- December 2025
“Innovation at any cost. Consequences TBD.”
An improvised comedy of tech issues…and summoning the IT guy won’t fix it. Triumphant new technology—sleek, smart, life-changing, chosen by you for you. But progress has a price. As the tech takes hold, the cracks begin to show. Join us on an expedition into the world of new technology, we’ll guide you through all the joys it can bring—but perhaps that shiny new toy has just the tiniest crack in its surface.
What if all your devices could show you only good news, and filter out all the bad? What if an implant could always tell you when someone is lying? What if your AI dating coach secretly wanted to keep you single and using its services forever?
Every night you will be pitched the next big billion-dollar tech breakthrough and get to bear witness to how it falls apart.
- November 2025
‘What good is theory? What good is an idea without the smallest inkling of relief?’
Raymond, an unemployed and vaguely paranoid man, is commissioned to write a manifesto for the suspiciously corporeal ghost of Russian politician Pavel Milyukov, founder of the Constitutional Democratic Party. Hijinks ensue. Love might just be in the air.
Weird, ominous, and oddly jolly, PERIPETEIA invites the audience to believe, if only for a moment, in ghosts, supercomputers, and the possibility of utopia.
- November 2025
The women of Athens have a problem. It's big. It's huge. And, by god, it's really really hard.
Lysistrata is a classic ancient Greek comedy about a group of women, sick of their husbands neglecting them and making ridiculous decisions. Led by Lysistrata, they join forces across Greece to propose a daring solution to their collective problem: a sex strike. It might seem mad at first, but soon they are causing chaos across all of Greece. With a design vision which shifts the play to the early 2000s, the WAGs of Athens in this production have decided enough is enough. 💋💋💋
- November 2025
This term, DNA takes over the Corpus Playroom as the Week 6 Freshers Late Show. Dark, gripping, and razor-sharp, this production dives into the unsettling world of teenage complicity and the spiralling consequences of one terrible decision.
Written by Dennis Kelly, DNA follows a group of teenagers who commit a violent act—and then attempt to cover it up. As guilt and fear take hold, the group fractures, revealing shifting power dynamics, moral ambiguity, and the terrifying ease with which truth can be manipulated. Tense, fast-paced, and disturbingly funny, DNA is a chilling exploration of peer pressure, group psychology, and the thin line between order and chaos.
- November 2025
This term, Ruckus in the Garden bursts onto the Corpus Playroom stage as the Main Show for Week 6, brought to life by a vibrant cast and creative team of freshers. Expect a high-energy, sharply funny production that blends teenage chaos with a touch of Shakespearean mischief.
Written by David Farr, Ruckus in the Garden is a fast-paced exploration of teenage life, following two rival schools—Riverdale Comprehensive and St. Nectan's Grant Maintained—on a disastrous school trip to the idyllic garden of Cecil Fortescue. As tensions rise and old grudges flare, magical forces intervene, drawing inspiration from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to spark unexpected romance, comic confusion, and total mayhem.
- November 2025
Operation Market Garden is a powerful new piece of verbatim theatre, inspired by the wartime diary of a Welsh paratrooper captured during the 1944 operation of the same name. Blending real testimony with dramatic interpretation, the show centres the often-overlooked voice of a footsoldier—offering a raw, personal perspective on war, identity, and survival as a prisoner of war. This is a story of resilience and remembrance, told from the ground up.
- November 2025
"The drama critics won't go along with that - I mean we can't have the ultra-left hooligan winning hands down like that!"
Defenestration, freudian impersonation, and police corruption. This shockingly funny fast-paced show based on a true story is sure to make you laugh, cry, and question what's really going on in police headquarters. Set in an unnamed police station, we witness the farcical reenactment of the fatal interrogation-gone-wrong of an anarchist and its explosive consequences. Written 55 years ago, but still just as pertinent, Fo's masterpiece is a political farce for the ages.
- November 2025
A trampoline. A jigsaw puzzle. An orange peel. Which one of these ends a relationship?
Sophie and Leah have been happy together for a long, long time. But now there’s a problem. As their relationship fractures, lines are drawn, crossed and redrawn as the two attempt to navigate how to love someone you no longer understand. At times comic, at times tragic, ‘Lands’ is an absurdist exploration of obsession, apathy and the hills we’re willing to die on.
- November 2025
What would you do for freedom?
