- March 2016
CALIBAN starts where Shakespeare's The Tempest ends. As Prospero and Miranda leave the island, Ariel and Caliban are left alone in each other’s company for the first time. As they contemplate life without their master, they must learn new things about their island and work together to build the future.
In this original play by Cambridge playwright Rani Drew, the Caribbean island regains its confidence once the colonisers have departed. What was seen as evil by the invaders is simply the island’s pristine state. Its natural resources, its flora and fauna and its myths of gods and spirits reveal the rich social and animistic beliefs of the people. The lessons of colonial oppression are many for the islanders, as they prepare to move into another period of their history.
This is a script in hand performance.
- February 2016
This is an evening of plays by Cambridge playwright, poet and author Rani Drew written on a Shakespearean theme to celebrate the Bard's 400th remembrance year. There will be a script in hand dramatised performance of The III-Act Hamlet by Rani, a exciting feminist slant on Hamlet through innovative spoken frames surrounding Shakespeare's text. There will also be an extract of the filmed premiere of Totempole Supremo, again written by Rani and performed in Budapest in 1993. The performances will be followed by a discussion and talk with Rani.
This is part of In Finite Variety, a week of theatre at the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, 21-28 February 2016.
- February 2016
"Naturally, maids are guilty, when madame's are innocent. Oh Madame... if I had been your executioner, I would have carried out your sentence to the last drop. The tea you have refused to drink - I would have broken your jaw open and poured it down your throat."
'The Maids' by Jean Genet, inspired by the infamous Papin sisters, is the sinister story of two sisters - Solange and Claire - who are maids to a wealthy society Lady. From sadomasochistic fantasies concerning her and each other, portrayed through elaborately constructed 'rituals', to poignantly challenging notions of so-called morality, middle class values and upper class entitlement, this play questions where the true balance of social power lies, while power swings not only between the social divide but between the two sisters themselves.
"I'm getting carried away by the devil! In his fragrant arms he's lifting me. I'm taking off! I'm high!"
- March 2015
Welcome to Tate Cambridge.
it is opening night at the gallery and the star artist has gone missing.
the gallery faces foreclosure, the art critic is unimpressed
the life model thinks he’s been drawn too fat.
Join us for a unique immersive theatre experience set in an art gallery.
At the Tate Cambridge you can take in the full breadth of modern art in one visit, from Dulex Colour Guides and plug socket installations to performance art and the postcards in the gift shop.
A ticket to our gallery will include a guided tour of the space.
The Tate Cambridge would like to take a moment to thank our kind benefactors, HATS, for their generous donation to our gallery.
- November 2014
A modern tragedy about love and death on the Internet.
- May 2014
- March 2014
A break-up sped up by a mythbeast. Sad sitcom turns into drunk circus. Waist is a new play about kebabs, satyrs, and not being alone. ‘A well-observed combination of the fantastical and the prosaic...capturing a youthful ennui with scathing accuracy’ The Independent. ‘Parker Rees’ boisterous and lyrical dialogue...vividly describes the creature that we, the audience, eventually, willingly and wholeheartedly become.’ The Scotsman. A FringeReview Number One Pick. Live Beasts are an award-winning theatre collective. We like to make work for lively audiences — it makes us try harder, and no one gets left out. We just opened the NOW '14 collection at the Yard Theatre with a play called Horsehead: ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt like this in the theatre. Shambolic chaotic genius’ Louise Mari (Shunt, Nigel & Louise) 'beautifully conceived; touchingly delicate and nuanced even in its vaudevillian grotesquery’ Andy Field (Forest Fringe) www.livebeasts.co.uk/waist
- March 2014
'A seminal piece of world drama written in 1779 and banned by the Nazis in 1933, its theme speaks urgently and forcefully to us today.’ (Michael Billington, The Guardian)
This expressionist-style production will explore several metatheatrical levels: It will set Lessing’s 1779 Enlightenment play, originally set in medieval Jerusalem during an armistice at the end of the Third Crusade, in a Berlin Café in the 1920’s. It seeks to renew Lessing’s appeal to intercultural understanding in the contemporary world by evoking the context of artistic innovation and internationalism in the Weimar Republic before its tragic demise. A group of 1920’s women intellectuals, poets, journalists, actors and dancers will rehearse their own performance of Nathan the Wise, including multilingual songs and poems. In this play-within-the play, Nathan will be performed by the poet Mascha Kaléko, Saladin will be performed by the poet and painter Else Lasker-Schüler, Recha will be performed by the young actress Marlene Dietrich, Daja will be performed by actress Anna May Wong, the Dervish Al Hafi will be performed by poet Sarojini Naidu, Sittah will be performed by performance artist, dancer, and writer Anita Berber, and the Templar Knight will be performed by journalist Sylvia von Harden.
