- January–February 2017
“You can’t explain me. Spagger. Victim. Attacker. Addict. Lover. Priest. I am one of those sorts who is impossible to explain.”
Stuart is an alcoholic, drug addicted, violence-loving, “chaotic homeless”. Alexander is a middle-class, Cambridge graduate and volunteer at the local homeless shelter who decides to write Stuart’s biography. As their friendship blossoms, he peels back the layers of a troubled past and discovers just as much about his own along the way.
Working in partnership with local homelessness charities, this is a production which seeks to challenge your pre-conceptions and transform the Corpus Playroom into a site of social activism.
Hilariously funny, yet shockingly tragic. This is their story, told backwards.
- January 2017
The average person will speak 123,205,750 words in a lifetime. But what if there were a limit? Oliver and Bernadette are about to find out.
'Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons' is a dystopian rom-com about a young couple, Bernadette and Oliver and their developing relationship in the face of a new censorship law that bans all British citizens from speaking more than 140 words a day.
When every word is sacred, how do we say the things we really feel to those we care about?
- November–December 2016
Lily is dead. Who was she?
It seems even her friends don’t know.
As they gather in Eleanor’s living room after the funeral, Lily’s friends attempt to remember and celebrate her life, but their discussion soon turns inwards. Though they talk about Lily, they actually say very little, and end up revealing more about themselves than about her. In the wake of death, they think of their own jobs, children and love affairs; their own life forces are brought to the fore as they deal with the idea of death. They take chances, and take trust in each other. Tangled relationships unravel and quiet sufferings find voice in this strange afternoon of grief and false smiles. In the limbo space of the living room, they express their desires and confront their demons. Love and death meet head-on.
Jack seems to be the only person truly focussed on mourning. Unlike the others, he has no trouble in remembering Lily, but how will he ever let go?
- November 2016
Scenes from A Void is a work for incurable insomniacs, people who are completely unsure, people who wake up with their brain in a whirl. Perec’s original text was written without using the letter E, this absence becomes an intense metaphor for loss, distraction, and nothingness - it is the invisible backbone of his dizzying, swirling novel.
Scenes from A Void is a modern opera / musical theatre piece. I have set to music responses by 8 different poets. These poets are responding to a substantial portion of the tenth chapter of Gilbert Adair’s translation of Perec’s A Void. My opera is comprised of six musical events in total: ridiculous, violent, amorous, introspective re-writings of famous, wonderful works of poetry including Milton, Shelley, and Poe. The subject matter of each very different poem drives the narrative of the work and the emotional subject matter moves quickly and heavily. Each half, lasting roughly 25-30 minutes, contains 3 arias.
Scenes from A Void is currently scored for a small chamber ensemble of flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, clarinet in Bb, bassoon, a percussionist (vibraphone, glockenspiel, some cymbals and small drums), an electric guitar, two violins, a viola, a ‘cello, and a piano. The singing cast would consist of two tenors and a soprano, these would operate a two small percussion batteries set either side of the stage. The singing cast steps in and out of center stage to operate these batteries and in doing so act as a type of chorus. These percussion batteries consist of found objects amplified with contact microphones to make unusual, sometimes ridiculous, sounds. I am able to receive help from of a number of musicians and directors who have been involved with ADC productions. In viewing these texts in an abstract manner I hope to find and dialogue with new methods of expressive engagement
The development of the material- physical movement, auxiliary percussion, and more standard music into more unusual, unsettling realms is central to this work. I want to create a real sense of upset, distress, and searching in response to the crushing feelings of absence that pervade the text. One way I hope to take the music in this direction is by manipulating the microtonally-tuned strings of an electric guitar to literally create rhythm from harmony by constantly altering the fixed pitches of differently-tuned strings. I want to purposefully cause the critical bandwidths of two or more complex sounds to interact in changing ways over periods of time, this causes pulsations of changing rates – the audience will perceive the actual physical movements of these sounds interacting and the cast will have a visceral musical world to react and engage with. Pushing the cast to respond to these particularly visceral sounds is a further example of my interest in engaging with new modes of expression – navigating spaces between choreographed movement and musical sound in service of blurring expressive boundaries. New methods of artistic expression should become apparent in the spaces that separate different forms of artistry. Above all, however, these ideas work together to create an ambitious, performable, expressive, exciting work of musical theatre.
Scenes from a Void immerses its audience in distraction, indulgence, and emptiness - an exhausting exploration of being without identity in this plural age.
http://scenesfromavoid.wixsite.com/scenesfromavoid
https://www.corpusplayroom.com/whats-on/musical/scenes-from-a-void.aspx
- October 2016
Join us for this evening of new writing! The Fletcher Players bring you Smörgåsbord: a brand-new festival showcasing the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted at the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
- October 2016
“Now is the time to throw off our chains, to dance footloose upon the earth, to carpe some f***ing diem. We’ve earned tonight, gentlemen.”
Join the Riot Club, an elite group of privately-educated Oxford undergraduates, as they gather for their termly dinner in a hired room of a family-run pub. Taking place over the course of one evening, the dinner begins with hilarity and amusing drunkenness, but quickly descends into something darker. Be amused, then alarmed, by a series of increasingly disturbing jokes and disputes with the pub owner, his daughter, and a call girl. It will be a night of drinking. It will be a night of surprises. It will be a night that both the boys, and you, won’t be able to forget. The play that inspired the popular film ‘The Riot Club’, Posh is at once hilarious and disturbing, distantly elitist and yet uncomfortably close to home.
