- March 2023
“Je t’aime…Je t’aime…Je t’aime…”
One woman, One telephone. In the middle of her room, a young woman awakes next to her telephone, waiting for a call from her ex-lover. After many wrong numbers, he finally gets through. Over the 40-minute call, Elle delves into their past in search for the truth as we watch her spiral into despair. The connection cuts out, the line between truth and fiction becomes blurred, and a confident woman crumbles as her misery and paranoia overtake her. Based on the play by the same name, Poulenc's powerful one-woman opera La Voix Humaine tells of the importance of human connection, and the fear we all share of being alone.
- March 2023
Following its initial run as a rehearsed reading in October 2022, this new student written play will be staged as a Corpus Mainshow in March 2023
Sam is gay, Sam is Catholic, and Sam's mother doesn't think he should be dating his boyfriend. An exploration of the intersection between faith and sexuality, 'Greater Than Ourselves' engages with a mother and son's endeavour to define what love truly means to them.
- March 2023
…Yeah, we realise how that looks. Let the record show- Going Down is a strictly platonic show.
See, you can only fit so many things within your average two by four metre moving box. A bad boy like that can squeeze in a good sized group- we’ll say seven, maybe eight people. The odd petty power struggle, for sure. A bit of room for some weirdly consistent references to diuretics. And some straight up murder. That’s just good business. But sexual innuendo? Fuggedaboutit!
Take all of that and you’ve got Going Down, a very not serious drama which has a real disregard for keeping the British lexicon consistent. (The word ‘lift’ simply has zero gravitas and we will not be apologising for that at this time). When a group of strangers find themselves shut in an elevator for the foreseeable future, they must navigate the trials of survival, power play and how many times you can ask someone to turn down their phone volume before you look like the unreasonable one.
It’s the kind of situation that can only end well!
For at least one whole person!
- February–March 2023
Lizzie Borden is one of America’s most famous murderers. Or is she?
Five years after Lizzie was proclaimed not guilty for the brutal murder of her parents, the night of the their deaths still haunts her. Lizzie is drinking with her new friend The Actress when she suggests recreating the night in question. But what’s real? What’s acting? Jumping between two time-frames, Sharon Pollock’s eery play asks us to question how misogyny villianizes women, asking who the victim and villain really is here, and leaves you wondering whether we could all be driven to murder under the right circumstances.
- February 2023
According to traditional Chinese beliefs, a person cannot rest in peace and enter their next life if their soul is not brought back home after death. However, this simple requirement is impossible to meet for a group of women: the victims of human (in particular, marriage) trafficking. This age-old, outrageous crime has made them lose their home not just physically, but culturally as well. To save these wandering souls, a girl decided to dedicate herself to helping them find the way home, while her own identity remains a mystery even to her closest companion. Each represented by a kind of flower with special symbolism in Chinese culture, this play focuses on the stories of four women who are from different social backgrounds, different ethnicities, and even different time periods in Chinese history, yet share the same trauma. As they unveil their tragic memories to us, their narration is incorporated with classic poems, traditional dance and music, thus the beauty of Chinese culture is presented alongside various misogynistic aspects of Chinese society, and here raises the question: where does the root of this crime actually lie in?
- February 2023
- February 2023
Don’t miss out on the return of the Fletcher Players’ freshers play as they join the Greek God of wine Dionysus on his journey to the underworld to save theatre. First performed in Athens in 405 BC this surviving Aristophanes comedy follows a colourful cast and has jokes galore ranging from the subtle and politically critical to the ever-classic toilet humour.
- February 2023
"If someone could just tell me, I’d use the guide for every single second of every single day. I’m just so tired of not being able to— I just don’t feel like a person"
WINNER OF THE MARLOWE OTHER PRIZE 2022
Her Very Many Faces explores the lies we tell to be loved a little more, and how these lies destabilise our relationships with things, people and places. Wider social structures, such as class and gender, condition the lies that the protagonist (Her) tells, as she struggles to move between her home life with elderly, working-class parents, and her university life among privileged students. Her eating disorder becomes the only thing she can control as she grapples with her sense of self. But when Her's lies begin to dissolve, perhaps she can find comfort in the truth of who she is.
