- May 2024
Pack your boxers, tape your tits, break your voice and embrace the power of being a silly little man. Get roasted by the psychiatrist for your lack of rizz, get roasted by the national press for being too woke, get roasted by your friends for being bottom of the pecking order. (But there’s nothing wrong with being bottom, even without a prostate.)
Join Cambridge Footlight Kae Deller as he takes you on a madcap journey of trans-masculinity and self-discovery, a journey that will contain doctors, actors, politicians and, embarrassingly, Vulcans.
Warning: Sad monologue about the evils of transphobia not included.
- May 2024
There's my train - Good-bye.
Two strangers' chance encounter, or two lovers' final goodbye: two lives intersecting at Milford Junction station as the 5:43 train departs from the platform.
Still Life by Noël Coward is a deeply touching romance about a fleeting yet tentatively genuine love that provided the basis for the hit movie Brief Encounter in 1945. After meeting and falling in love at a suburban rail station, Alec and Laura meet every Thursday in the refreshment room over tea, debating between respectability or love, and some sentimental moments transpire before they must decide whether to take that leap in the dark.
A poignant tale of forbidden love, polite apologies, and a life left behind.
- May 2024
'The Palace' cabaret club, Berlin, sometime in the late 1920s. A drag performer, their faded mother, the controlling stepfather, a preacher who lives in the basement, a doorman and a patron.
This radical new adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 'Salomé' tells the biblical story in place we've never seen it before as cabaret performer Salomé struggles to maintain her independence in an environment controlled by sex, seeking salvation in the baptist preacher Jonathan, only to be scorned as a "child of Sodom".
A visceral and gut-wrenching tragedy which explores the depths of rejection and fetishisation as queer person.
- May 2024
- May 2024
Before there were knights, there were idiots who thought swinging a sword and being a hero were pretty much interchangeable.
In this original quirky comedy, a group of medieval squires, led by dreamer Lance, grapple with the realities of their lowly existence. When a new squire, Phil, arrives, the group's mundane lives take an unexpected turn. Little do they know that Phil is short for Philippa, and she is running from a past that just might catch up to her.
While Phil tries to hide her identity from what is rapidly becoming the world’s most awkward love triangle, the squires get to work training for an upcoming tournament and engage in the classic debate of magic v. science. A series of disparate events, including inventing the concept of gravity (suck it da Vinci), spirals into a murder that demands an elaborate cover-up.
We are looking for a hilarious and formidable cast and crew for our Corpus run before heading to Fringe. If you are interested in being a part of our company for Cambridge, Edinburgh or both, please apply!
- May 2024
“Am I dying or just going mad?”
It can be uncomfortable to think about death, but when you’re locked in a room with a Corpse, it becomes unavoidable. When the Corpse starts talking to you, it becomes even more so. In a place where life and death can meet, talk, and eat cake together, a Woman and a Corpse get the opportunity to talk some things out, and try to teach each other something about mortality. They have until the sun comes up to fall a bit in love with life, the afterlife, and each other. This bittersweet reimagining of medieval dream vision literature will take you by the hand and gently ask you:
“What do you want to come next?”
For fans of cake, the macabre, and dancing with death.
- April–May 2024
Vignettes is a play of two halves: past and present, fever dream and reality, cause and effect. Frayed at their seams, however, the acts have an intimate yet strained relationship with one another- a tension present amongst the characters themselves. An unflinchingly all-access tour of a tortured psyche, the play tackles masculinity, sexuality, hereditary trauma, adolescence, the vital importance of art and the crushing burden of the past. Told through voices which ring out with continual authenticity, sometimes comfortingly, often chillingly, central to Vignettes is a poignant sense of realism; whilst often choosing to present itself in a surreal lens, the play has human tragedy at its core.
- April 2024
- March 2024
- March 2024
- March 2024
Every term, as part of its suite of new writing programmes, the Marlowe Society runs HATCH - a (sometimes) themed collage of the freshest new writing in Cambridge.
Apart from granting writers the opportunity to see their work put up on stage, it affords directors and actors the chance to easily hone their skills when interpreting scripts, and gives all three groups the chance to work together to create something special. HATCH is envisioned partly as a chance for people from the weekly Marlowe Writers’ Group to edit the writing exercises they have been working on and see them up on stage, but also for writers beyond Marlowe’s programmes to join the fold!
In line with the evening’s history as a low-stakes, relaxed opportunity to get involved with new writing - there will be no applications or auditions, and writers will be accepted on a rolling basis. What there will be are short pieces of new writing, and extracts from longer plays. And a lot of fun to be had by all, whether in the audience or on stage.
- March 2024
A cunning plan is coming to Cambridge…
Cambridge Does Comic Relief: Blackadder Goes Forth presents an adaption of the two best Blackadder episodes: Private Plane & Goodbyeee. You may disagree that these are the best, but you’d be wrong. Set in the trenches of the first world war, this black comedy follows Captain Blackadder's various attempts to escape his fate.
So come and see your favourites - General Melchett, Captain Flashheart, Darling and the rest - we're as excited as a very excited person who has a special reason to be excited for you to see us!
