- February 2020
It’s five o’clock on a Friday night at the Department of Health, in a near-future Britain in which everything is going wrong. Power cuts are frequent and unpredictable. Floods have overwhelmed the southeast.
Anna, working on paper files under her office’s flickering lights, is part of a team trying to isolate and contain a strange and terrible new disease. Quarantines and social media blocks are in place to stop word getting out, but tonight it’s in five cities and no one knows how or why. By morning there might be riots and cities alight.
And beneath Anna’s office, in a darkened cell, is a girl who might know something about the disease- but she's refusing to talk, and as the night drags on and everything begins to fall apart, Anna is faced with terrible choices...
- February 2020
"The moment was suddenly over; a fleeting trick of the light. Who'd have thought, looking back, that this chance encounter would change my life?”
It's a freezing and rainy day when Elizabeth Day is finally persuaded to tell her story- the story of how she and Liam Moore met, fell in love, and fell apart, and of how their shared life influenced each other, and those around them. Life With You is a nostalgic and poignant piece, exploring how life goes on, even once the curtain falls on one stage and the rose-tinted memories fade.
Life With You is an original student musical. Featuring numbers from the tear-jerking 'Someplace Safe' to the uplifting 'Almost's Good Enough', this is not one to miss.
- November 2019
An earthquake leaves two strangers buried alive in an office building. No air, no supplies, no communication with the outside world. As they wait and hope for rescue to come, they must come together to pass the time, discussing life, death, and everything in between. As the air grows thinner and the light dims they will learn more about each other and themselves than they could have ever imagined. But is everything truly as it seems?
A play about friendship, loneliness, life, death, fear, and happiness, Oxygen will ask the audience to question their own morality and relationships as the characters on stage do the same.
- October 2019
The infamous Marlowe Hatch night returns to the ADC for another exciting evening of new writing. The Hatch project offers an opportunity for students to showcase the theatre they’re working on in an unfussy and liberating atmosphere; featuring perfectly polished pieces performed alongside inspiring works in progress, no other student night offers a glimpse into the heart of the student theatre scene so uniquely. Expect an eclectic mix of genres, styles, and voices, in one of the most intimate and well-loved celebrations of creativity in the Cambridge theatre community.
- July 2019
In a civil society, what are the limits of what can and cannot be said?
Three static gargoyles, believing themselves to be angels, sit atop three plinths atop a cathedral. The First, an entitled rule-maker, imparts his wisdom on The Second, a consensus builder, and The downtrodden Third. Sleeping by day, the gargoyles spend their nights examining their origins, desires, politics and purpose.
One fateful day, after wedding bells chime, to they other ‘Angel’s’ horror, The First is granted the gift of movement. Will he be free, fly away and explore the world beyond? Or will he stay for the good of ‘the brotherhood’?
Using absurdist farce, The Offensive is a satirical parable navigating the logical rabbit holes of modern day identity politics to explore the case for freedom of expression.
The Offensive is one of six original one-act plays that make up the WRiTEON Festival, a celebration of new writing across all three ADC venues: the ADC Auditorium, the Corpus Playroom, and the Larkum Studio. This unique collection spans genres, themes and styles. Dip in or complete the set for the full experience.
- July 2019
'Darling. What's my name?'
John and Claire Cunningham are an average couple: married for years, they’re stuck in a rut, with only experimentation seeming to hold the key to invigoration. Except, those aren’t their real names, and over time the line between reality and fiction has become blurred to the extent that neither really knows where the games end and their actual lives begin. What began as an attempt to inject some much-needed excitement into their lives has led to a crisis of identity from which neither seems able to awaken, and as their lies become more and more elaborate, they start to threaten the world outside of the relationship, with potentially criminal repercussions.
From playwright James P Mannion (Hedgehogs & Porcupines, Old Red Lion, 2018) comes this story of thrill-seeking and delusion, self-deception and the breakdown of trust.
