- March 2024
The Beyond the Trigger research project aims to explore and reflect upon the ways in which theatrical performance can most productively inhabit, address - enter, exit - states of psychological difference and distress.
After workshopping material together in sessions across several weeks, members of the group will share their creative and critical responses on the 15th March 2024, 7.30-9.30 at the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, alongside an exhibition of the workshops' stimuli materials and the group's own documentary reflections.
All are welcome to attend the performance evening on the 15th March, and all are welcome to become members of the Beyond the Trigger group by joining us for workshop or seminar sessions in the weeks beforehand. Visit the Beyond the Trigger website or email Ian Burrows for more details.
- November 2023
- November 2022
Lights, Camera, ASNCtion! The Yule play is back for 2022! Want to know that Asser's pet-name for Alfred was? Why monks were really reading Ars Amatoria? How many Eels are too many Eels? Then come along to one of THE theatrical events of all time!
Tickets are FREE!
- November 2019
The time to act is now. Bringing together the creative voices of those passionate about the more-than-human world, RE:CONNECT offers an experimental and wholly collaborative creative response to the current climate crisis.
- November 2019
Mabel. Kit. Anna. Bertie.
Kit. Anna. Bertie. Mabel.
Anna. Bertie. Mabel. Kit.
Bertie. Mabel. Kit. Anna.
Four characters. Four monologues. Four corners. Four times.
Choose where to begin and follow the square, listening to the story of this remarkable night unfold part by part, person by person, corner by corner. Repeating, contradicting, overlapping – this experimental new piece of theatre looks at what it is to tell, to be heard, and to be overheard.
- November 2019
I Am A Camera tells the story of writer Chris and nightclub singer Sally Bowles and their host of friends in 1930s Berlin whose carefree lives disintegrate with the coming of Nazi Germany. This semi-immersive production in the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio is sure to be an innovative and exciting piece of theatre, transporting the audience to Weimar Berlin in all of its fragile decadence. Don't miss this chance to see the play that inspired the film and musical Cabaret!
- June 2019
__
What is hanger?
We are new here.
Hello.
hanger hangs on the edge of theatre and performance art, making multi-media, immersive pieces essaying on a topic.
Where narrative-based theatre might be said to provide audiences with things to think about, we aim to provide our audience with themes to think with.
hanger recognises its participants (performers + audience) as artists; we like to understand and interrogate performance as content/reality, as opposed to performance as dissembling content/reality. This is performance-theatre; there are no illusions.
Life as/is (an) art, basically.
hanger is not a theatre collective/group - rather, it is an exhibition space for hangers and the art they(you?) put on. Like any exhibition space, hanger is also a social event, and socialising is a huge part of what we aim to do - and continue to do, post-performance.
Be new with us.
What is on intimacy?
Our topic, this time, is intimacy, and how we navigate this with others, and ourselves - especially through different media. We lean into the abstract, to encourage audience connection in a more general way - a reminder that whilst we are all different in appreciable ways, there are some common themes/feelings we all occupy variously, and (if hanger does its job properly) simultaneously.
So, on intimacy is,
Siri's love song
a tragedy in five acts
bodies
a couple arguing about
...
- March 2019
More Dance Less Admin presents a dance theatre project that is built from experimentation, focus and the growth of relationships. Inspired by the work of German expressionist dancers Pina Bausch and Mary Wigman, we build dance from emotion and action rather than music and we work with real dialogue and its strengths and weaknesses. The conversations display desire, shame, intimacy and the mundanity of romance in real life. This is about adultery, unrequited love, bad sex, and embarrassing romance.
The work explores not just the way dance and theatre intersect, but also the way they are developed - in an environment where time is incredibly precious, does it make sense to depend on the idea of a finished work? This is in a way an attempt to strip performance of all the formal, administrative, decorational, and prestigious elements that so often take over. Experiments can be funny and sincere while being innovative and confusing.
- March 2019
"The revolution came and went,
And unrest was replaced by discontent."
Unrest swells at the Asylum of Charenton. After years of confinement Marquis de Sade has been given the liberty to stage one of his plays as a recreational activity for the other inmates. De Sade proceeds to harness the neurotic, exposed energy of his co-patients into a story about the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat in which they are to play all the roles. Not long ago Marat’s death in the hands of Charlotte Corday had catalysed a bloodbath, the reverberations of which are soon to be felt by the Charenton walls.
Weiss’s text is as topical as it was in the 1960’s, the philosophical discussions between Marat and de Sade prodding at today’s pressure points. What roles is one forced to play, to whom they need to sell their identity to, who benefits from whose revolution?
