletcher Players bring you Smörgåsbord: a brand-new festival showcasing the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted at the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
- October 2016
“Now is the time to throw off our chains, to dance footloose upon the earth, to carpe some f***ing diem. We’ve earned tonight, gentlemen.”
Join the Riot Club, an elite group of privately-educated Oxford undergraduates, as they gather for their termly dinner in a hired room of a family-run pub. Taking place over the course of one evening, the dinner begins with hilarity and amusing drunkenness, but quickly descends into something darker. Be amused, then alarmed, by a series of increasingly disturbing jokes and disputes with the pub owner, his daughter, and a call girl. It will be a night of drinking. It will be a night of surprises. It will be a night that both the boys, and you, won’t be able to forget. The play that inspired the popular film ‘The Riot Club’, Posh is at once hilarious and disturbing, distantly elitist and yet uncomfortably close to home.
- May 2016
Three strangers are about to face their demons head on. Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another – if they can only over come their urge to self destruct.
- March 2016
Come one, come all, to a comedy extravagamza of comedic and #relatable sketches about Cambridge life, written by real Cambridge students in a real Cambridge college. A night perfect for all college families no matter which college you call home. We all need a laugh now and then, don’t we? Right?
- March 2016
Violet has just split up with her husband. Cecilia likes painting dead birds. The sisters are living in their mildewed family pile in the back of beyond to look after their senile father and stop the ceiling from caving in. When their brother arrives with a prospective buyer, he unwittingly raises a storm of questions about the house's past and future.
The halls echo with eerie love songs, and the kitchen where the family gathers seems haunted by ghostly presences – alive and dead. As the body count moves from birds to things more substantial, the house’s occupants are forced to reconsider the life their family has led for centuries.
‘The Beck’ is by turns a warm, dark, and uncomfortably real piece of new writing by Flora de Falbe.
- February 2016
The Fletcher Players and Shadwell Society bring you “Smorgasbord”: a brand-new festival showcasing the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
Come and see some of the boldest works of new theatre in their rawest and most creatively fertile state
- February 2016
‘I don’t care if I am an abomination. That woman, that wrong woman, is who I am, and I refuse to be cured.’
This claustrophobic, bittersweet twist on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses turns the romance of Iphis and Ianthe into a tragedy. The heroine, Iphis, having been transformed into a man by the goddess Isis in order to solve the ‘problem’ of her homosexuality, suffers an identity crisis. Her mother Telethusa and new wife Ianthe struggle to cope with her depression and anger, which threaten to turn into radical action against her misogynistic father, Isis and society itself.
This bleak yet hopeful student-written play challenges prevailing ideas that our identities are not our own. In our world of increasingly fluid sexuality and gender roles, 'Iphis' raises the question – does mankind ever progress beyond its prejudices?
- November 2015
It’s 1956 and the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein are having their annual quiche breakfast. Will they be able to keep their cool when Communists threaten their idyllic town?
- March 2015
One naive fresher encounters a spirit too many in this terrifying tale about a Cambridge University degree. Matt learns the hard way not to consort with ghosts when his misguided wish to achieve academic success has haunting consequences. Matt races through his past to secure his future and get the ghoul of his dreams. It'll be dead good.
- March 2015
'The best thing to happen to the sky since rainbows'.
Based on the BBC Radio 4 show “Cabin Pressure” by John Finnemore copyright Pozzitive Television Ltd, ‘Cabin Pressure’ is set in the cabin of 'GERTI', a charter airplane run by ‘MJN Air’ and examines the relations between and the antics of the four crew members as they fly across the globe: Carolyn (the owner of the MJN), Arthur (her son and hapless flight attendant), Martin (captain) and Douglas (first officer). The crew pass their time by engaging in games, bets and general tomfoolery; making a madcap comedy that is as fun for the actors as well as the audience.
