- November 2019
From members of the Cambridge Footlights comes a brand new immersive sketch show. The Wrecking Ball is a comedy show based around the breaking of the fourth wall. Join us in the six walled Corpus Playroom for an hour of sketches, songs and friendly lighthearted discourse. We’ll break the wall, break our legs and maybe even break your hearts (probably not though).
The Wrecking Ball is a comedy show that plays with the relationship a comedy audience has with its performers.
Also we really need some friends.
- November 2019
Ben and Oscar have been best friends since the first day of school. They have grown up together, experiencing all the trials and tribulations of childhood and puberty by each other’s sides. Now, as young adults, they meet again for the first time in years. Their history may remain unspoken, but how long can they go before their past catches up with them?
Big Boys Don’t Cry explores manhood and puberty, and how we try to convince ourselves that we’re doing just fine.
- November 2019
When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on his estate beside the paw prints of a gigantic hound, the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Dr Watson must travel to Dartmoor to unravel the mystery, and investigate the ancient curse of the Baskervilles. It should be elementary, but with seventeen characters, over thirty props, and only three actors juggling them all, we can promise it will be entertaining!
Packed with verbal ingenuity and slapstick comedy, this farcical retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic novel ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is as relentless as it is hilarious. Prepare for a detective story like no other, as this ridiculous romp through the desolate moors will leave you howling with laughter.
- October–November 2019
THAT long-running show about four mystery-solving teens - and their infamous dog - is on its last legs. Now in their 40s, the gang face their toughest cases yet: spectres of midlife crises, demons of double-divorce, and ghouls of child-actor syndrome.
. . . . . .
Having been cast in their teens in the hit kids mystery TV show Meddlin’ Kids, Frank (the leader), Darcy (the hot one), Veruca (the clever one), Humpy (the stoner) and Robert Dubois (the dog) have been straitjacketed into playing the same roles over and over, season after season. It’s always the same old story: show up at a crime scene, question the locals, monster, chase sequence, set a trap, unmask the monster, and let the credits roll. It’s been 25 years, but now out of nowhere the network decides not to renew Meddlin’ Kids for its expected 26th season.
At their final ever wrap party party, the gang all look back at what they’ve achieved, and desperately look towards the future. All seems hopeless - that is, until one final, REAL mystery rears its head, a mystery that goes back 25 years and ties the studio to some dodgy dealings. The gang, whose off-screen dynamic has long-since eroded away over the years, will need to step into their on-screen roles one last time.
A brand new piece of devised comedy theatre coming to the Cambridge from its run at the Edinburgh Fringe! Written and directed by ex-Footlight and self-proclaimed Scoob-Nut Will Bicknell-Found.
- October–November 2019
"Like mushrooms, babies grow in rubbish."
Dennis Kelly's debut play enters into the insane world of siblings Michael and Michelle. The play follows their dysfunctional relationships with their family, themselves and each other. Michelle can't make sense of how their Mum died whilst Michael attempts to work through his relationship with his father. As they both try to navigate and make sense of their troubled past, the stories and events build to a shocking crescendo. Painful, emotional and disturbing, 'Debris' offers a dark view of the world through the eyes of Michelle and Michael that won't be easily forgotten.
- October 2019
The iconic night of new student writing is back for one night only in the Corpus Playroom.
Get ready to laugh, cry, and have your thoughts provoked by this fresh crop of new Cambridge theatre.
- October 2019
"If you're there, I want to talk. If not... that's fine. I want to talk anyway."
Valerie's sure that she knows what happened the day that Dean and Melanie died. An accident took the lives of the two people she loved most in the world, and she was left to pick up the pieces and try to move on. If one last conversation would help her get on with her life, isn't it worth a try? Even if both of them have two very different accounts of the tragedy, and she's given more questions instead of answers? It's amazing what you can achieve with some electric candles, an empty beer bottle, and some photographs.
Produced in association with Fletcher Players
- October 2019
On the eve of one of the most important games of his career, Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas received a warning: The Sun newspaper was going to “out” him as gay.