- March 2019
Howl: An Odyssey is a theatrical reimagining of Homer's epic tale about a complicated king who is never still and always becoming. This new script by Emma Johnson and Evan Silver queers the Homeric text to explore the fluidity of gender and the multiplicity of identity. The story follows Odysseus’ journey of self-revelation across the vast uncharted sea, and his return home to an Ithaca he no longer recognises, to the Ithaca he has yet to become. This odyssey is a constellation of mythic and mundane encounters, a shroud woven between contested narratives, a plunge into the belly of a whale, a prophecy strung by the wings of birds, and an autopsy on the remains of an ancient beast washed up on the shore.
the big mammal theatre project is a fledgling devising organism creating multidisciplinary theatrical experiences about the creature-ness of being human and our place in the family of things. We are, all of us, mammals with spines, with warm blood coursing through our veins. We are interested in exploring the ways our defining mammal characteristics – spine, milk, blood, fur – inform our lives. Is the spine courageous or grounded? Does blood mean passion or rhythm? What is the strength of milkiness? Might re-connecting with our non-binary mammal selves constitute an urgent political act? We hunt canonical texts, the natural world, the weather, dreams and each other for clues, questions, and magic.
Presented with support from the Heywood Society and the Judith E Wilson Studio. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions at ejs209@cam.ac.uk.
- February 2019
A short film about a Taiwanese farming commune.
A queer trash forest.
Cesspools of capital.
Grunts from post-/non-human.
Wade through this intermedial installation non-place that questions the escapist eco-sublime, unending cycles of violence, urban loneliness, and queer rituals.
Stay as long as you like and rot with us at your own whim, or run away as you always do, into placating legibility.
- February 2019
This year the annual Cambridge Italian play brings to the stage a masterpiece of Renaissance comedy - The Mandrake (La Mandragola) by Niccolò Machiavelli!
A story of young love, disguises and magic potions, The Mandrake remains a thoroughly modern tale- showing how easily fraud can prevail over all morals and how we all pursue happiness at the expense of others.
Like previous years, this sixth annual show is a collaboration between the Cambridge University Italian Society, the Cambridge International Theatre Festival and professional director Ludovico Nolfi.
Italian language - with English captions.
THERE ARE circa 50 TICKET a performance. The show is free but in order to support the young actors and help the Society to put on more shows in the future we kindly ask audience members to make a small optional donation - SEE EVENT PAGE FOR TICKETS or email vr312@cam.ac.uk.
Publicity design: Chloe Marschner
- January 2019
"There is no justice on earth, they say... but there is none in heaven either."
Before Milos Forman's film, before Peter Shaffer's play, there was Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri.
One of the Russian poet's greatest works, this brief "Little Tragedy" is a gem of world theatre. Exploring the turbulent relationship between two great composers, it is a story of mania, music, jealousy and murder. Co-organised by the Cambridge University Italian Society and the annual International Theatre Festival, this free English-language production is a celebration of Pushkin's work and life, an evening of performance, music with a special critical introduction.
"My dear friend, genius and villainy are two things incompatible. Don't you agree?"
Tickets are free of charge, but limited to 50 - if you wish to come, make sure you reserve a ticket by emailing vr312@cam.ac.uk, or come early to ensure you have a seat.
- January 2019
iHamlet is an immersive digital reconstruction of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
It is a CGI flesh rodeo.
It is one thousand reeking iPods, rotting in the evacuated skull of a visionary tech billionaire.
It is Idiots strutting towards their own built-in obsolescence, accompanied by the sound of a Canadian psychology professor falling down a flight of marble stairs, pitch-shifted into a near-perfect rendition of the Seinfeld theme tune. At the end you can hear him moaning for his mother, pitch-shifted into the sound of a laughter track.
It is a bird, bleached white and buffering at the edge of a hope.
But mostly it is the story of Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet: The Supreme Gentleman; the ur-incel; the bull and the bull rider. Ophelia: The One the River Didn't Keep; the accused woman and the woman who accuses; the loverdaughtermother with ONE HOLE TOO MANY.
It is the story of all of us: all of the HamletActors and all of the OpheliaActors. All of the Idiots.
Congealing several groundbreaking performance texts into something altogether new, iHamlet will be performed in the Theatre of Cruelty (the Judith E. Wilson Studio). The show will involve both live performance and audio-visual elements, including an original soundtrack by LORE. It will be either a gorgeous, nauseating spectacle that will make you want to crawl back inside your mother's womb, or an abject failure. In either case it should be worth the price of admission.
