- May 2025
When Gary was preparing for the end of his life, he thought it would be a private moment. But death, as well as life, very rarely goes to plan, and before he can jump from a very high height, he is joined by a complete stranger about to do the exact same thing. Can you help someone at their lowest point if you’re feeling just as hopeless? Can you persuade someone else that their life is worth living while you’re confident your own is not? These questions and more riddle these two unlikely friends, as they clamour to find a meaning of life in the most desperate of circumstances.
- May 2025
- March 2025
The first screening is at the Howard Theatre and the second screening is at Pembroke New Cellars!
“When he performs, he doesn’t just break the fourth wall. He demolishes it and builds a fifth wall.”
The Footlights presidential election is just around the corner, and tensions are high. Join two Cambridge documentarians as they shadow one of the final candidates, The Golden God, in his quest for victory. Charismatic, fearless, and adored by all, he seems unstoppable—but does his charm conceal a deeper truth? Watch the election campaign unfold in this mockumentary.
- March 2025
When Casey, an enigmatic, charismatic, self-proclaimed god comes to town, this precipitates a crisis for devoutly religious, socially conservative Joseph.
This modern adaptation of Euripides' Bacchae focuses on the tragedy of repression, the lure of being different, and the agony of feeling trapped.
- March 2025
"Dunhuang" is a musical set along the Silk Road, where A-Lai, a modern student, works to restore ancient Buddhist murals in the Dunhuang caves. After damaging a statue, she is transported back in time and meets Liansheng. Together, they uncover secrets tied to a missing lotus and explore mystical caves.
- March 2025
As many of you may know, Pembroke Players is the oldest collegiate theatre society in Cambridge. Come take a trip down theatre memory lane and get ready to receive - it's the 69th anniversary smoker.
- February–March 2025
Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Questions
"Writer: ...Tell me- how can you write a play about someone who sees life realistically and dreams about it romantically?
Manasi: I can't think of a better protagonist for a play.
Writer: No. It's not possible. The more I tie him up in a plot, the more he escapes; says it isn't real. The more lines I write for him, the more he stands outside them. Says they are not real. Oh! He know's too much- altogether too much!"
What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Evam Indrajit, by Badal Sircar, dives into this universal question with humour, heartbreak, and a touch of surrealism. At its core, a writer struggles with writer’s block, for he knows not the struggles of the poor or the luxuries and love interests of the rich. He is only surrounded by normal, boring people, unworthy of ever being a story. That is when he turns to four people in the audience—Amal, Vimal, Kamal, and Indrajit—for inspiration, he finds that their lives are strikingly normal, following predictable paths of work, family, and routine. But within this ordinariness lies an extraordinary tension: Indrajit’s profound, almost painful awareness of life’s emptiness and his resistance to simply conforming.
Do you want to question your role in the scripts of your lives and engage in a conversation about identity, purpose, and the fragile beauty of being human? The play blurs the line between fiction and reality, weaving poetic dialogue and absurdist humour into a sharp critique of societal constructs. Ideas that will linger long after the final bow and you may want to drop out of your degree to live a monastic life.
- February 2025
Join brand new sketch comedy group Lukewarm Goo (James Allen, Dom Andrew, Will Boyce) for their debut goo show. Expect surreal sketches, goo, wacky characters, rats, singing, heartfelt confessions, and goo.
- February 2025
It's a smoker: this time with pink balloons and all tickets go to Pink Week. Hooray!
- February 2025
24 hours to write a sketch show. Ideally, it's funny but honestly who's to say.
- November 2024
What exactly is the difference between a medieval monk and a modern-day academic? ...Shockingly, nothing. Or at least that's the conclusion Mary, a troubled new student at Cambridge University, has come to after a shockingly traumatic first few weeks of term.
Raunchy, irreverent, and biblically brilliant, "Me and My Year of Casual 'Monasticism'" invites audiences to question if they really are both a madonna AND a whore.
- November 2024
‘…but I am a blazon. I would be on fire so to know I am whole.’
This psychological horror-comedy balances the levity of farcical delusion with the ground shaking impact of psychosis on perceived reality, truth and what it means to love. Fluctuating between scenes in an imagined church council and Lynchian arguments behind curtains, we see the story of Anthony: a man circling between derealisation and disembodiment in the face of trauma. Folie Circulaire is a genre-challenging exploration of self-destruction which questions whether mental illness can ever exonerate abuse.