Contact Eva Urban on eku22@cam.ac.uk for reservations.
- December 2013
The STARCRUSHER THEATRE NIGHT (Fri 06 Dec '13, 7pm - late, Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, English Faculty, 9 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP) will be an ENTIRE ACTUAL NIGHT of THEATRE, PERFORMANCE, MUSIC, FILM, POETRY, KUNST & CACA from the combined bodies and souls, confirmed and to be confirmed, of:
LUCY BEYNON ELLIE BRADFORD LAWRENCE DUNN LAURA ELRICK OLLIE EVANS IRUM FAZAL KAT GRIFFITHS JEREMY HARDINGHAM LISA JESCHKE LUKE JORDAN JUSTIN KATKO BEN MORTIMER DELL OLSEN WILL STUART MISCHA TWITCHIN TOXIC WHORE
THE UNDERWORLD OF MUSIC IS MOBILIZED AGAINST THE DISAPPEARING WORLD OF THE STARRY HEAVENS IN ORDER FOR THE LATTER TO BE MOVED AND TO BE A CORPOREAL PRESENCE AMONG HUMANKIND.
/// Free admission, free wine, free juice. /// http://www.facebook.com/events/182157091987591
- November 2013
A celebration of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Double Helix. The play is set in 1953 in London & Cambridge and charts the historic events that led to the dicovery of the Double Helix.
- June 2013
Try something dark this May Week.
- February 2013
The team behind last term's Richard the Third is back with quintessential Jacobean revenge tragedy The Changeling. It's six years since Cambridge last saw a production of this Early Modern masterpiece, which sees Beatrice-Joanna and her deformed servant De Flores ensnared in a deadly web of murder, seduction and jealousy.
- October 2012
- May 2012
A play about the Iraq War, and how Iraqi women decide to take up a stand, not only against their own men, but also against the foreign invaders.
- February 2012
"Then which way shall I find Revenge's cave?
For these two heads do seem to speak to me."
An exhausted general returns to Rome to bury his dead sons. Titus Andronicus sparks a bloodbath in the high-strung state by slaughtering the son of his dangerous prisoner, Tamora - a captured wolf breaking out of her cage with all the elegance and calm of a deadly spider.
The scenes that follow explode through a devastating machine of vengeance, told in surging poetry and stark, traumatic visions. We see the maddening zeals of lust and revenge as two sides of a self-spinning coin, and that any person will become an animal when hunted.
- November 2011
A visionary re-imagination of a masterpiece.
This intensely intimate, vibrantly progressive production breathes new life into the greatest play of them all, in a devastatingly raw, painfully moving, new conception of its power to electrify in this millennium.
An urgent, modernistic tragedy, pulsating with heart-stopping poetry, in a scintillating amalgamation of 21st-century film realism with Shakespeare's timeless genius.
- April 2011
Beckett Festival
Over the course of three evenings, associates of the Faculty of English and the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio aim to introduce the work of a figure both deliberately ambiguous and disarmingly accessible. The 27th and the 28th will feature two student productions of well-known Beckett plays, beginning them with a short lecture and ending them in discussion. The final evening invites performers from Cambridge and Europe to present their theatrical responses to a writer who has influenced both them and the modern stage at large.
Happy Days – 27th April An alarm clock rings and a woman starts her morning, buried waist deep in a mound of sand. Rifling through her bag for her lipstick, her toothbrush, her pet revolver, Winnie is determined that this is going to be ‘another happy day’.
Written at the start of the 1960s, Happy Days is one of Samuel Beckett’s last major dramatic pieces for the stage. Next to the bemused pair of Waiting for Godot and the tyrannical presence of Endgame’s Hamm, Winnie remains among the most endearing figures of the tragicomic. Conscious always of the threat of despair, she is determined to face the absurd with grace.
Krapp’s Last Tape – 28th April
Krapp sits alone with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and the neatly filed recordings of his life. In between a fetish for bananas and liquor, he pores over a history of romantic conquests…
‘Plans for a less…(hesitates)…engrossing sexual life’
…women eventually given up in pursuit of the mind. Now, somewhere and nowhere, we watch as they encroach upon his solipsism.
- March 2011
BECKETT! BECKETT! BECKETT! Orbiting productions of Happy Days and Krapp's Last Tape, the Judith E. Wilson presents three evenings of Samuel Beckett. With extracts and conversation fuelled by members of the faculty and pieces by seasoned performers, we will tease the work and the man who had such an impact upon the modern stage.