Classical tragedy meets Shakespearean love comedy in an intricate web of conflict, sex and betrayal.
War is coming. Sophonisba, a young noblewoman, is caught at the heart of a conflict between two mighty powers. Plans to wed her beloved are scuppered when she is sent away to marry a political enemy. Isolated and far away from both the man and country she loves, Sophonisba must do what it takes to fight back.
- October–November 2025
Join sketch comedy group Lukewarm Goo (Footlights James Allen, Dom Andrew, and Will Boyce) for a gooey sketch show. Following the success of their debut show (no one came to review it so you will just have to take our word that it was a success. Will's dad seemed to enjoy it at any rate) the guys are back with new sketches of largely the same quality. As they make their way to the zoo for a day out at the zoo, a funny thing happens to them (on their way to the zoo). Expect surreal sketches, goo, wacky characters, romance, action, singing, heartfelt confessions, and goo.
- October 2025
- October–November 2025
“As I often say to myself, in order to make a story, or indeed, a life, one must surely ask oneself, at least to start with… who am I?”
Finding the courage to be yourself. A play of radical acceptance, following the life of young Orlando as they navigate growing up, love, life and loss all the way from the court of Elizabeth I, right up until the 1920s. If a life lived for hundreds of years was not enough, Orlando goes from living life as a man, to living life as a woman.
Written for, and based on, Woolf’s lover, the enigmatic Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a lyrical love letter to queerness and self-discovery. A tender portrait of a person who lives as much as the world has to offer and more.
Bartlett’s bold adaptation celebrates the continuing importance of Orlando’s story, in a new and inclusive, whimsical and moving tale.
- October 2025
Welcome to the Royal Court! As members of the court you will watch and judge three comedians as they are forced to be Jesters for their Monarch. Over a number of fun and chaotic rounds the jesters will have to prove their abilities to the Monarch, but also to the court, as at any time audience members can vote to stop the current game and move on to the next.
Court Jesters is a chaotic panel show that promises big laughs, chaos and feudalism!
- October 2025
Footlight Lorna Beal has never gotten over anything ever. But why would she? She's perfectly happy the way she is. Mostly. Sometimes. Join her for her debut hour of side-splitting stand-up where she'll unpack nostalgia, girlhood and maybe some emotional baggage. Maybe.
- October 2025
Norway. The fjords. 1881.
Helene Alving has been living in the shadow of her husband’s death for ten years. When her son, Oswald, returns home from Paris, she is forced to confront the ghosts of her past from which she had tried so desperately to escape.
- October 2025
- August 2025
Trapped indoors by torrential rain, legendary writers Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley and their friends, Polidori and Claire, search for inspiration by the gloomy Lake Geneva. But things fall apart the longer they are stuck together... Polidori’s diary is brought to life in the 1816 Year Without a Summer musical.
- October 2025
Smorgasbord is the Corpus Playroom’s eclectic showcase of new student-written theatre. For over a decade, this evening has been a rite of passage for emerging student playwrights in Cambridge, and it’s the event at the heart of the Corpus Playroom’s calendar.
We particularly seek to give a spotlight to those who haven’t previously had their work audienced, and to anyone who feels that they have an underrepresented narrative or cultural lineage to bring to the fore.
- September 2025
- September 2025
- June 2025
Faked Attraction is an improvised reality dating show, similar to Love Island, performed by The Cambridge Impronauts. Each night will feature a group of people who are looking for love who are then paired up and people going on dates, interacting as a group to create a unique plot every night. The characters and how couples are sorted will be decided by the audience. In true reality fashion, there will also be new additions to the cast throughout the show, audience interactions that allow them to mix up couples and a ‘winning’ couple chosen at the end! It will feature a reality TV style host, include talking heads like the show and characters will be inspired by audience suggestions meaning there will be maximum variation between characters every night. The developing relationships between all characters will create the opportunity for secrets to be revealed, fleshing out the cast further, and allow the exploration of romance and chemistry between characters that wouldn’t otherwise meet!
- June 2025
Rothko, an ageing artist struggling to stay relevant as the new decade of the 1960’s looms, hires Ken, an eager young apprentice. Ken starts out in awe of Rothko and his so-called ‘genius’ but those feelings begin to change as he gets to know the man behind the canvases. Tackling the complicated relationship between the master and the apprentice, the old and the new, art and the artist, Red is an intensely expansive and tense examination of what it means to create.