This is the story of two Welsh names bruised, but not beaten, by media speculation; Gareth “Alfie” Thomas, 100 caps for Wales, once its captain, now the world’s most prominent gay sportsman; and his hometown, Bridgend.
Working with Alfie himself, and young people in Bridgend, two of the UK’s most exciting theatre companies – National Theatre Wales and Out of Joint – teamed up to tell a great Welsh story about sport, politics, secrets, life and learning to be yourself.
- October 2019
Footlights bring you the funniest songs, sketches, monologues and stand-up in an hour 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 spiky, wordy and nerdy, or a little surreal. Whatever the style, it's always 'uproariously funny' (Varsity).
- October 2019
Am I a virgin? I think I am. I mean it went in her but it was floppy and it wasn’t very nice so I think I am a virgin. I’m going to say I am. Will look better on me uni applications.
Liverpool, 1989. Greg is fourteen. He's always causing trouble with his best mate Tom. He hates school. Girls are f**king weird. Liverpool FC are everything.
Bottleneck is a gritty one-person show which tracks the days leading up to the FA cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest; a game no longer synonymous with football, but rather with scape-goating, police negligence and the unlawful death of 96 innocent people.
It is a play about a notorious city and how, after Greg's fifteenth birthday, it will never be the same again.
- October 2019
‘Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language, I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba’
Phonetician Henry Higgins has got a project: to transform cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a duchess of high society. However, the one thing he doesn’t realise is that his ‘creation’ has a mind and a life of her own, and he can’t simply throw her back into the gutter when he's finished with his experiment.
A witty and slapstick reworking of the classical tale Pygmalion, this play is also a cutting attack against the treatment of women by men and the British class system.
Founded in 2017, we are a non-profit, student-run organisation representing some of the best theatrical, creative and technical talent the University of Cambridge has to offer. For the month of September we tour across the UK and East Asia performing and providing workshops in venues, schools and universities. It is our aim to open up cultural dialogues through lively performances and interactive workshops. We have the support of Oscar winning Emma Thompson (an ex Cambridge Footlight) as our patron and participants will be working with some of the most prestigious institutions in each of the countries.
It is a fantastic opportunity to put together a production that will be staged internationally, while exploring some incredible places on a highly subsidised tour. It's an unmissable project if you're interested in theatre beyond Cambridge, education or culture/cultural diplomacy.
- October 2019
Manon Lever’s life has been one long struggle to fit in, but now, armed with her uniquely dark sense of humour, along with several hours of therapy, she brings you her debut hour of stand-up in which she challenges the concept of normality. In this love letter to self-acceptance, Manon Lever guides the audience through the minefield of social interaction, reminiscing on embarrassing romantic endeavours, an unfortunate flirtation with song-writing, and a woefully misguided foray into self-help websites, all through the prism of mental health. Manon Lever is different, she is strange, she doesn’t fit in: Manon Lever is just like you.
- October 2019
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s gripping and compelling story is retold through this powerful one-man musical drama.
- September 2019
- September 2019
Dare you sit in the chair?
The year is 1900, two rival barristers have proposed to the same woman, Lucy. One of them presents the other with a gift, an old antique chair, that has a dark and sinister past. The chair can supposedly take your soul, and your life...
118 years later, the same chair is found in an abandoned theatre where four friends meet for an ill-fated reunion. Romantic jealousy and a tragedy 25 years ago begin to pull them apart. Is the chair really cursed, or when the first of them dies, is something far less supernatural happening?
- July 2019
“All brains and no blood…well that’s just no good for anyone.”
Emily and Andy said they were soulmates, but the music of their blood broke them apart. How will a chance reunion impact their lives now they’re “all grown up”? A gently comic exploration of friendship, love, sex and meaning.
In July of 2019 WRiTEON will be producing an entire festival of one act plays. There will be six new plays staged across three venues. This is one of those six plays. Every play will be fully-staged and fully rehearsed.