- November 2024
In the last Pembroke Players Comedy event of this turn, it's another classic stand-up night!
- November 2024
'Because the stories we tell ourselves about what we do and what happens to us - that's the only truth that matters. That's the only thing we do know.'
Mind: The Gap follows Murph and Niamh during the aftermath of a car crash which killed the driver, their friend Neil, after his drink was tampered with on a night out. Suffering with memory loss linked to the crash, Murph grapples with his potential responsibility for Neil's death, clashing with his internal monologue, Frank, who strongly believes Murph to be innocent.
However, on meeting Cait - a mysterious commuter with a hauntingly familiar background - Murph becomes mistrustful of both Frank and Niamh's versions of events. As the boundary between Murph's mind and the outside world becomes less certain, he must remember the story behind how Neil died - and perhaps more crucially, why - before the truth is rewritten for him.
- November 2024
Women aren't funny - discuss.
- October–November 2024
Three Men in a Boat is a comedy by Clive Francis adapted for the stage from the 19th century novel by Jerome K. Jerome.
Three friends; Jerome, Harris and George (and their dog) try to escape the dullness of London by taking a trip along the river Thames after discussing all the possible illnesses they have acquired from working too hard (or not enough) and drinking too much (or too little).
They are faced with all the classic perils of a holiday – not knowing where to moor the titular boat, opening pineapple cans with a brick, getting caught in the rain and sharing beds - or all cosily sleeping on the floor in their case. All of this, of course, leads to hilarious mishaps and witty chaos during their meandering along the river. Along the way, they tell stories about the places they visit, often leading to digressions, funny anecdotes and all of them teasing each other.
The show pokes fun at the stereotypical British high society of late 1800s, with similar jokes and comedy to Oscar Wilde, but less known and even more applicable in its humour and storytelling to a modern audience. It is a comedy about the camaraderie of youth, the absurdity of existence, comic songs, and misadventures.
- October 2024
Stand-up. It's in New Cellars. Yay.
- May 2024
“I’m the silly sausage? I’m the silly sausage? In what world am I the silly sausage?”
Come, sit, and let the dynamic and frilly Orsino and Viola bring you into their surreal, Tralfamadorian experience of love. Sometimes silly, sometimes grotesque, often filled with expletives, Jellyfish Brains is formed through a chaotic lens where beginnings and ends, the good and the bad, the erotic and the abusive all sort of squish together.
Jellyfish Brains is a new comedy/drama written by Sarah Fowler, for all those audiences that like to squirm, laugh, and wriggle. Let’s all take the plunge together.
- March 2024
Witness the opening of the hottest new restaurant in town- “Worlds Of Sage” (it’s a reference, apparently) – a budding hivemind of culinary talent under the wing of former fleeting TV star Heather Beakman and their high-strung cousin. There’s an astonishing lack of organisation, a vampire-obsessed chef, three waiters without a brain cell between them, and apparently they’ll serve food at some point too.
Tickets are free, but a donation to Cambridge Community Kitchen is encouraged: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/cambridgelight-entertainmentsociety?utm_term=rdKMXm4ME
- March 2024
Psychologists say that inside everyone is a child screaming out to be loved. But all this adult child screams for is a cheap double, a wank, and, if the cards are in her favour, to not fall asleep in front of the TV. Being a woman in your mid-twenties is hard, being an educated, underpaid part-time waitress and self-confessed terminal layabout is - well, not harder, but that hasn’t stopped Cass, our protagonist, from whining on about it. Georgie, long-term best friend and begrudging roommate, is increasingly keen for Cass to do something with her life (or at least start paying her half of the rent), as the audience is jettisoned through a lush pastiche of snapshots that every young twenty-something can relate to - botched job interviews, unrequited love, indiscriminate public acts of violence, the etiquette of sharing Class-B drugs, and a yearning for a childhood innocence you can’t quite ever return to. In a tale brimming with Y2K nostalgia for the faraway bliss of Saturday morning cartoons, fried finger-food, and a world where your biggest fear is simply skinning your knees on the playground, join Cass as she learns that, kicking and screaming, someday we’ve all got to grow up.
- March 2024
"And, you know what? There will come a day when you’ve holed yourself so deep into your letters that not even we’ll be able to find your way out for you!."