Role Play is one of six original one-act plays that make up the WRiTEON Festival, a celebration of new writing across all three ADC venues: the ADC Auditorium, the Corpus Playroom, and the Larkum Studio. This unique collection spans genres, themes and styles. Dip in or complete the set for the full experience.
- June 2019
‘The curtains aren’t blue because I’m sad. The curtains are blue because I’m trying to remember all the reasons not to be.’
Charles’ wife died three months ago but her favourite book’s still on the night stand. Billie’s ex boyfriend gets a poem left on his answerphone every day. D likes stories, and now he’s in one. There are 20 clocks in Alex’s room. It’s a reminder that time is running out.
The Blue House explores the things that break us, the things that mend us, and what it means to be alone.
- June 2019
Do you want to be one of the first to explore the future of art and entertainment? Do you want an experience that you will not get anywhere else? Magnet Rose is your answer. It is the first immersive narrative mixed-reality experience in the ADC Theatre, blending new-frontier technologies, installation art, special soundscapes, dynamic lighting designs, and interactive theatre performances, in a cinematic story setting. By becoming a character in the show, you will live in a surreal world of magnets and roses, exploring human feelings, dualities, attractions and love, in a linear narrative. A universal story, the show's messages also speak about gender equality and non-binary. With a rare combination of Eastern and Western aesthetics, technology and art, traditional and experimental storytelling, you will take home with one of the most unique memories with the shortest time spent.
- March 2019
‘Everyone knew him as The Boy Who Fucked The Duck In The Bush At Alton Towers – you’re going to have to bleep that. We were on a school trip, queuing for the rides, and The Boy – I think his name was Steven – he pops out from a bush, zipping up his flies with a duck following after. Obviously he’d just gone in to have a piss, but the name stuck.’
Lent Term will see the exciting premiere of Victor Rees' dark new play in the Larkum Studio. A pitch-black tale of intimacy and cruelty, Let’s Start a Fire questions what it takes to be famous in the 21st century – and how much you can truly love those you hurt.
‘Next morning I couldn’t remember a thing. My clothes smelled of smoke. It’s only later I found the video. It just happened. It didn’t feel like it mattered.’
- February 2019
This play is about dreams, where forgotten memories go, deja vu, laughter, the inability to laugh, that sense you get when you can tell someone is staring at you, the song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," balloons, coincidences, the stars, belief, the suspension of disbelief — but it is not about me.
"This Play Is Not About Me" is written and performed by Steve Rathje, and produced as a staged reading as part of the ADC's Papercuts rehearsed reading series.
Read an interview with Steve about what the play's really about here: https://medium.com/@steverathje/interview-with-steve-rathje-about-this-play-is-not-about-me-21d98b49074e
Get tickets here: https://www.adctheatre.com/whats-on/play/this-play-is-not-about-me/
- January–February 2019
London, 1969. A conscientious but mischievous phone-operator uses her specialist skills to avert the end of the network.
The last days of the manual telephone exchange. While the new automated switchboards are being installed across the nation, an operator resents connecting phone calls that are ending the careers of her colleagues. Never shy to a prank, Susan commits herself to take it further, using her skills of eavesdropping, rumour-spreading, and call-misdirection to save the present from the future. When the upgrades were only scheduled in Birmingham alone she was able divert and disrupt them; yet within days the threat starts to close in on London itself.
Unable to match the efficiency of the system, Susan must contend for the human side of the technological sector. Though she is up against an industry that prefers the superfast dreams of the visionaries, who promise instant connectivity and the removal of human error. Susan refuses to leave, in part to complete her employment, and in part to wait for the impossible return of a precious fellow operator.
- March 2018
Edinburgh, 2006. Romania, Susanne and Adrianne are students, living together but leading very distinct lives. Adrian is a junior lecturer whose nihilistic worldview cuts gradually deeper into his increasingly lonely life.