- July 2019
Shelagh is in her thirties. She has everything she could wish for: a healthy and fit body, a long-term relationship, a job with prospects of promotion, parents close by … But she lives in a competitive world, where everyone wants more, has more, achieves more. Shelagh doesn’t own her home, she doesn’t have children, she doesn’t run the company … Trying to keep up in a world where only the fittest survive, she absorbs the neoliberalist “friendships” and takes her mother’s ambitions on herself. At the same time, she is trying to run away. She runs, she exercises, she goes to the gym every day. Her obsession to work out becomes a form of self-harming. But is she willing to give up the core of who she is so that she could have it all?
Sink or Swim 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
- July 2019
- July 2019
- July 2019
Jessica has a habit of stealing your pens, Ken makes personal phone calls, and Rachida enjoys talking about her holiday home in Marbella.
Whether you work in a hospital, in a nightclub or in a nursery school, we all know what it’s like when the people around you are, well, just being themselves.
The Ministry of Unplanned Occurrences invites you to join us for an improvised show where we explore the occupational hazards of being a human in the workplace.
- June 2019
'I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence open and inside there are three women I’ve seen before.'
Three old friends and a neighbour. A summer of afternoons in the back yard. Tea and catastrophe.
From award-winning playwright Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone combines neighbourly chit-chat with visions of apocalyptic horror. Providing a uniquely female version of the Armageddon, four seemingly normal women sit down for a chat over tea over several summer afternoons; but what emerges about each of their pasts, as well as what lies in store for them, could never be expected.
- June 2019
Three women. One beach. One conversation.
Written in her distinctly rhythmical prose, debbie tucker green's 'trade' examines the ways in which we financially and emotionally trade with each other. On the hot sands of an idyllic Caribbean resort, three women discover how their lives are connected by a single man in a fascinating examination of the relationship between first and third world countries, tourism and the power struggle between women.
- June 2019
"We stand and serve, we grin and smile,
We serve to please, and all the while
We do, we burn up deep inside
With all the pain we're meant to hide."
Yorkshire. It's the height of the Thatcherite era and cocktail bars are opening in every town across the country.
Welcome to Shakers! That trendy bar in the main street where the neon light shines out tempting passers-by. That place where dreams come true. Where time stands still, where everyone wants to be seen, from the checkout girls to the chinless yuppies, from the newlyweds to the local lads.
Then there's Carol, Adele, Niki and Mel.
Shakers gives a wickedly funny glimpse of this familiar world as seen through the eyes of these four long-suffering waitresses, offering a fascinating view of the harsh reality that lurks behind the glitzy decor and Piña Coladas.
- June 2019
- May–June 2019
Two comedic/romantic/bizarre solo shows back to back; ‘Lanky Olive’ and ‘Broken Flowers’ create ‘Love, Cats and Bill Murray’
- May 2019
- May 2019
'Bicameral' is a split-hour of stand-up from graduating Cambridge Footlight Isambard Dexter and Computer Science PhD candidate Jovan Singh Powar. As 2 young brown boys growing up in the early 2000s, unsurprisingly they have a lot in common. However, their comedy styles are strikingly different! They've joined forces to take on the one thing they're both concerned about: brands using Twitter. Or rather, how we need to be aware of the level to which technology is ingrained in our social lives (for better or worse). Far from being the old man down the pub who maintains that The World Wide Web increases fecklessness and idolatry in the youth, 'Bicameral' advocates for a sensible look at the virtual world in which we all live and how it is constructed.
- May 2019
Doctor Faustus is irreverent, chaotic and riotous fun. In a post-theistic age, the play ask questions of the modern conception of humanism: is immortality an achievable goal in the 21st century? What constitutes personal fulfilment, and to what lengths will one go – and should one go – to achieve it?
Faustus experiences hallucinogenic highs, balanced against moments of personal crisis and breakdown. With original compositions and jazz funk choreography, this show recollects something of the spectacular quality of the ‘Marlowe effect’ experienced by the play’s original audience.
