- July 2021
In 1875, a former sailor set out from Dover pier on a quest no-one thought possible. Twenty-two hours later, he had swum his way to fame. This one man show, written and performed by Chris Hudson, brings to the stage the extraordinary true-life story of Captain Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the English Channel. Follow his rivalries with fellow swimmers, the glorious triumph of his pioneering Channel swim, his increasingly futile attempts to capitalise on the resulting fame, and finally his tragic demise in a swimming stunt gone wrong. An inspiring history of athletic endeavour, and an early cautionary tale of the perils of fame.
- June 2021
Charlene is having a tea party, and all of Cambridge is invited!
Has a year of social distancing left you low? Struggling to make it through a month of online exams? Or maybe you missed out on love in lockdown...
Whatever your worries, don’t leave them at the door - bring them inside!
Dragtime!’s Charlene Collins is the Dragony Aunt of your dreams, and she’s ready to set the world to rights over a good ol’ cuppa. For one special night, step into the comfort of her private parlour, where secrets are shared and nothing is off limits.
This intimate and interactive drag show is your chance to get all the answers that you need. There’ll be music, mayhem, and madness - but rest assured: Charlene is leaving no stone unturned to find the tastiest tea Cambridge has to offer.
- June 2021
Eddie and Niall meet by chance on an unremarkable street in Manchester. Eddie’s trying to break into the film industry, Niall’s at uni. They strike up the unlikeliest of friendships, and before long they’re living together. They’re happy, until life takes an unexpected turn for both of them, and their differences threaten to tear their friendship apart. This is a play about connection, isolation, perspective and life drawing gone wrong.
- June 2021
Dan Bishop is currently writing in the third person to inform you that this comedy show will last roughly an hour and only contain one joke. If you like jokes, that’s great as he’s got one for you and if you don’t like jokes, well that’s fine too, you’ve only got to sit through one and then we can all go home and face-time our loved ones. Oh, and it’s all in the third person. Sort of.
Anyway, Dan’s a Cambridge Footlight if that sweetens the deal, if not, I’m afraid not many established news outlets have ever said much about our boy Dan. Varsity once called him ‘brilliant’? A butcher he once met outside a nightclub once told him to ‘call him’? Is that helpful? Also - the show will be better than this blurb. Dan believes strongly that blurbs are brilliant opportunities to set the bar low.
- June 2021
Eat the Rich (but maybe not my mates)
Jade Franks’ debut stand up hour will be honest, high energy and brutally hypocritical.
Previous work of Jade's has been described as:
'The best piece of student theatre I have ever been fortunate enough to see...high energy, humorous, cheeky and straightforward' (Varsity)
'Jade Franks industrious in their vigour...always engrossing the audience.' (The Cambridge Student)
- June 2021
“Why make me “human”, if all I’m meant to do is work for people?”
“Well, that’s all a lot of humans do.”
“I don’t think it’s what humans are meant to do.”
Beatrice has just managed something amazing: she’s designed Andy, an Artificial Intelligence created to work in customer service. However, she thought the best way to make them realistic was to release them onto the internet, and now Beatrice has got a problem: Andy thinks they’re human, and all they want is to go to San Francisco.
- June 2021
This is a retelling of the childhood classic Peter Pan. And it is nothing like the original.
20-years-old, jobless, fatherless, partnerless, almost friendless and definitely on the verge of some kind of meltdown, we follow a woman, who acts like a child that wants to be an adult, and who has tried and promptly failed to run away from reality, figuring out her identity, her family, and whether she can ever, actually, just manage, for a minute, to stop…and breathe.
TW: reference to eating disorders
- June 2021
- May 2021
CW: Sexual Assault
The Passion is a new piece of student writing about sexual assault and relationships. Set in a student flat in Cambridge, the play follows the reconciliation of Dan and Tony, a former university couple, over a single afternoon during Freshers Week. However, when it is revealed that Dan’s motives concern an incident which occurred during their relationship, the afternoon soon becomes a heated discussion about memories, self-deception, and the realities of assault. The Passion is a story about the things that go unsaid in a relationship, and the implications we make of other people. It features a cast of two, and is comprised of three acts.
- May 2021
CN: sexual assault, addiction
With lush and sensual language, Goblin Market celebrates and explores the complexity of sexuality and love.
Two Sisters, Laura and Lizzie, struggle against the oppression and control of nineteenth century England in an otherworldly and yet familiar landscape.