- June 2025
Seb is changing. Into what, he’s not sure. He longs for the cold damp earth, for the latex of the gimp suit he’s been wearing to writhe by the side of roads. The locals in his small village fear him. He’s on the run. And the worm within is getting louder…
‘Seb Vaughn, Seb Vaughn, you’re one of us
Return to the earth, you must, you must’
Folk horror meets body horror meets real life weirdness in this absurd and touching new play. Loosely inspired by real events, and driven by a current of tenderness and compassion, The Shropshire Wyrm explores what it’s like to be queer in small town England.
Also it's about gimps. And worms. And gimp-worms.
- June 2025
Reese Patel has spent his whole life being told to smile more. But he doesn’t want to. So instead, he’s made it his mission to make everyone else do it. Join him for an hour of dry, deadpan stand-up as he unpacks everything from the genius of Indian toilets to the perils of overthinking. Expect unpredictable twists and jokes about life’s most awkward, absurd, and dark moments.
- August 2025
“Chicks before dicks, bros before hoes…girl time before heinous crime!”
Penelope is back...and more fabulous than ever.
Penelope Quadrangle has one best friend in the entire world: Natalie. Sure, she doesn’t talk much, or invite Penelope to her birthday drinks, and might be a serial killer, but they’ve been best friends since high school, and never quite grew out of it.
And then there’s her next-door neighbour Bridget, who insists on trying to be friends, and absolutely believes that Penelope is lonely. She’s not. In fact, she has a thriving social life which includes going on coffee dates every single week in her favourite middle-class café.
But when she personally witnesses Natalie brutally murder a client at their workplace, priority number one is make sure she isn't next. As she attempts her first ever friend break-up, conversations with Bridget begin to pick apart Penelope’s ideas on what a friend really is. Shouldn’t friends be there for one another, even if it means hiding a body? And would she frame Bridget to protect herself from her own best friend?
If Penelope is one thing, it’s loyal. (And extremely well dressed. And absolutely, definitely, not lonely.)
- May 2025
Cara’s supposed to be in her prime. She’s a fresh graduate with a stable job, a diet that isn’t exclusively spaghetti hoops on toast, and the kind of boyfriend your grandparents like more than you.
But behind closed doors, she’s struggling to stay afloat as the chronic illness that blighted her undergrad resurfaces.
As her health deteriorates again, her dad faces redundancy, and an old friend comes abruptly back into her life, Cara is confronted with harsh questions: to what extent should she allow her health to determine her identity, and how much can she allow it to impact others?
Somebody / Nobody is a play about care - the intimate, often unconscious ways we give and receive it - and chronic illness. It’s also about finding light amongst darkness, whether in humour, relationships, or the occasional ultra processed food.
- May 2025
“I have been your servant, God, but now, I want your house.”
The first time Joan was called a witch was when she was eight years old, and from that moment, she knew that the man they called the prophet wouldn’t save her. The miracles performed on Abney Farm were mere mirages to Joan as she slowly becomes disillusioned with the altar at which Beau, her father, was willing to sacrifice anyone for his destiny. This play is a Southern Gothic retelling of the tragedy of Shakespeare's Macbeth, inviting you to bear witness to man’s ruthless grasp on destiny and asking you to judge the price of liberation.
- May 2025
What exactly is the difference between a medieval monk and a modern-day academic? Shockingly, nothing. Or at least that's the conclusion Mary, a troubled new student at Cambridge University, has come to after a shockingly traumatic first few weeks of term.
Raunchy, irreverent, and biblically brilliant, "Me and My Year of Casual 'Monasticism'" invites audiences to question if they really are both a Madonna AND a whore.
Join Emily Knutsson as she offers a shockingly fresh and innovative approach to sex, 'that' ex, and the Middle Ages in her debut one-woman show.
- May 2025
"And, you know what? There will come a day when you’ve holed yourself so deep into your letters that not even we’ll be able to find your way out for you!."
Adapted from the 2024 play by Sophia Orr
Everyone knows Jane Austen. Ever winning the race of Britain's favourite female writers, her wit and humour and wisdom in all matters of society and romance seem to know no bounds, as charisma flows from her every word.
And everyone knows a 'Jane'. Everyone has a favourite, yet-to-be-prolific, yet-to-write-anything author, constantly struggling with writer's block, mental blocks, and the eternal romantic cockblock of 'far too high standards'.