Embrace the chaotic world of Faustus’ creation - and all its implications.
- May 2019
Star of BBC Radio 4’s Chinese Comedian and E4’s The Hangover Games, Ken Cheng returns to Cambridge with a preview of his next Edinburgh show “To All the Racists I've Blocked Before”.
Using racism he’s received from Twitter trolls as a jumping-off point, Ken explores racism in all its forms from the unique position of a British-born Chinese, ex-Cambridge mathematician dropout and professional poker player.
Accolades include:
BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show
Comedy Central at the Comedy Store
Dave Joke of the Fringe 2017 winner
Amused Moose Best Show Nominee 2018
One of The Guardian’s Best Edinburgh Shows 2018
- May 2019
Abstract, tenuously connected scenes related in some-way-shape-or-form to the word "party". Party conferences, house parties, dinner parties, big organized parties (BOPs), you name it, and we'll throw it. Featuring sketches, stand-up routines and short-odd-musical numbers, from the perspectives of the politician to the table-lamp, the party never stops (at least until the hour's up). A show made by freshers for everyone - grab those limited tickets, avoid the FOMO, and join the party.
- May 2019
“The plague bacillus never actually dies. It never disappears - not entirely”. From Camus’ novel, in an unnamed city, it has reared its head and sent forth its rats. The screaming becomes normal, the gates are locked, families and lovers have been cut off; now all there is to do is identify, diagnose, condemn and file. Faced with inevitable doom, humanity chooses to fight or resign, asking what we all want to - ‘can there be hope without meaning?’.
We bear witness to the retrospective inquiry into these events. Our protagonist, Dr Rieux, is torn between the personal and the official, bureaucracy ultimately hindering the inquiry and his healing. Camus’ original may have been a response to Nazi invasion, but now this electrifying adaptation makes it applicable to our personal and societal descent into chaos.
“What it is that you learn when you live through a time of plague… there is more to admire about people than to despise or despair of”.
- May 2019
Wowee! The Middle Child is a sketch show about the FAMILY. We are looking for a small cast of comedians to audition for this extra-super-fun sketch show expose into what can be ridiculous about family life - the mundane, the ordinary, the sometimes extraordinary, your grandma's whiskey habit (no? just me?) ANYWAYS
A five-man sketch comedy show that will focus on the ‘nuclear’ family. The show will centre on the middle child and the trope of what it means to be compared constantly, overlooked, and lacking attention. make some funny funnies, ridiculing what the perfect family looks like and how they deal with the issues of kids growing up.
- May 2019
King Agamemnon is long dead. His wife and her new boyfriend were his murderers. But his children are starting to come of age- children who grew up surrounded by death and conflict. Electra who grieves, bloodthirsty Orestes, and Chrysothemis, who has moved on too quickly.
With a score of original electronic music, and a chorus of slam poets, this brand new adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy injects an urgent profundity into Electra's fraught psyche.
This is the tale of a young girl, floored by the crosswinds of her feuding family, grappling with loneliness, abandon, and a debilitating desire for revenge.
"Blood might be thicker than water, but it's got nothing on dust."
- May 2019
Sir Trevor Brierly — writer, director, philanthropist, plasterer — was many things to many people. But to his colleagues Michaelmas Crouch and Patio Horse, he was a friend above all.
Patio and Michaelmas host a memorial service in tribute to the life and works of their late companion, featuring an array of guests, from family members to former lovers, each of whom has a story to tell.
‘Masterful character comedy from two of Cambridge’s premier Footlights’ (Varsity)
- April–May 2019
Join Gen, Rohan and Harry for a night of delicious shepherd’s pie!
Unfortunately their beef mince has been in the freezer since 2010 and will take 45-60 minutes to defrost. In the meantime, they’ve written some sketches and songs to entertain you, your friends, and, most importantly, themselves. Come on down to the Corpus Playroom as they try and simultaneously warm up the meat for their dinner and the meat of your heart.