Laura is tempted to eat the goblin's fruit and subsequently becomes ill and tortured by addiction. Lizzie lets the goblins abuse her so that she can rejuvenate her sister.
Goblin Market affirms these sisters’ bravery, solidarity and strength.
- May 2021
CN: sexual assault, rape, disassociation
Permanent Marker is an original student-written one-person play. It is an exploration of a woman’s fragmented response to rape and the imperfection of memory. As the piece develops the sense of a solid story/timeline disintegrates using the experience of disassociation. Her memory jumps back and forth as her sense of self disconnects, and she becomes overwhelmed by the potential beauty of her trauma.
- November 2020
'A pool, she had a pool. Of all of us the most – at least in the eyes of this so-called world – the most successful of us.'
Mark Ravenhill's 'pool (no water)' is a dark and twisted tale of the jealousy that drives a group of artists navigating adulthood and all its accessories: money, substance abuse, grief. When the most successful amongst them suffers a terrible accident, the group think not of her wellbeing, instead seeing a chance to manipulate her agony to their own advantage. This experimental play makes use of a fragmented voice to unfold the details of their shared act of deception.
[CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19]
- May 2020
- May 2020
You enter. Only illuminated is a DJ deck and its DJ. Specifically Dee-Jay’s (Dee-Jay, short for Davy Jones, short for David Michaelangelo Jones III) Deck who stands entranced in their set. Cue blaring beats and lightning lights -- as we reveal that it is, in fact, DeeJay and his DJ decks that control the show, providing the framework for the sketches that will ensue, the characters (and their lives) who enter the nightclub each night. We learn what goes on in the toilets, on the dance floor, at the bar, in the smoking area and in one hour, for one night, we play out what happens in one night at Bizzare (read like Ballare).
The club is a site for every libidinal urge - sexual, relaxational, danceual - to be satisfied
from c.11pm to c. 2am (6am, if dissociating in the uber back from junction) in confining, dark walls and sticky floors, the club becomes a dense microcosm of society's basest instincts released and unrepressed. Club Night is a ballad to that sweet frenzied intellectual shutdown.
- April–May 2020
'And in all the important things I did conform. "How can he be a spy? He goes to my tailor."'
Famous actress Coral Browne is on tour in Moscow in 1958 when infamous English spy Guy Burgess barges into her dressing room and throws up in her sink. The two Cambridge graduates meet for lunch the following day to discuss all things comfort, culture and civility.
With secret police following their every move, and Soviet-UK relations at an all-time low, Guy invites Coral to navigate the streets of Moscow with one motive: the obtaining of a new English suit from his tailor in London. Based on a true story, Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad is a powerful probing of British values and our place in history.
- April 2020
A school shooting tears one woman's world apart. In the aftermath, she finds herself disempowered and hopeless, surrounded by the fragments of her broken life. But then, all of a sudden, she gets caught in the crosshairs of a new, unlikely obsession which propels her to the steps of Washington, leaving her message ringing in the ears of those who refuse to pay attention. As she steadies her aim, she remembers the advice the old man in the gun shop told her: “fire on the exhale.”
This one-hour, one-woman monologue confronts the ubiquitous trauma of gun violence in a highly personal way. Discarding the politics and the age-old debates about gun control, Zimmerman’s monologue gets to the heart of a very human tragedy.
- March 2020
Grotesque, surreal and absurd!
Meet Sasha and Misha, the Ukrainian soldiers of the Donbas hybrid war. Meet also their dead dogs - Ollie and Boi. All trapped together in a bombed pet shop on the Eastern Front, accompanied by unexpected visitors and smart-ass radio.
In this grotesque and surrealistic story human perspective is mixed with that of animals, the well known world, although under fire, slowly disappears in the fumes of absurdity. Is anthropocentric perspective the legitimate one? Who has the right to decide the fate of other living creatures? What is man capable of and are there any borders?
- March 2020
"I've had the most wonderful day... I looked at a bud vase." Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers. Homer is sardonic, irascible; Langley child-like, a virtuoso at the piano. They have always lived together in their crumbling house, where junk encroaches at every corner, sniping and fighting - but then worldly, normal, socialite Milly enters their lives, struggling to be involved in a world where truth doesn't seem to matter.
- March 2020
'Like chalk – she just rubbed it all out and started again.'
A broken home: after the death of their mother, two mixed-race sisters are left in the care of their white father. When the elder sister disappears, suppressed racial tensions bubble to the surface and relationships are pushed to their limit as we are forced to interrogate whether our identities are set in stone, or whether we have the freedom to represent ourselves?