FLESH LIKES TO KEEP THE COMPANY OF FLESH, so don't retreat into your entrails: iHamlet is here to stimulate.
- November 2018
HERMES-> brings together recent poems by Thomas Stell in a semi-theatrical context. Anecdotes from Chinese history, Classical literature and art, and Natural History, presented in free verse and taking their structure from the writer's practice of walking are inter-weaved with found text from an astronomical work and read out in a space dotted with symbolic objects that enter into a dialogue with the poems. Through these very specific objects and stories runs a theme of the starkest polarities: Hades and the upper world, life and death, the near and the far, the celestial and the biological, memory and destruction - the opposing domains over whose meeting Hermes, messenger and psychopomp, presides.
- November 2018
- November 2018
The Marlowe Showcase is an opportunity for 12 - 14 graduating actors to perform in front of industry professionals including agencies and castings directors. Returning as our professional director this year is Nicholas Barter, former principle of RADA and former Artistic Director of the Arts Theatre.
The Showcase is a fantastic experience for those who are serious about entering the creative industry once they've graduated from Cambridge.
- October 2018
SAMSON:
I praise the poetry of ‘stony wastes’,
I praise the poetry of lush spaces,
I praise the poetry of difference,
I praise poetry of co-existence.
Samson Agonistes is a complex verse play which touches on themes of modern warfare, identity, and the knotty tragedies of global international politics. As a content notice, it touches specifically on the political situation of Israel and Palestine, and contains discussion of gender. Kinsella dedicates the play "for Israel and Palestine and lasting peace and equality in all things".
- September 2018
This workshop is part of 'Intersections: Between Music and Theatre in Seicento Italy', a two-day conference held at the University of Cambridge, exploring the intersections between music and theatre in seventeenth-century Italy.
The two-hour Commedia dell’Arte acting workshop will be held in the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio in the English Faculty on the Sidgwick Site of the University of Cambridge (9 West Road, CB3 9DP).
One of the conference keynote speakers, Prof. Richard Andrews (University of Leeds), will give a short introduction to Commedia dell’Arte before the workshop.
The workshop will be lead by Ludovico Nolfi, director and theatre trainer from Rome: https://www.arsinfieri.co.uk/about
After a few warm up exercises, participants will be able to learn movements for stock characters, explore solo 'lazzi', as well as develop short improvised scenes for pairs of characters.
There is no participation fee, but advance registration is required as spaces are limited. Participation is not limited to conference attendees.
If you would like to attend the workshop, please follow this link: https://intersectionsconferencecambridge2018.wordpress.com/acting-workshop/
There will be a waiting list - please, let us know immediately if you can no longer attend.
- June 2018
The 2nd day of the Polyphonic Poetry Festival, dedicated to poetry as performance/sound/theater
SATURDAY SCHEDULE
@ FACULTY OF ENGLISH
in Room DR 06/07 & 1st Floor landing
From 11am-11pm
Continuous Screening of works by Corina Copp,
Carla Harryman, Lanny Jordan Jackson, and Sophie Seita
in JUDITH E WILSON DRAMA STUDIO,
Noon
Talks:
Q aka Kyoo Lee on “Queenzenglish”
Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian on
“Poets Theater”
1pm
A Certain Sense of Order
(Anne Sexton/Tick Tock)
2pm
Walden by Max Fletcher
3pm
Rhythmdrama: A Disaster by Will Hall
4pm
Sop Doll! by Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn
5pm
Try! Try! by Frank O’Hara
(6pm Dinner Break)
7pm
Turn On The Heat by Dodie Bellamy
8pm
Box of Rain by Kevin Killian
9pm
POLYPHONIC BALL!
Community Readings and Party
w/DJ Set by montenegrofisher
- June 2018
Come and watch the recording of Cambridge's first ever radio comedy panel-show: Playing it By Ear! We’re point-scoring and playing games such as: spoonerism charades, a cooking lesson for abstract concepts (how to bake hope, how to boil a pan of consumerism) and an MI6 panel interview.
Our diverse cast of Cambridge comedians romp through 30 minutes of sketches, silliness and songs. 'Playing it By Ear' is possibly the world's first competitive comedy show featuring games and sketches with Alfred Leigh, Cockles Faulkner and Molly O’Gorman. Hosted, presented, produced (and arguably ruined) by Will J-Wood
We will be recording a double-bill of 30-minute shows back to back. There will be fun audience participation so bring your wits and giggles.