Washed-up Sacramento band The Stranger Than Fictions are in town, and when they offer Romania a gig all manner of uncertainties and anxieties start to crystallise.
From these characters and their disorientating web of friends, acquaintances, haunts and habits emerges a multilateral examination of depression, performative insincerity and exploitation of sexual naivety. There is no grand design or all-governing plot, but the coming-of-age struggle that all the characters face one way or another is presented in all its bitterness and uncertainty.
- February 2018
‘I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.’
Far From the Madding Crowd is set against the part-real, part-dream world of Hardy’s Wessex. Where Bathsheba's choices show us life in all it's unpredictability, the decisions we take, both wise and unwise. And those choices that cause aftershocks that reverberate throughout everything that follows.
This will be an intimate production performed in the round, with naturalistic scenes alongside movement pieces and music.
Adapted by Jessica Swale from the novel Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
Directed by Eleanor Dodson, movement direction by Marlie Haco (RCSSD).
"Eleanor Dodson... saw its possibilities, and directs with extraordinary delicacy and long sorrowful silences of rose coloured tension" The Times.
Image by Jess Pigott.
http://www.castlegatehouse.co.uk/paintings-for-sale/jessica-pigott/
- February 2018
Are there any cynics in paradise?
When two brothers join a cult, things turn for the worse as Michael and Liam question their mortality, their faith and whether or not they can trust each other.
The pater familias has his own suspicious intentions, the outcast is ostracized yet untouchable and the remainder of the denomination ring out their doctrine in unison.
The Road to Nowhere is Alfred Leigh's debut play, promising to be an irreverent ideological examination.
https://bats.tessera.info/tickets/road-to-nowhere
https://www.adctheatre.com/whats-on/literary/the-road-to-nowhere/
'Darkly Seductive' - Varsity ★★★★
- November 2017
The Cambridge Impronauts are so proud to be running a BME-only improvised comedy workshop! We welcome all those who identify as BME, regardless of prior experience or year group.
Come along to learn a skill which will make you a better stage performer, and a better person in general!
- 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.
- March 2017
Miss Phyllis Kelway talked to the animals and they answered.
Her friend, Miss Mary Sykes, one of the first lady solicitors, meant to build a house but found she had accidentally built an ark full of red squirrels, hedgehogs and Juggles the otter.
Now, to add to the pandemonium, there is a war on, an escaped adder, and Phyllis wants to keep geese to do her bit for the war effort.
- March 2017
Rehearsed reading of the play 'Bromley Bedlam Bethlehem' - a play exploring mental health across 3 generations of a family living in (shockingly) Bromley.
- May 2016
"You can’t let yourself be hollow anymore... beneath this whole covering of bad jokes and self-references and these papier mache memories... Are you even sure that you exist anymore?"
Trimalchio is a tragicomedy about Mark, a young playwright drafted in to adapt The Great Gatsby for his billionaire best friend. While slowly sinking into the mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark finds himself dodging demons from his romantic past. Fourth wall breaks abound.
Papercuts is the ADC's rehearsed reading programme. Come along, grab a drink from the bar, and watch new theatre in its purest form.
- May 2016
- May 2016
Losing my Religion follows public intellectual and atheist campaigner Pritchard Fawkes, loosely based on a certain 'someone'. Finding himself championing the great cause against God, he soon finds himself hilariously wrapped up in a crisis of faith. Following tragedy in his own life and against apocalyptic currents, Pritchard slowly begins to find out he just might be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Papercuts is the ADC's rehereased reading programme. Come along, grab a drink from the bar, and watch new theatre in its purest form.
- May 2016
Joshua and Llewellyn tell stories. Stories which always end the same way. Stories which offer no relief. Stories for an audience of one.
They’ve been doing this for a long time now. Somewhere in the depths of a vast library filled with masks, Joshua and Llewellyn tirelessly weave old narratives into new faces. They tell and play out tales of all kinds: a fantastical child wanders lost in the forest; a priest receives a most unexpected confession; one man dreams of an impossible toilet.