- February 2023
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 2023
A robot walks into a convent. What could go wrong?
Electric Rosary imagines a not-too-distant future in which human-looking robots are employed in farms, hospitals, even churches. Acting Mother Elizabeth’s decision to open St Grace’s Convent to one of these robots, Mary, elicits mixed responses from her sisters (in spite of the council bursary which comes with the robot, a sizable sum they need to travel to their sister convent in Ecuador). As Mary’s presence exacerbates tensions among the nuns, the struggle for power within the convent echoes unrest across Britain, where Luddites protesters have started attacking and destroying robots.
‘And that celebration is running through my fingers to my toes, through my boots and up my habit to my hymn book and my rosary. Electricity. That’s what a prayer is.'
Hysterically funny and profoundly moving, Electric Rosary blurs the line between women and machines in a poignant exploration of faith, technology and of what it means to be human.
- February 2023
Sammy, Jason and Teddy, grow up together. Strange concrete places become forests, and the world is big. They find imaginary friends in between these spaces; mirror images of themselves that take them to the world next door.
Then they grow up. Certain doors shut and are brick bound again. Teddy goes missing and his absence causes a rift between them throughout the years that threatens to break them and the fragile lives they've made for themselves.
Sammy and Jason find that the world has moved on without taking them with it.
But as they grow older, neither of them can shake the feeling that someone else is watching them. The world next door is whispering and their imaginary friends don't want to be forgotten.
- February 2023
"I wanted you to have opportunities I couldn't ever have given you".
"No, you didn't. You wanted your own life more than you wanted mine!"
Against the backdrop of the huge social changes of twentieth century England, four generations of women navigate the incredibly complex and difficult relationships between mothers and daughters. Doris, Margaret, Jackie and Rosie are forced to try and reconcile their varying social roles, responsibilities, and the generational burdens they have placed on one another, as they all struggle against impossible societal expectations across the century.
Keatley’s incredibly powerful, emotive and captivating piece is the most performed English play written by a woman. Delving into themes such as teenage pregnancy, familial guilt, duty and above all, sacrifice, it asks us to think about how the decisions and emotional entanglements of family affect generations, and fundamentally what it means to be a mother.
- February 2023
Macroevolution, Variant B is a feel-good comedy/drama about a longlasting three-way friendship.
Three shy freshers meet at a board games night in the university of York, and agree to play the fiendish Macroevolution, Variant B together. This meeting blossoms into a close friendship, over which the group keep playing Macroevolution on and off, for many years, until their lives start moving along different tracks.
Can they help each other navigate the choppy seas of their twenties? Can any of them understand the game’s opaque, pretentious rules enough to win it? Can they keep in touch, or are things coming to a natural close? This original play documents the highs, lows, arguments, and stupid-yet-hilarious banter that you get when three introverts join forces against the world.
- January–February 2023
“You can't understand it, but I was born to be a queen. And I wasn't raised I was built: I was built to be this thing, and now they're killing me for it.”
Spoiled, pretty, rich – Marie Antoinette has it all. Except her friends are fake, her husband is incompetent, the French people are baying for her blood, and a strange sheep keeps reminding her of her impending death. Totally. Not. Cool.
Playwright David Adjmi offers a new take on the iconic and tragic queen of France in a sharply written, strikingly pertinent play that is as sour as it is sweet.
- January 2023
‘Thank you for reaching out'
In a world increasingly disconnected from itself, Alex finds connection on the phone, telling their most intimate thoughts to a stranger.
Exploring the ways we love, lie and empathise, YOUR CALL is a play about the use and abuse of helplines, told through a series of phone calls. To an underscoring of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, we follow our protagonist Alex come to terms with family trauma from the safety of their apartment, addicted to the sound of that first ‘Hello, how can I help?’.