- March 2011
Clare Actors presents THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN By Josh Coles-Riley. The MARLOWE SOCIETY COMPETITION WINNER: "It is 1965, and Simon Vaughan has arrived at Capel Celyn to visit the Lloyd Family, who he stayed with as an evacuee during the war. The village is about to be drowned to create a reservoir in the Tryweryn Valley, and it is Simon's last chance to return to the place he lived in at the end of his childhood. But there are tragic secrets buried in the past, and Simon's arrival stirs up painful memories of those last few months in 1945 - and of Rhiannon Lloyd, who gave him his first experiences of love, sex...and death. The House We Grew Up In is a play about memory, identity and the times that change us."
- March 2011
- November 2010
[Description 1]
'William Fergus Stuart' starts off in a bathroom, with a man singing along to 'Rocket Man' by Elton John, alone in front of a mirror.
Then his friend comes in. His friend has taken 'all the laxatives.' His friend is excited about a party he's planning for later that evening.
Something horrible is about to happen, but it will all be alright in the end, if you use your imagination.
[Description 2]
2010: the play reaches its climax. After a series of volatile, bloody purges the life-loving, volatile Will Stuart is tormented by his part in it all. His political rival, the driven, ascetic Will Stuart, decides his fate. A titanic struggle begins. Once friends who wanted to change the world, now one stands for compromise the other for ideological purity as the play awaits.
"Why should an event that transforms the whole of humanity not advance through blood?"
A revolutionary himself, Will Stuart was 22 when he wrote the play in 2010, while hiding from Will Stuart. With its hair-raising on-rush of scenes and vivid dramatisation of complex, visionary characters, 'William Fergus Stuart' has a claim to be the greatest political tragedy ever written. Will Stuart captures Will Stuart's exhilirating energy as Will Stuart struggles to avoid his inexorable fall.
"This is your rhetoric translated. These wretches, these executioners, the guillotine are your speeches come to life. You have built your doctrines out of human heads."
"We're real worldwide breaking all the rules" - Iyaz
[Description 3]
Sex! Death! Laxatives! Time passing! Music! Singing! Dancing! Speeches! Wit! Realism - mundane! Realism - fantastic! Magical powers! Magical tricks!
'What you got boy Is hard to find I think about it All the time I'm all strung out My heart is fried I just can't get you Off my mind Because your love Your love Your love Is my drug Your love Your love Your love I said your love Your love Your love Is my drug Your love Your love Your love'
Ke$ha
- March 2010
A man with a hundred eyes... a woman turned into a cow...
A devised piece for the Miscellaneous Theatre Festival.
- February 2010
A man pushed to the brink of collapse by his superiors. His wife, her infidelity. The tragic consequences. There is nothing half-hearted about Georg Büchner’s hard-hitting classic “Woyzeck” - it’s power is in its simplicity.
Reduced to a diet of peas by the gruesome experiments of the Doktor, Woyzeck finds himself having visions, and entering further and further into a state of madness. The final straw: his wife's infidelity with the Drum-Major. Surrounded by a society that ignores him, and overcome by the voices in his head, it is only a matter of time before Woyzeck reaches the point of no return.
- December 2009
A new play by Rani Drew about the human side of scientist Charles Darwin is to be performed in Cambridge. The play is centred on the crisis that confronts Darwin after the death of his favourite daughter Annie. As his wife and friends rally round Darwin to comfort him, the devastation he feels causes him to ask many questions about science and religion. The play reveals something of the man behind the great scientist whose insights into life on Earth have been celebrated in this anniversary year of the publication of The Origin of Species by Natural Selection.
The Man Behind Evolution will be played at the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, English Faculty, 9 West Road, Cambridge, on December 10th, 11th & 12th at 7.30 p.m. Admission is free but donations towards costs will be welcome. Enquiries & reservations: 01223-368231.
- November 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
In a sleepy town, the intricate and personal stories of Santiago Nasar,
Angela and Bayardo unfold - in arms length of the audience. Angela is
returned to her family home the night of her wedding to Bayardo San Roman,
when he discovers that she is not a virgin. Her brother is forced by the
code of honour to kill the violator. Santiago Nasar wakes up the next morning,
unaware of his fate. Very soon, the whole town learns of the murderous plot
against him.
The Judith E. Wilson Studio will be transformed into a small town, thrusting
the audience and the actors into the same dramatic space. The audience will
be granted a mask of invisibility, allowing them to wander around the studio
and intimately observe the characters, piecing the plot together without being
seen.
- April 2009
An evening of performance...
Fragments Sketches Adaptations and Wine
featuring the work of The Antigone Project:
antigone (a sketch) *
4.48 psychosis *
radio mime *
and
idiot *
more
work by Jeremy Hardingham and Gloria Dawson
Please note for the london performance the doors will open at 7pm and latecomers will not be admitted. Admission is FREE. Please email lucy_beynon@hotmail.co.uk for directions to Oliver House.