But there is always the Worm. It watches them work, feeds on their labours, stretches their lives. They’ve been doing this for a long time now. Llewellyn remembers, but Joshua thinks; when the shelves are full and their work is over and the Worm is fat, they’ll find their way out. They’ll complete themselves.
They’ve been doing this for a long time now.
--
Papercuts is our new rehearsed reading programme.
We believe that the best way to help writers and their work develop is to get the script on its feet and spoken. Papercuts is produced in the Larkum Studio at the ADC Theatre, and is intended to let the writer see their work given a voice.
Come along, grab a drink from the bar, and watch new theatre in its purest form.
- March 2016
Which country is this?
Population paranoid about 1% of its citizens;
Press at odds with politicians;
Propelled towards war behind closed doors.
Answer: England. 1907.
Eddie is a well meaning and cash strapped minor Edwardian aristocrat. In the years before The Great War he is an acquaintance of both the King and the Kaiser and finds himself caught in gathering tension. He tries to build bridges, and with one innocent remark, he changes the course of history...
A lifelong soldier, later he's in command on the Western Front. Increasingly frustrated by events, disastrous leadership and the futile loss of life, he and one other commanding officer resist sending their men over the top on 1st July 1916. This remains the worst day in the history of the British Army. One man meets an ignominious fate while the other is treated as a hero and later becomes ADC to the King. Why?
- March 2016
- February 2016
An unscrupulous landlord lets the same flat out to two different men: a hatter who is out at work all day, and a printer who is out at work all night. When the hatter is given the day off and the two lodgers discover each other, the landlord’s scheme falls apart. But when the lodgers discover they have something in common, will they forget their quarrel?
Adapted by F.C. Burnand from a play by John Maddison Morton, and composed in 1866, this one-act musical farce was the first successful operetta by Arthur Sullivan, who later collaborated with acclaimed playwright W.S. Gilbert on such household names as The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, and H.M.S. Pinafore, which continue to delight and entertain audiences of all ages today.
- February 2016
"Maximum Firepower"
Join us as once again the Impronauts battle it out in a fun, competitive showdown of quick scenes and long laughs.
Join our Improvisational Gladiators as they once again take to the arena to battle for your amusement. For too long, the Cambridge Impronauts have been weaving tales together in relative peace and harmony. But now, things are getting personal as a crack team of Impronauts will go head to head, duelling through sketches, skit, and songs, all completely made up on the spot, for your applause!
There can be only one winner, but who will it be? And to what lengths will they need to go to win your approval? Come along to marvel at the magnificence and madness of the Cambridge Impronauts. You decide the winner. The power is in your hands...
- February 2016
London, 1665: one man suffers love and loss in the shadow of plague. In this song cycle, drawn from accounts such as Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year', Mark Ravenhill’s wry libretto and Conor Mitchell’s experimental score sensitively explore questions of mortality and survival, whilst revealing sharp parallels with modern epidemics.
- February 2016
After a huge sell-out success in "Impronauts Quickfire - Too hot for the ADC" the Impronauts are back with "Quickfire - Turning up the Heat"
Join our Improvisational Gladiators as they once again take to the arena to battle for your amusement. For too long, the Cambridge Impronauts have been weaving tales together in relative peace and harmony. But now, things are getting personal as a crack team of Impronauts will go head to head, duelling through sketches, skit, and songs, all completely made up on the spot, for your applause!
Can Peter hold on to his victory in the first round or will one of his apprentices rise up and strike down the master? There can be only one winner, but who will it be? And to what lengths will they need to go to win your approval? Come along to marvel at the magnificence and madness of the Cambridge Impronauts. You decide the winner. The power is in your hands...
- January 2016
‘Girl, Interrupted’, chronicles Susanna Kaysen’s stay in a mental hospital in 1967 after an attempted suicide.