- May 2018
This innovative dance-theatre piece uses found text and objects to create a subtle and moving meditation on the myth of the Labyrinth and the figure of Asterion: the hidden star, the Minotaur. Stylised movement, an electronic soundscape, and the non-linear presentation of these Classical stories creates a trance-like, hypnotic experience.
Currently a work in progress, we now present extracts from what is an ongoing and constantly evolving project.
- April 2018
CIPN is delighted to join forces with performance group TICK TOCK to co-host their next performance event in Cambridge, a showing of their work 'A Certain Sense of Order' for two female singers exploring the American poet Anne Sexton. The performance will take place in the Judith E Wilson Drama Studio at 2pm on Sunday 29th April, followed by a panel discussion with the performers, chaired by Dr Laura McCormick Kilbride and Dr Zoe Svendson.
A Certain Sense of Order
Sunday 29th April, 2 - 4pm
Judith E Wilson Drama Studio
(optional workshop from 1 - 2pm, all welcome)
Created by: Sasha Amaya, Catherine Kontz, Naomi Woo
Performers: Rosie Middleton, Sarah Parkin
Panelists: Dr Laura McCormick-Kilbride and Dr Zoe Svendson
A Certain Sense of Order is a work for two female singers exploring the American poet Anne Sexton. Using the text of a single poem—“For John, Who Begs Me Not to Inquire Further”—the piece reflects on Sexton’s life and work, including her practice of recording and listening to tapes of her therapy sessions. While reciting excerpts of the poem, the singers perform activities reminiscent of a variety of practices from Sexton’s life: writing at a typewriter, recording speech, listening to tapes. Transitioning between media, the singers manifest and mingle roles from the home and therapy room. Rather than a literal or biographical representation of the poet or her work, the piece is better understood as a performed poetic interpretation.
Poetry | Anne Sexton
Creation + Composition | Catherine Kontz
Creation + Direction | Sasha Amaya
Creation + Concept | Naomi Woo
- March 2018
Fresh Bulbs will be a three-day showing of new writing! 1st and 2nd will be performances of a new play 'What Would Harold Pinter Think' and the 3rd will be a selection of short performances of new student writing.
- March 2018
Eleanor and Robert live in a sordid apartment with Joe, their flatmate. One night, unexpected guests arrive at their home and set their lives on a journey through their past and present. Set in a post-Brexit world of alienation and absurdism, this play deals with the profound terror and anguish that underlines the lives of these people and how their minds create and alter their reality and that of the world around them. Alexandra Blanchard has created a uniquely singular vision of what it is like to be alive in the present state of the world examining ideas about femininity, mental health and freedom.
- February 2018
On 31st January 2018, we lost the rights to perform a show.
Within five hours, a new idea was born.
‘Re: write // a collective work’ will fill the creative space that was made momentarily and hauntingly empty. We are devising an immersive piece of theatre in which we will dramatise the struggle to create, and the fear of both finding and losing your voice.
Our starting point will be this passage of Hélène Cixous’ ‘The Laugh of Medusa’ — ‘And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. (And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great – that is, for “great men”; and it’s “silly.” Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off.’ We are not yet writers. But we are going to try.
The collective company will, by 22.02.18, have created a new work. By the end of each performance, the audience too shall have come together to create, without realising it, a collective work of their own.
Re: write will be documenting their process here: https://rewritecollective.wordpress.com/
Please find content notices and warnings here soon.
https://www.facebook.com/events/191600638256077/
- October 2017
What do you do when you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that your wife has cheated on you? If you're a Shakespearean tragic hero, you kill her, very few questions asked. If you're a sailor named Compass, however, the solution is a bit different...
Join the Marlowe Society as we set out on a new venture--exploring the lesser-performed plays of the early modern period through script-in-hand stagings. This year, we start with the expectation-shattering A Cure for a Cuckold, John Webster's neglected comedy about love, friendship, and trust.
Presented in partnership with the Centre for Mediaeval and Early Modern Law and Literature, the evening will include a panel discussion on the legal issues invoked by the play. Tickets are free, but space is limited!
- March 2017
Ralph Roister Doister thinks Christian Custance loves him madly. Christian Custance thinks Ralph Roister Doister is a twit. Only one of them is correct.
Join the Marlowe Society as we set out on a new venture--exploring the lesser-performed plays of the early modern period through script-in-hand stagings. On March 14, we begin with Nicholas Udall's 1552 comedy about a dim-witted man convinced of his own importance attempting to force himself on an unwilling woman. Sound like anyone in the news today?