- March 2009
Death Begins is an absurd dark comedy set in a 21st century purgatory, by Footlights Harry Porter Prize shortlisted writer Simon Haines. Death Begins was shortlisted for the Marlowe Society 800th Anniversary Masterclass.
Critical acclaim: 'absurd, fast-paced and eloquent ... incredibly funny' – Marlowe Masterclass judges 'much better than I expected, and very funny.' – Germaine Greer 'very funny ... a very strong piece of writing ... really excellent' – Scarlett Creme, Harry Porter Prize Winner 2008 'entertaining enough' – Varsity
- March 2009
Held in Week 8 (11-13th March) the 2009 MISCELLANEOUS THEATRE FESTIVAL promises to excite, experiment, and generally entertain: with readings from original works, abstract musical pieces, devised performances and everything under the sun.
It is a 3 day event (free of charge) unlike anything you will ever see in Cambridge: a festival where pieces - mime, recordings, the uncategorized - can inform a dialogue with other works. There is no requirement for 'polish' or 'definite finish', no application process.
With works from: Finn Beames, Ian Burrows, Finbarr O'Dempsey, Ollie Evans, Patrick Garety, Simon Haines, Jeremy Hardingham, Mark Hanin, Edward Herring, Emma Hogan, Decca Muldowney, Orlando Reade and others.
Downstairs at 7pm each night (11, 12, 13th March) in the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio (in the basement of the English faculty on Sidgwick Site).
- March 2009
A moving Expressionistic drama about the death of a patriarch, by Footlights Harry Porter Prize shortlisted and Marlowe Masterclass shortlisted writer Simon Haines.
Critical acclaim: 'absurd, fast-paced and eloquent' – Marlowe Masterclass judges 'much better than I expected' – Germaine Greer 'a very strong piece of writing ... really excellent' – Scarlett Creme, Harry Porter Prize Winner 2008
- February 2009
Telltale Productions in association with MadHouse present: THE HEIGHTS
This is the story of the House in the Wilderness...
Ambrose looks after his four companions in his House in the Wilderness. They don’t know how they got there, they never have visitors, and they never open the front door. Ambrose makes them soup (which they don’t particularly like), he plays chess with them (which they don’t particularly like), and he takes away their prized possessions (which is what they really don’t like) and strings them up above the dinner table along with a very old, and very special, apple...
But The Heights has another occupant who is determined to disturb the delicate balance of the household. And, one day, he succeeds – there is a knock upon the door.
It is time for the attic to divulge its secrets Punch and Judy to tell their story the watch to start ticking and the apple to fall...
Apparently, the Wilderness was not always a Wilderness. And the Wilderness is not all that's out there now.
- February 2009
The inmates are waiting. Nothing happens.
Time meanders. There are floors to clean, letters to write, time to spend in isolation. The rule is: ‘No Talking’. Friendships appear, develop and fail, briefly. The institution staff organise a Film Night, and the inmates watch the films. Nothing happens.
But then, at night, the inmates dream. We see flashes of daydreams and nightmares; of a time when they can leave their silent, monochrome world and escape into music.
With a score written and provided live by The Staircase Band (as seen in Suitcase Cabaret and the Gnädiges Fräulein), Film Night is a new piece of theatre using barely any words. Silent and still scenes contrast with vivid musical flashes, offering glimpses into the existence of the institutionalised, told through whispers and movement.
- November 2008
Take my hand and I'll lead you through the dark.
A theatrical journey for one.
Email sunkendeep@googlemail.com to reserve a space, stating which day you would like to attend.
- November 2008
'There is no holding back or reserve in the East End of youth as I remember... you lived for the moment and vitally held it... you said what you thought and did what you felt.' - Steven Berkoff
Berkoff's East follows the violent and lustful exploits of Mike and Les as they crash through the East End and the lives of those around them, competing for the affections of Sylv whilst Mum and Dad fight over the t.v. as their relationship disintegrates. This exciting production seeks to breathe new life into the play by combining a gritty, urban realism with Berkoff's special combination of speech, movement and spectacle.
- October 2008
One-off performance of the award-nominated production fresh from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe '08. Olivier Award-winning writer Debbie Tucker Green's Stoning Mary weaves together three eerily familiar storylines; sandwiched between adverts in our newspapers, lost amongst celebrities on our television screens, these are the lives of the voiceless, their stories too long unheeded and unheard. With bristling urgency, Green gives utterance to these vital stories and events jerk vividly to life, rendered fresh, immediate and incisive in this startling and thought-provoking play. Bursting onto the stage with raw energy, ringing with Green’s stark, percussive poetry, and gripping the audience with witty characters and fast-paced narrative, this is a show not to be missed!
"full of sharp observations about a violent and uncaring world" - Times "a linguistic gift" - Michael Billington, Guardian