18 year old Susanna was put in a taxi and sent to hospital to be treated for depression. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for you women, in the psychiatric ward renowned for its famous clientele, including the distinguished poet and author Sylvia Plath.
This is a new adaptation of ‘Girl, Interrupted’, written for the stage by Rosie Brown. Susanna’s story is explored in new and exciting ways, set to music composed specifically for this original production.
Mental health, gender, sexuality and non-conformity are examined in this predominantly female production, for the most part through the eyes of Susanna.
- November 2015
The Battle of Stamford Bridge is looming.
A single soprano enters the space. All of a sudden she is King Harald, then the ghost of Saint Olaf, then Harald's wives, then the men of his kingdom.
This exciting and short contemporary opera tells the tragedy of King Harald in a demanding and engaging ten minute performance.
This unique aural drama, as the soprano flits between roles and perspectives, will aim to engage and draw out Judith Weir's deeply engaging and unique music, convincing us all not only of each role but of the deep emotional responses behind them.
- June 2015
“I was surprised it didn’t rip; surprised I didn’t burst all the way from the nape of my neck down to the small of my back, like the seam of a ripe peach. The memory of you, it was suffocating.”
In a hilltop house overlooking the sea, three women drink wine and reconnect with their past. What happens when an unexpected dinner guest arrives?
CRACKED is a new memory play about the experience of abuse.
- May 2015
From the writer who brought you Ajax440, comes an imaginative and quirky retelling from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Moved to modern-day, the original set of star-crossed lovers find themselves on Tinder, looking for a meaningful connection. As romance unfurls across the realms of social media, connected by the truest of loves and the most infinite of broadbands, will they actually find that the screen keeping them together is the very thing keeping them apart?
'I can't wait til I can photoshop my actual face. What's that called? Surgery?
Papercuts is the ADC's rehearsed reading programme. Come along, grab a drink from the bar, and watch new theatre in its purest form.
- March 2015
24 hours, 9 old friends and 5 years' worth of tension. Starting at the end and moving back this play explores the complexities of the relationships you share with the people you most love and the inability to separate the past, present and future.
- February 2015
Watching You is a brand-new play written by Nathan Smith. Absurdist and dark it aims to explore the paranoia and addiction behind TV. With hundreds of channels at hand, and thousands of hours of new input released each day, its never been easier than to just sit in front of the box. But what message are they sending out, and would we notice if it changed?
You're invited to join our main man for a night of TV browsing, everything's on offer and everything wants your attention. Warning, though, you may not want to give it...
- February 2015
The magician Nathaniel Taumont is putting on a show, and everybody who’s anybody is coming to see it. Enthusiasts, wits and skeptics alike have gathered in a small city theatre, and eagerly await what they know to be a most unusual performance: Taumont, with the aid of two loyal assistants and a curious, inscrutable frame, is going to raise the dead.
Come and see the great figures of the ancient world, in all their imperial splendour, come once more to life before your eyes! Watch as the frame, with all its intricate workings, communes with spirits long departed, eager to impart their wisdom to a welcoming and sage modernity!
Pay no heed to the look of disquiet in their eyes, or to the trembling of their borrowed, bruised body. Taumont is a master of the stage, and this is all, of course, merely a performance.
--
Papercuts is our new rehearsed reading programme.
We believe that the best way to help writers and their work develop is to get the script on its feet and spoken. Papercuts is produced in the Larkum Studio at the ADC Theatre, and is intended to let the writer see their work given a voice.
Come along, grab a drink from the bar, and watch new theatre in its purest form.
- February 2015
Execution is a new thriller set in a criminal syndicate. After a disastrous heist, Michael has been told he must murder Tim, the man supposedly, and perhaps deliberately, responsible. But Tim has information that complicates what should be a routine operation, and soon both men are locked in a tense power struggle, and at least one of them will not leave the room alive.