Everyone knows Jane Austen. Ever winning the race of Britain's favourite female writers, her wit and humour and wisdom in all matters of society and romance seem to know no bounds, as charisma flows from her every word.
And everyone knows a 'Jane'. Everyone has a favourite, yet-to-be-prolific, yet-to-write-anything author, constantly struggling with writer's block, mental blocks, and the eternal romantic cockblock of 'far too high standards'.
And everyone knows they would never want to be 'Jane'.
Faced with constant scrutiny in the polite society of 1800s Bath and the painful flashbacks to her romantic failings, Jane begins to barricade herself into her own mind, a barricade which can only be pierced by the written word.
Enter Emma. Emma Watson. The heroine of Jane's latest scrawlings and now also the heroine of Jane's own life.
With Emma as her increasingly constant friend, saviour, and comforter, Jane's real, past, and fictional worlds begin to blur, and the worry grows whether she will ever find her way back to the present.
- February 2024
Death. It's everywhere. Especially in Victorian London. Especially if you run a funeral business. And especially if you're Etheridge, an undertaker whose long-time business partner has just kicked the bucket. Now, commissions are piling up: snobbish families, oedipal complexes, double lives, truant vicars, ferrets, raving ghosts, and a surprise christening. All these end up on Etheridge's walnut counter. And all within the space of an hour.
Watch Etheridge try to squeeze every penny he can from this unrelenting procession of absurdity, lurching between slapstick, surrealism, and cynicism. It's an original student-written comedy show that will have you dying of laughter (or cholera, or old age, or food poisoning, or a freak radish accident).
Last Post - Benboncan on Freesound
- February 2024
There were three people in my marriage… Three people and twelve legs.
Professor George Grey is world-renowned for her pioneering research into octopus intelligence. Recently bereaved, her closest relationship these days is with her research subject, Frances, who resides in a large, purpose-built tank in George’s campus accommodation.
But when ambitious anthropologist Harry enters her life, his breathtaking new theory threatens to tear her world apart in more ways than one…
Octopolis is a fascinating and funny exploration of love, grief, and what makes us human.
- February 2024
Pigs is a comedy night like no other.
Expect the weird and wonderful in this bonkers one-night variety night. Come meet the Pigs.
- February 2024
The world is teetering on the brink of survival. In order to adequately ready ourselves for the end-times we’ve asked our top boffins/sketch comedians to forecast the most likely scenarios for the destruction of the world. Whether it’s the inevitable uprising of smart fridges, the accidental self-nuking of the United States when they bomb the wrong Georgia or forgetting to wash the milk bottle out before putting it in the recycling we’re preparing for all eventualities.
- February 2024
She may be dead and buried in the ground. She may be bathing and sleeping no more. But she lived a complicated life. And this is her story.
Once, she was an engineer, selling her mind for everything and earning nothing; now, she sells her body, working on her own terms. Once, she had a family, with children and grandchildren; now, they’ve all fallen apart. Once, she had a caring friend; now, even she’s abandoned her. Someday, they will forgive each other and remember her story, but only once that story has been told - when she’s dead and buried beneath her willow tree.
- November 2023
You are a singular stroke of a letter in a word of the great Epic of these Crusades. Your rebellion will be counted as a tremor in the hand of a chronicler. The story has already started; This tale must be written. Do not presume to have a say in it.
A historical fiction drama split between the modern day and medieval crusades, 'Negotiating with the Dead' follows an archaeological team discovering ‘The Templar’s Cross’, a fictional medieval relic supposedly as famous as the Holy Grail. It is a discovery which the archaeologists have dedicated their lives to finding, and now, one archaeologist, Florine, has begun to hallucinate the Crusaders who once searched for the same relic – as she does, the play devolves into an exploration of how faith can be manipulated by corrupt figures for political and personal goals (e.g. expansion of empire, war, power, greed) and how this behaviour is almost normalised in religious institutions.
Winner of the Pembroke Player's Playwriting Competition 2023.
- November 2023
“I wish I had no love in me at all so I could better bear the things that need doing. I hate being held back and still, still I’m mourning the past.”
The early twentieth century.
Sophie has created a life for herself in a new country. When Jim, the younger brother she left as a boy, makes the same journey to come live with her, the siblings must renegotiate their relationship and the political tensions threatening to overwhelm their two-bedroom flat. At turns witty, tender, and thoughtful, this two-hander asks what happens when the people we love are too familiar and too strange, and how the fight for one home – family, community, or place – can complicate another.