All profits will go to Comic Relief.
- March 2024
Adapted from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, this one-woman show is a closed event, celebrating the 40 Year Anniversary of Women's Matriculation at Corpus Christi College.
- March 2024
- March 2024
Death is at your door – she's only trying to tell you a knock-knock joke!
After a disappointing job interview with the Grim Reaper, Ariel Hebditch must take to the stage to pursue her second, far more stable career path of comedian. In her debut stand-up hour, your resident asexual goth takes you on a whistle-stop tour through her own personal haunted house. From werewolves to vampires to the devil herself, Skeleton Out of the Closet brings you a night of queer joy and the decidedly-more-hard-to-come-by gothic joy as your humerus entertainer promises you the time of your death!
- March 2024
"They've got no sense of what we're trying to achieve here!"
"You've gotta roll with it, you can't just hide yourself away!"
"For someone who's not the captain, you're doing a hell of a lot of captaining..."
It's the worst group project imaginable - and, it's in space.
From the writer of last year's Macroevolution: Variant B, KSOSES is a sci-fi comedy/drama about four astronauts trapped in a training simulation. Isala, Chenruth, Myraden, and Vos may all be individually gifted, but somehow, combined, they bring out the very worst in each other: sulking, pettiness, unbearable passive aggression - all this and much, much more. And, as if working together wasn't hard enough, something about their environment seems off... but how do you escape a simulation from the inside? Come for the sitcom, stay for the epic space adventure.
- March 2024
What's going on? Who am I? Who are you? What are you doing my house? Can you leave? All these questions and more will be answered (or not) in EUREKA!, a brand-new question themed sketch comedy show. We hope you leave the theatre more confused than ever before after an hour of mind-melting comedy, because if there's one thing Cambridge is known for, it's pointless and stupid shenanigans! I think...
- February 2024
What if you code-switch so hard
That you just switch?
That it just becomes the code?
What do you get when you put a Black-British Caribbean working-class woman in a predominantly white institution that seems to be praying on her downfall?
An identity crisis, that’s what.
‘Blackboard’ follows Adina, a headstrong, politically-minded 18-year-old starting her first term at the prestigious Fawcett institute, as she struggles to reconcile her attendance there with her identity. Watch as she attempts to navigate academia, friendship, love, and what seems to be an endless sea of microaggressions while the judging voices of her friends, her melodramatic inner-voice, and the enigmatic Black Council echo.
Will she crumble under the unbearable weight of impostor syndrome and ignorance? Will she remain true to her values, keeping her ‘Black Card’? And what’s up with the mysterious blackboard that seems to track her every mistake?
- February 2024
Liminal Space is Dominika Wiatrowska’s (almost) one-woman show about growing up in Poland, learning English as a second language and moving to the UK alone at the age of sixteen. Join her at the Corpus Playroom for an hour of storytelling, dance, and celebration of Slavic culture.
Learn answers to your burning questions, including: Which city's statue of Jesus reaches higher than that of Rio de Janeiro? How could we redefine the word 'prolific'? And how does it feel like to live life in a Liminal Space?
- February 2024
What do a sham poet, Count Dracula and the London MET have in common? Doggerel is a new comedy play written by Miles Hitchens, which considers the problem of authorship, how words are liable to take on lives of their own and the factors that go into interpreting them. The late Victorian poet Vincent Conquest is struggling to make ends meet. His customers believe his verse to be the key that will reveal their future lives, and he believes he’s fallen to the worst fate a poet can get, the writer of doggerel. That is until the mysterious Count Sorin finds the writings, holding them to be a bona fide confession of vampiredom. The spontaneous scribbler is now implicated in a revenge plot against Bram Stoker and his satirical account of crimes against the vampire race. Will he survive, or will his broken versifying see him slaughtered?
- February 2024
- February 2024
Smörgåsbord is the Corpus Playroom's own eclectic bi-annual 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.
Come and sample a platter of the most exciting new theater in town!
- February 2024
'Place like this - you know this - place like this gets in your blood. Once it's in your blood, you can't get it out.'
One night under Cardiff skies, four lost souls go searching for answers. After dark, when the city is quiet, their paths weave and collide. Their stories may be shocking, their morals may be ambiguous, but they all want salvation. When dawn breaks, their lives will go on, however there will be another night to contend with soon enough. Be prepared for a close-up glimpse into a heartbreaking world of choices and consequences in the Welsh capital. Can anyone really break free from their past?
- February 2024
‘You know, he would’ve done it himself if he could. He would’ve walked the whole way here, dug his own bleeding grave and laid down.’
‘But he didn’t. He asked us to do it instead.’
When Matt dies, he leaves behind a wife, a brother, and extensive instructions on how to make him a bog body. To complete this unusual final request Ada and Chris must first fake his funeral, smuggle his body to a remote Scottish island and finally bury him. Unfortunately, life (or more accurately, death) is never that simple and on this road trip Ada and Chris learn more about Matt, each other, themselves, and bog chemistry than either of them could have bargained for.