YOUR CALL is the debut play from writer Hayley Canham, whose previous work includes the five star musical ‘Medea The Musical’, which was performed in 2022 to sold out audiences at The Town and Gown Theatre in Cambridge and Paradise Green at Edinburgh Fringe
- January 2023
These things she knows to be true: she is fat, she is a woman, she is trans, she loves clubbing, she hates her body, she likes sex, sometimes, men don’t like her, except for Anders.
She is forced to navigate a world which constantly pushes her to the side, with wit and charm along the way. Find the answers to important questions like: How do you love? How do you have good sex? How do you party hard? How do you learn to accept the body society has told you to hate? What happens when your world gets turned upside down? How do you recover from rock bottom?
- January 2023
"I think that I could be in love with someone like you..."
Jamie and Cathy’s relationship is over five years after they first met. Both have their stories to tell from meeting to breaking up, but while Jamie follows the events chronologically, Cathy traces the relationship backwards. With alternating songs, the pair meet only once in this sung-through musical, exploring themes of marriage, career ambitions and what it means to be in love.
Humorous yet poignant, at times heart-warming and at times heart-breaking, The Last Five Years encourages us to see the complexities within modern relationships, and ultimately consider whether we are right to do the things we do for love.
Accompanied by a powerful score, the Last Five Years moves between hilarious comedy songs and tender, emotional ballads to produce a whirlwind picture of Jamie and Cathy’s relationship, told through both their lenses
- January 2023
- December 2022
- December 2022
- November–December 2022
Leave your prudishness at the door. Let’s talk taboo.
Welcome to the Garden of Eden, where trees and flowers abound. But there are no snakes here.
We all know that Eve was tempted and caused The Fall. Since then, women have been taught to view their bodies with shame. But what if it never happened…?
A vibrant and colourful exploration of sex and self-hood, this devised piece of theatre imagines womankind if humans never fell to earth. fruit(ful) is an anthology of the experiences of womanhood which tackles new and old ideas in order to bear fruit.
- November–December 2022
‘Why do you think I asked you to peel the orange?’
‘To see what colour it was inside.’
‘And what colour was it? In your own words. Without any help from me.’
‘In my own words. Blue.’
In a London psychiatric hospital, a patient is coming to the end of his 28 day section time. But when he claims to be the son of an African dictator, and that the orange in front of him is bright blue, his psychiatrists begin to question his unnerving story.
Blue/Orange is an incendiary tale of race, madness and a Darwinian power struggle at the heart of a dying National Health Service.
- November 2022
This story follows the experience of Sophia, a young GCSE student from West London who has a passion for rapping but is forced to navigate the effects postcode tensions have on her family whilst also trying to find herself. Whether she is lying to herself, her best friend, or her brothers, she learns that despite the truth hurting, it also heals.
- November 2022
- November 2022
Anton Antonovich, corrupt mayor of an unnamed Russian town, loves authority - but hates responsibility. So, naturally, when he learns that an anonymous Government Inspector has been sent to visit the town, he panics. Discovering that a bureaucrat newly arrived from St. Petersburg has been set up in the local inn at the crown’s expense, the mayor and his cronies go to extreme lengths to appease him.
Considered one of the greatest satirical plays of all time, Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Government Inspector’ still serves as a cautionary tale for those seeking power and authority.
- November 2022
Field of Folk invites you to enter the psychedelic dreams of one aspiring musician, meeting his own mind on his tortured quest to find Truth. Led through his mind by Imagination, his dreams — a mix of the childlike fantasies of Lewis Carroll and 60s psychedelia — set him on a winding path to rediscover his own voice, even in a world which has lost its song.
- November 2022
The writer’s hands are stained with ink and the page they write on is blank. They cannot push the words from inside them, out. This is when they are visited by Theuth, the god of writing. Theuth arrives in a flurry of darkness and an outpouring of words and offers them the gift of writing in exchange for a part of their life. They accept the offer and begin to write once more, again and again. But Theuth is constantly watching them from the shadows, and he is not a kind god. The writer is caught in a desperate act with the knowledge of Theuth’s return. And, when he does return - ...