- March 2020
'Lovesong' is a hauntingly beautiful drama which explores the relationship between William and Margaret, taking place across two different timeframes - when the couple are just embarking on their lives together in their twenties, and as they reminisce about the past in their seventies. Time bleeds into itself as old and young collide and the couple are forced to confront their younger selves, and to figure out if it was all really worth it in the end.
Originally performed in collaboration with Frantic Assembly in 2011, this wistful and uplifting story is a tale of love, memory, loss, time and peaches.
- February 2020
A microbiologist for a defence contractor is being investigated by his employer over an incriminating memo leaked to the press. He thinks his wife may have done the whistleblowing - to protect her and himself, he must learn how to beat a lie detector. With his best friend spying on him, his wife opening old wounds and his polygraph consultant uncovering his dark secrets, he is forced down a path of paranoia and bitterness.
- February 2020
On the eve of Singapore’s National Day in 1988, 3 people are killed along the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE), Singapore’s oldest expressway which cuts through the heart of the country.
An interrogator has 60 minutes to question James, whose script, ‘PIE’ foretold these 3 deaths. Somehow surviving a car accident along the PIE that killed both his parents just moments after he was born, James grew up to become an unsuccessful playwright who now faces accusations of murder.
As the fragmented story of what ‘actually’ took place unfolds, the line between the ‘real’ and the ‘official’ narratives blurs, as James is forced to confront an interrogator intent on writing her own script - that James is a Communist conspirator who masterminded these deaths to ignite widespread dissent. Set against the backdrop of the global Cold War and the 1987 ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ in Singapore, Pan-Island Expressway promises to be a riveting comedy, political drama and whodunit mystery - all in one play.
- February 2020
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, and bring a couple of Qs for the writer/director/actor Q&As!
- February 2020
Who knows you best?
A) Yourself
B) Your mum
C) Your best friend of 12 years
D) An obscure data server on the edge of the Arctic Circle
Alex has just started university and feels like a fraud, which is ironic because they’ve also had their data hacked and all their money stolen. In their quest to get their money back, Alex has to go through a series of increasingly intrusive security checks that leaves them seriously questioning some of their life choices... and not just because of the old Facebook statuses the identity thief seems to be dredging up.
Told through a combination of sketches and self-deprecating comic monologues, Identity Crisis takes aim at Big Data through a comic lens.
- February 2020
‘Well, I'm here now, I'll always be here.’
Revealed posthumously with the note ‘publishable, but worth it?’, Maurice is a gay love story by E.M Forster that encapsulates the struggle of being a closeted gay man in Edwardian England and the joy of reclaiming a happy ending. Despite having heterosexual norms insistently impressed upon him from a young age, when Maurice enrols at Cambridge University and meets Clive Durham, a fellow ‘unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort’, he finds that he cannot choose to continue repressing what he feels, and must wrestle with the consequences.
This adaption breathes new life into Forster’s novel, telling a queer period story about acceptance, love and identity, while also seeking to bring the story back home to Cambridge, a place of special significance to him.
- February 2020
Hey, have you ever noticed how everything in your life kind of goes wrong but exclusively in a dramatic fashion? Ever feel like maybe your life is just so crazy it feels like it was designed for other people’s entertainment? Well, we have. It could be bad luck, or it could be the narcissistic belief that our lives are somehow more interesting than everyone else's. Either way, come stroke our egos by watching us for a whole hour!
See three of Cambridge’s funniest ladies (self-defined) and enjoy a fun-filled mix of stand up and sketches.
- February 2020
Ever felt like the first year who doesn’t quite fit in? Even though you’re wearing your shiny new Dino Stompers? Like how the hell is this not the key to social stardom and the undivided attention of that unreasonably attractive guy who just happens to have gone to the same public school as your (somewhat unhinged) friend Posh Immy? I mean they were £60 off Depop for God’s sake. And now you’re crying in the pastry aisle of ALDI … Again.
- February 2020
Deptford, 1982: unemployment abounds and the 1981 Brixton race riots are fresh in everyone’s memories. Caught in the midst of these racial divides are Chima and Onochie: two mixed-race brothers, sons of an Irish mother and a Nigerian father. Finally returning home from prison after he was blamed for the death of a white girl, Chima is horrified to find out that his younger brother, Onochie, has become a skinhead who no longer thinks of himself as black. As brutal justice seeks Chima out, Onochie must decide whether he will side with the community he’s tried so hard to belong to, or stand by the flesh and blood he barely knows.