- February 2024
“I used to have dreams. Of disappearing into the jungle, and never coming back. And everything in the jungle would be upside down. Tigers would be blue, crows could be pink, mushrooms would glow, and nothing would be normal. But I was so happy in that jungle.”
Racked with homesickness in a strange, vast city, Jia Wei finds herself breaking down in the middle of a 24-hour convenience store -- until she is suddenly rescued by the charming Kim, a fellow customer, who shows her an unexpected kindness.
Soon, they begin to meet there most nights, and a romance quickly develops. Kim is enamoured with her - perhaps a little too much - and Jia Wei is persuaded to move into Kim’s grand mansion, nestled in the Malaysian countryside. However, this utopia turns nightmarish when Kim’s overbearing adoration takes a terrifying turn. Isolated and trapped in Kim’s dark house, will Jia Wei find a way out?
- January–February 2024
Imagine spending 19 years with someone you barely get along with over a single, continuous game of chess. What would you do? How far would you go to dissipate the boredom? In my new minimally-staged, mile-a-minute play, two mathematicians who drifted apart in life argue over and risk everything in death amid furious and hilarious wordplay and wit as a third mathematician and mutual acquaintance threatens to break them apart.
- January–February 2024
This re-staging of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party sees Stanley, a man we come to realise is suffering from dementia, across two days of his life and indeed his own birthday party. As chaos encroaches alongside the mysterious appearance of two sinister strangers, the space of the stage becomes unstable, and Stanley’s illness is reflected in the disorientation and absurdity that follows.
- January 2024
‘I may be a creature, but I am God’s creature!’
Margery Kempe is a normal housewife. She has fourteen children, a useless husband, and no education. But God has chosen her for a very special purpose. She’s been given the gift of tears, and she’s going to make sure you hear them.
As Margery’s raucous and ravishing visions of God begin to derail her life, she starts to attract more and more attention. And soon she’s on trial for heresy. But Margery won’t be quiet, and the visions won’t stop. In fact, they’re becoming more intense.
In this fast-paced, time travelling retelling of the autobiography of one of the Middle Age’s most incredible women, Margery takes to the stage to give us her life in her own words – tears and all.
- January 2024
Archie won’t use the lift. Lily draws on her Underground map. Everyone is afraid of heights and the future is vertical.
It is London between the wars and Archie and Lily have recently moved into one of the city’s first ‘skyscrapers’. Amongst the changing skyline, seen from above and traversed using the Underground network below, the two navigate an existence which places them increasingly further into the sky and deeper into the ground. 'Skylines' maps the attempts of ordinary people to come to terms with both the distance and closeness of their newly vertical lives and what it means to confront the future in a world where everything seems suspended.
- January 2024
What happens when you encounter an invention that could change the world? And who would you destroy to take control of it?
A Professor of linguistics, his prize PHD student and an ambitious computer science postgraduate wrestle for control of a new, logical language which will transform the way we communicate. Jamie Rycroft’s new play for Corkscrew Theatre explores both the current zeitgeist and the age-old human traits of ambition and greed. Let the games begin.
- January 2024
- December 2023
Set in 1997, over fifty years after the war that brought them together, three Special Operations Executive agents meet to record interviews for a television documentary investigating the murder of their colleague at the hands of the Gestapo.
As Leo, Vera and John wait to be interviewed in a beautiful English garden, drinking tea and doing the crossword, pleasantries give way to deeper darker subjects and a web of self-deception, lies and guilt begins to emerge.
Love, revenge and feelings of guilt are at the centre of this fascinating play and in an era when ‘alternative facts’ replace actual facts, we are reminded that the first victim of war is the truth.
- December 2023
- November–December 2023
Calling all intellects! The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is here, and simply aims to perform every single Shakespeare play (there’s 37 of them!) in 97 minutes.
This uproarious and highly physical sketch comedy takes the audience on a breath-taking and whiplash-inducing rollercoaster through all of the Bard’s magnificent plays, presenting them in a way you never have seen, or even imagined, them before. Importantly, the play is extremely spontaneous and appears to the audience as almost an improvisation. Mistakes are scripted, the fourth wall is demolished and there is fabulous audience participation. Wildly funny and with madcap actors running around, this show will be fantastic fun.
- November 2023
One tragic night, three separate accounts of the same story ... but which one is real, if any are at all? Witnesses are only human, and no matter how hard one tries, emotion and past experience will always cloud the way in which we remember. Inspired by the work of Frantic Assembly and Florian Zeller, this devised piece will take you on a creative journey of speech, physicality and technical exploration to venture in the less-well defined spaces of theatre in a truly unique performance.
https://www.instagram.com/lighthouse_corpus/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
- November 2023
The Hair Shop is a play that shines a light on the black feminine experience.
It discusses the trials and tribulations that black British girls go through growing up in England, and the ways in which sisterhood and community aid them through it. These events mostly play out in The Hair Shop - a setting that is emblematic of the black feminine experience to so many.
The play enables a glimpse at experiences that are often lived quietly and redirects attention towards the struggles that are ignored. Whilst doing this, tension is alleviated by comedy and a beautiful friendship that lightens the mood of the play, showing how essential these relationships are to these communities.