This narrative is devised and experimental - it cannot be written down.
- November 2022
You are civilian — Now. But what if you have never been one before? What if your entire adult life has been combat-based? How do you learn to exist within a society that does not require your skills?
What you’ve been trained to do is useless — Are you useless?
As you try to navigate this now unrecognisable world that abandoned you, your past intercuts your present. Have you seen your friends die over there? Have you seen your friends die here? What have you done? And why?
Which rituals did they make you engage in that stopped from one second to the next — Rituals considered torture anywhere else? You believed what they told you: you will become legends — heroes — over there. But it was all a myth; and it’s too late now.
What if you could write a letter about your experiences? A letter to someone who understands? Someone who shares the same scar you do?
But what if you caused their wounds?
Solifuge thinks about the lived realities of being a veteran once you are back home. Trying to understand your experiences and how to move on, this play explores what it means to be haunted by your past and how you deal with that. We follow Corporal Simons as he writes a letter to a child he saw in Iraq. But in the end, the question remains: will anyone ever read this letter?
- November 2022
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!
- November 2022
The stories follows four people of colour, unconnected in all ways except for their melanin. We watch them reveal their innermost struggles and joys to a chorus and see how they are welcomed but occasionally shunned by their own.
It is a celebration and warning about the tensions that define black culture. These stories are personal and intimate markers about the Black Women. It is infused with movement that breathes life into the play.
- November 2022
In a study of the psychic torture we inflict upon society and ourselves, three people find out Hell is a room full of nothing but each other.
Garcin, Estelle, and Inèz are brought to Hell by a mysterious valet and are pleased to find themselves in a nicely furnished room. But what will happen as they begin to discuss the lives they led? Sartre explores perception and existence in this engaging, witty play.
- October 2022
N.B. this show has been cancelled
A new, student-written horror, ‘Edward’ tackles questions of democracy, our histories, and guilt. John and Billy happen upon each other at an Old Boys event for their college; John’s an admiral and Billy a politician but how exactly the country should be governed is a point of contention. As they reconnect, the spectre of their past begins to haunt them. Their guilt begins to bubble up, as do homoerotic tensions, and they are forced to relive their darkest days of university. Experimenting with the boundary between theatre and performance art, this play aims to unsettle whilst questioning on what kind of men have we built the foundation of our country.
- October 2022
“Do you see it? You see the bug? It’s feeding. It’s feeding off my blood.”
In a motel room in Oklahoma, Agnes is looking for comfort beyond her next fix. She finds it in local drifter Peter, who brings with him an unexpected guest in the form of a live egg sack underneath his skin. What follows is a feverish tale of twisted love, conspiracy and the contagion of paranoia.
- October 2022
"Do not let him finish this case. For the sake of his own health and yours..."
Thorgil was a world-renowned detective. A charming paragon of justice with a mansion, books written about him, and even his own thinking scarf!
Now he is an old man. Alone in a house too big for him and a world that sees him as nothing more than a cheesy sell-out.
But when he finds out that he is dying of unknown causes nothing else is on Thorgil’s mind except a mystery to be solved, and a legacy to be rebuilt.
This new original drama by Frederick Upton takes the iconic murder mystery genre and flips it completely on its head – exploring the dynamics of legacies, role models and swollen egotism- and poses the question of ‘what do we do when we see our old heroes grow too grey and senile for their own good?’
- October 2022
Love, betrayal and revenge behind the scenes of a production of Othello, against the political turmoil of Jim-Crow America, set in the hotels the cast stay in whilst on tour.
- October 2022
After meeting at a pet cemetery, divorce lawyer Bernadette and free-spirited musician Oliver start to date. But their relationship is tested when a new law is enforced: citizens are only permitted to speak 140 words a day. As their regular relationship develops against the backdrop of a dystopian political experiment, we ask ourselves: can a relationship survive on tapping out messages in morse code? How do you argue with your partner when you’ve got a word limit? And what happens to words when there is so much to say and so little freedom?