- November 2023
The Pembroke Players' Freshers Panto returns again with an all new cast, crew and script! Come down to New Cellars for a rip-roaring Bridgemas special, following Peter Pan-tomime as he has to learn to embrace the panto spirit and save Cambridge from some malevolent rowers in the process!
- November 2023
“I’ll tell you what love is. Love is a precious thread you lose when you start to think. Love is a wide wide field of utter purity and it doesn’t exist - beds and carpets of snow flowers, drift stars of innocence, original light, embryonic sun, planet of lucid crystals, bruises like a virgin to the fumbling human senses, isn’t there.”
We are putting together a pastiche of Jeff Nuttall’s performance scripts, a collection of experimental, surrealist and expressionist writing which, in the author’s own words, tries to ‘punch holes in reality by weaving fiction and absurdity into the patterns of lives of unsuspecting citizens’. Comedy, farce, the ideas of Strindberg and Artaud, Tzara and the Absurdists, are all present, but the poetry, the humour, the sex
and outrage, the sense of unreality and fright are all reborn in the corporeal, graphic expression of Nuttall’s text. His writing turns inward, towards the complexity and disposability of the human condition, and how this in turn can be wielded against the authority of the powers that be.
- November 2023
AFTER A SUCCESSFUL OFF-WEST END DEBUT, GASLIGHT IS COMING TO CAMBRIDGE!
What would happen if we lived in a world where life-threatening physical wounds were treated as dismissible?
'Gaslight' is an Off-West End Award nominated play by Shaira Berg that delves into the devastating psychological impact of sexual assault and the struggle of victims to receive support. Scarlet, a university student in a seemingly loving relationship, is surrounded by toxic friends.
After a traumatic incident, she is plagued by a mysterious expanding physical wound that nobody takes seriously. As she tries to get help, she is met with disbelief, betrayal and apathy. Scarlet's journey highlights the impact of traumatic experiences on mental health, relationships and everyday life.
'Gaslight' is a powerful commentary on society's attitudes towards sexual assault and the importance of believing survivors.
'A brilliant and harrowing play that will stay with me for a long time...', 'Be prepared for the lasting impact this will have on you. You have been warned...' ★★★★★ - The Tab
- October 2023
Summer with Monika is an exploration of what it means to love, be loved and subsequently experience the loss that was in some ways inevitable, but no less painful.
- October 2023
"This is a true story and it's a love story. This is our love story. And the first thing I want to tell you is this: love is not a cast-iron set of symptoms. Love is whatever you feel it to be."
Blink is the story of Jonah and Sophie, two introverts thrown together by grief and fate. Newly arrived in a city too busy to notice them, they embark on a heartfelt romance without ever exchanging a word. Will their relationship rescue them from loneliness or are their scars too deep to heal?
A sweet, off-beat romantic comedy from multi-award-winning playwright Phil Porter.
- October 2023
The Pembroke Players regularly occurring comedy nights hosted in the beautiful New Cellars.
- March 2023
At the Young Women’s Empowerment Forum, Karina, the youngest female partner in a prestigious law firm, is poised to impart her wisdom to the hordes of Gen Z women who regard her as a role model in a male-dominated industry. Unexpectedly, Karina is thrust into a Zoom breakout room with Sara, her former intern, whose experiences throw into question Karina’s #girlboss sloganeering… #WomenSupportingWomen maps the vast expanse of greys behind the glib hashtag of solidarity, and unpacks the performances expected of women as leaders in the workplace — and as victims in the courtroom. The play also explores the incongruities of virtual identities in our post-pandemic world, where we are forced to project our public selves while in our most private spaces.
- March 2023
A and B have been close friends, for a while. A is sharp, witty and unafraid to be vulnerable; especially when they drink too much. B is more traditional, straight, and is quick to tell A when the point of 'too much' has been reached. They bounce off each other and push each other; neither are afraid of an argument. However, when military intervention in another country provokes them to severe disagreement, the closeness of their friendship is brought into question. B has a new girlfriend, A disapproves. B suggests A gets help for what might be a drinking problem. The volume is dialed up when a protest forms against the military intervention and A and B come to a head. Neither will back down, and both are at a tipping point, will either of them step in?