Presented in partnership with the Centre for Mediaeval and Early Modern Law and Literature, the evening will include a panel discussion on the legal issues invoked by the play. Tickets are free, but space is limited!
- November 2016
After 2 weeks of rehearsing, training, and building an ensemble, the students of RELENTLESS FORWARD MOTION, a theatre residency by the internationally acclaimed Colleen Sullivan, come together to showcase what they have learnt, felt, and experienced.
- November 2016
What happens when you are hopelessly, dangerously drawn to another person? What does it take to stand by them? What does it take to leave them? How do you reconcile being with someone who is so different from what you claim to love about them?
Antony & Cleopatra, a story about the fragility of love and human relationships. Adapted for two actors.
Duomuži's Antony & Cleopatra premiered August 2016 at The Brick in Brooklyn, New York and is currently touring internationally. We are company of 3 located separately and variously in New York: Colleen Sullivan (Director) North Carolina: Luke Robbins (Actor), England/Czech Republic: Ronald Prokeš (Actor/Musician). After almost a year of development, writing original music and rehearsal (much of which happened through Skype) our 2-man, 7 character, 90 minute, stripped-down production of one of Shakespeare's most epic tragedies has become an experience of intimacy and truth, love and commitment in all of its complicated and devastating messiness.
- November 2016
'Foxfinder' is an unflinching exploration of obsessional faith, grief and desperation. In this strange yet familiar dystopian world, the human race has a new enemy - the Fox. When Judith and Samuel Covey are visited by William, a Foxfinder; everything they hold dear is put at stake. As William’s investigations of their alleged ‘contamination’ lead him deeper into the Covey’s lives, long buried secrets and demons start to emerge, revealing a primordial vision of humanity driven by the ultimate instinct for survival. Dawn King’s award winning play poses the unanswerable question: where will the finger point to next in mankind's never ending witch-hunt?
- June 2016
"I love you and everything is beautiful."
An immense wheel turns and cuts through the wind. A hurricane separates two young lovers. Across the world, two Stars collide, a prostitute's hair is set on fire and a priest searches a banquet of rotting food in the hope of finding a piece of Swiss cheese.
This new adaptation of Antonin Artaud's 'Spurt of Blood' incorporated with writing from Artaud's greater body of work and sequences of dance and music, brings to life the genius and the madness of the world's greatest proponent of the Theatre of Cruelty. This is a journey unlike any other.
"The theatre will never find itself again… except by furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitate of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism pour out on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior."
- June 2016
Violet smiles through her middling comedy gig, mulling over the last dregs of her aspirations and many a bottle of wine. Her friend Io struggles to make sense out of the Oracle of the Skip and her elusive threads of prophecy. In the meantime, petty ambitions run amok in the offices of Butler Dramatics, bedrooms are laden with anxious concern, and romance in back alleys isn't quite what it used to be.
Chicane is a short film: a story in reverse that presents the simplicity and strangeness of people and their lives in the most appropriate way: unexplained.
- April 2016
Making Good Theatre is delighted to present an evening in commemoration of Shakespeare's 400th death anniversary featuring work by Cambridge playwright Rani Drew.
The main screening will be Rani's play Totempole Supremo, a modern Hamlet, performed in 1993 in Budapest.
For comparison, there will be a short screening of Act I of Rani Drew's The III-Act Hamlet, which includes Shakespeare's own.
Running time 1.5 hours approx., with interval and Q&A with Rani Drew.
- April 2016
Making Good Theatre is delighted to present an evening in commemoration of Shakespeare's 400th death anniversary featuring plays by Cambridge playwright Rani Drew.
The main screening will be Rani's redoing of Shakespeare's Hamlet, performed in 1992 in Budapest, into III acts, which includes Shakespeare's own three acts of Hamlet.
For comparison, there will be a short screening of a modern Hamlet from Rani Drew's play Totempole Supremo.
Running time 2 hours approx., with interval and Q&A with Rani Drew.
- March 2016
A 4 minute in length film scene that will reinvent the feature film in order to show the ability of cast and crew.
Casting and crew recruiting - no experience necessary, just enthusiasm!!
(Put yourself in Pat's shoes..) You’re in a mental institution, you've lost your job and your wife and you’re living with your parents and all you want is to rebuild your life and get your wife back.
If you have any questions and or would like to get involved ask Chloe at clb95@cam.ac.uk :)