- February 2020
Come on down to the bottom with this open ocean sketch show. Follow Michael Phelps as he seeks official recognition as a fish and watch Steve the anxiety salmon as he regrets becoming a dentist for sharks.
The ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising and now even the Corpus Playroom is underwater. Meet a vegan piranha, the only octopus in the ocean who can't multi-task and a puffer fish Prime Minister as we answer the timeless question of whether fish would drive cars or submarines? BYO snorkels and make sure you do not slip on the plankton on your way in. Swimming lessons available on the door.
- February 2020
"Beware the Ides of March"
Shakespeare's brutal political tragedy explodes onto the Corpus stage.
Is anyone fit to lead in a world of blood, lies and revenge?
In this radical reimagining of Julius Caesar, no one is safe.
- February 2020
She came, she saw, she was not impressed. Graduating Footlight Jahan Tapadar is here to give you an exclusive, one night only, tell-all insight into the world of a brown Muslim comedian in Cambridge. Did any white men manage to save her in the end? And does she know that she doesn't have to wear a hijab now that she's in the West? You'll have to come and find out for yourself at this one woman comedy hour. Tea will be spilled, hearts may be broken, but PREVENT will definitely be called.
- January–February 2020
'What gets me through is knowing I took this pain, and saved all of you from suffering the same.'
Stumbling down Clifton Street at 11:30 a.m. drunk, Effie is the kind of girl you'd avoid eye contact with. We think we know her, but we don't know the half of it. Effie's life spirals through a mess of drink, drugs and drama every night, and a hangover worse than death the next day - till one night gives her the chance to be something more.
Gary Owen's powerful adaptation of the enduring Greek myth drives home the high price people pay for society's shortcomings, and offers a rallying cry for those pushed down by the powers that be.
- January–February 2020
“Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things…”
Late night, unreal city. The Tetrach is hosting a wild underground banquet. Salome - daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judea - escapes from the oppressive atmosphere of the party and the lascivious gaze of her step father.
Under the transforming moon, bodies become otherworldly and enchantingly strange. Through Wilde’s rich and symbolic mastery of language, we experience the world augmented through the eyes of Salome, culminating in the rapturous and notorious 'Dance of the Seven Veils'.
This new Soma Theatre production captures the queer and ecstatic spirit of Wilde’s most neglected and misunderstood play. In a world fluttering between enchantment and disenchantment, the familiar and the unfamiliar come face to face, breaking down boundaries of gender and exploring what it means to truly ‘see’ one another.
- January 2020
- January 2020
‘The Internet had always been a glitch in the fabric of reality; a shivering, white-hot portal where you could be everywhere and nowhere, all at once. But suddenly it seemed more like a vortex, or a black hole…’
Alarmed by the culture of surveillance shaping the virtual world, five young people conspire to delete their digital traces forever. Searching through the archives of a secluded medieval church, two historians encounter a mysterious network of tunnels. CTRL-Z explores memory and mysticism in the Information Age, asking what it means to disappear in a world obsessed with preservation.
TCS 4.5 stars
Varsity 4 stars
The Tab 4 stars
- January 2020
‘I’m actually handling it all incredibly well. I haven’t eaten a single tub of Ben & Jerrys.’
Long cold nights, short cold days, three 9ams a week, and a slowly-healing heartbreak – Robin’s winter stretches on without an end in sight.
Luckily, with Sam and Jamie in the next rooms along, life feels a bit warmer and brighter, even if it does mean hearing Jamie’s terrible music blasting out in the early hours and waiting an extra 40 minutes any time Sam’s in the shower. Friendship lights up G corridor where the crappy uni lighting fails.
But as Robin recovers and the trio tightens, things start getting complicated and feelings stand to get hurt. Love blooms, priorities waver, and chocolate mug cakes can’t quite chase off the lingering February chill.
Funny, heartfelt and moving, Spring Robin follows the happy highs and lonely lows of three friends in a corridor in the coldest, darkest season, but ultimately asks: if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Previous praise for the writing:
‘clever and insightful [...] brilliantly funny while also being incredibly poignant’ (Varsity)
‘funny and witty [...] utterly sensitive and articulate’ (TCS)
‘exhibits a deep sensitivity and awareness’ ‘its sardonic wit caused [...] irrepressible hysterics’ (The Tab)
‘[the] characters are deliberate and well-developed’ ‘a beautifully balanced, honest play’ (edfringereview)