And everyone knows they would never want to be 'Jane'.
Faced with constant scrutiny in the polite society of 1800s Bath and the painful flashbacks to her romantic failings, Jane begins to barricade herself into her own mind, a barricade which can only be pierced by the written word.
Enter Emma. Emma Watson. The heroine of Jane's latest scrawlings and now also the heroine of Jane's own life.
With Emma as her increasingly constant friend, saviour, and comforter, Jane's real, past, and fictional worlds begin to blur, and the worry grows whether she will ever find her way back to the present.
- May 2025
Blank Canvas is a celebration of longer-form new writing works in development, platforming new and underrepresented voices in the theatre scene. With support from the Fletcher Players committee, Blank Canvas is proud to present semi-complete stagings of new works that deserve to be seen by Cambridge audiences. Blank Canvas has a different show on every night - follow Fletcher Players on social media for further announcements.
THURSDAY - 'Go to Hell' - A visceral contemporary reimagining of the Greek myth of Hades, Persephone and Demeter, focused on gender dynamics and mother-daughter relationships
FRIDAY - 'If Walls Could Talk' - If walls could talk, what would they say? Find out in this homoerotic story of love and faith — is love ever truly enough, or are hearts made to be broken?
SATURDAY - 'Nobody!' - Nobody! follows Debbie as she tries to balance her friendships with aspirations of fame, narrated through Emily Dickinson’s poetry
- May 2025
"After traversing about a mile of trenches… we arrived at the entrance of a long tunnel which we entered and, proceeding almost to the other end of it, made ourselves comfortable and awaited the signal… Our guns had been silent almost all night… but at 5.30 the barrage was opened up. Even down in the tunnel, which was close to 60 feet deep, the sound was like a vast roll of thunder. We hurried out and I do not think I shall ever forget the sight which met our eyes as we reached the lip of the crater into which the tunnel ran.”
-Sergeant Harold Panabaker, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery
Set in real time, this new play by William Lloyd tells the evocative story of three Canadian students in the First World War in the hour leading up to the monumental Battle of Vimy Ridge.
- May 2025
Expect laughs, laughs, and more laughs...
Footlights bring you the funniest songs, sketches, monologues and stand up in an evening of non-stop, back-to-back fun-filled hilarity. The material is always original and always varied. It can be soft and silly; rude and spikey; wordy and nerdy or a little surreal - whatever the style, it's always "uproariously funny" (Varsity).
- May 2025
Life is precious, life is finite.
Martha doesn’t want to be alone and is unable to face reality in the process of losing her mother Madeline to Alzheimer’s. She turns to the universe for answers to help guide her. Convinced by the power of signs and divine numerological calculations, Martha and her new love interest stand a 98% chance they are destined to be together! But what about the other 2%?
Strangers is about the human need for love and connection, and what happens when a vital bond is threatened or cut off.
- May 2025
What would you do for an Oscar?
Actor/Filmmaker Nick Cohen relives his desperate Hollywood years - a tragicomic true-life Sunset Boulevard.
Nick flees South London and his dysfunctional family to live as a permanent guest in Hollywood with a double Oscar-winner; a man who worked regularly with Orson Welles, promising to get Nick’s film nominated if he follows exact instructions.
'Life with Oscar' upends La La Land in a confessional rollercoaster ride through its dark, twisted underbelly; aptly premiered, at Underbelly, Edinburgh fringe before transferring Off-West End to the Arcola Theatre in London.
‘Nick Cohen is a theatrical and comedic genius... . A one-man army... This is a must see.’ Broadway Baby ★★★★★
'This autobiographical show will keep you laughing for 60 minutes straight... it is physical theatre in its pure form; energetic, intimate and powerful.’ The Broad Online ★★★★★
- March 2025
- March 2025
In the confusing-as-to-how-distant future, the world lies in chaotic disrepair, and a cartoonishly power-hungry government rules over the lower classes (who have had it up to here, honestly). The laws that they enforce are so bizarre and silly that they may as well have been shouted out by an audience. But hope is still alive in the young adults that want to see change in their world. Only they can band together and fight back to bring down the absurd regime under which they live. In The Dystopia Games, you have the opportunity to build a totally new YA-style dystopian future and watch as our improvisers bring it to life! Is everyone divided up by hairstyle? Does the fate of millions come down to a cook-off? Is the world trapped in a big Zorb? You decide!