- May 2016
Three strangers are about to face their demons head on. Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another – if they can only over come their urge to self destruct.
- March 2016
Come one, come all, to a comedy extravagamza of comedic and #relatable sketches about Cambridge life, written by real Cambridge students in a real Cambridge college. A night perfect for all college families no matter which college you call home. We all need a laugh now and then, don’t we? Right?
- March 2016
Violet has just split up with her husband. Cecilia likes painting dead birds. The sisters are living in their mildewed family pile in the back of beyond to look after their senile father and stop the ceiling from caving in. When their brother arrives with a prospective buyer, he unwittingly raises a storm of questions about the house's past and future.
The halls echo with eerie love songs, and the kitchen where the family gathers seems haunted by ghostly presences – alive and dead. As the body count moves from birds to things more substantial, the house’s occupants are forced to reconsider the life their family has led for centuries.
‘The Beck’ is by turns a warm, dark, and uncomfortably real piece of new writing by Flora de Falbe.
- February 2016
The Fletcher Players and Shadwell Society bring you “Smorgasbord”: a brand-new festival showcasing the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
Come and see some of the boldest works of new theatre in their rawest and most creatively fertile state
- February 2016
‘I don’t care if I am an abomination. That woman, that wrong woman, is who I am, and I refuse to be cured.’
This claustrophobic, bittersweet twist on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses turns the romance of Iphis and Ianthe into a tragedy. The heroine, Iphis, having been transformed into a man by the goddess Isis in order to solve the ‘problem’ of her homosexuality, suffers an identity crisis. Her mother Telethusa and new wife Ianthe struggle to cope with her depression and anger, which threaten to turn into radical action against her misogynistic father, Isis and society itself.
This bleak yet hopeful student-written play challenges prevailing ideas that our identities are not our own. In our world of increasingly fluid sexuality and gender roles, 'Iphis' raises the question – does mankind ever progress beyond its prejudices?
- November 2015
It’s 1956 and the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein are having their annual quiche breakfast. Will they be able to keep their cool when Communists threaten their idyllic town?
- March 2015
One naive fresher encounters a spirit too many in this terrifying tale about a Cambridge University degree. Matt learns the hard way not to consort with ghosts when his misguided wish to achieve academic success has haunting consequences. Matt races through his past to secure his future and get the ghoul of his dreams. It'll be dead good.
- March 2015
'The best thing to happen to the sky since rainbows'.
Based on the BBC Radio 4 show “Cabin Pressure” by John Finnemore copyright Pozzitive Television Ltd, ‘Cabin Pressure’ is set in the cabin of 'GERTI', a charter airplane run by ‘MJN Air’ and examines the relations between and the antics of the four crew members as they fly across the globe: Carolyn (the owner of the MJN), Arthur (her son and hapless flight attendant), Martin (captain) and Douglas (first officer). The crew pass their time by engaging in games, bets and general tomfoolery; making a madcap comedy that is as fun for the actors as well as the audience.
- October–November 2014
The play that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's famous thriller of the same name, Rope is a tense psychodrama that promises to keep audiences on tenterhooks: 1929. Two well-bred Oxford students who, under the malign influence of Nietzsche and his theories of the Übermensch, kill a fellow undergraduate just for kicks. They then hold a dinner party, serving the food and drink from a chest that contains the corpse.
Can they keep their composure or will conscience and morality strike too late?
- July–August 2014
King Lear is a play made famous by its protagonist, but it also boasts three of Shakespeare’s most fascinating women. What does the story look like when you see it through their eyes? Using the original text and live music, this bold retelling of King Lear will present Shakespeare’s tragedy in a new light. Follow three daughters on a disorienting journey through a landscape that is riddled with alienation and domestic heartbreak. Lear’s Daughters brings you a play about family, where Lear himself is at once centre stage, and nowhere to be seen.
- June 2014
The world changes and you with it.
Abi Morgan's play, originally performed in collaboration with Frantic Assembly, is the story of one couple, told from two different points in their lives: as young lovers in their twenties and as worldly companions looking back on their relationship.
Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale exploring love, memory and loss.
- April–May 2014
What if the world descended into post-apocalyptic turmoil? What if every faction of society spiralled out of control? What if badgers governed humans? There would be no need to make a song and dance about it.
But some people probably would anyway.
Dystopia: The Musical (A Sketch Show) depicts everything that we humans hold dear collapsing into catastrophic confusion, with the occasional song to lighten the mood. Join us as dark dystopia clashes with whimsical musical theatre in a fabulous armageddon. Just don't expect to make it out alive. And definitely don't expect to make it out elated.
**Post-apocalyptic tristesse not included.
A new sketch show with music from Footlights regulars Milo Edwards, Archie Henderson, Jordan Mitchell, Theo Wethered and Guy Emanuel
- February–March 2014
Christopher Marlowe: writer, lover, spy, Corpuscle. When his secret diary is discovered during a thoroughly unprofessional archaeological dig, a tale of daring, seduction and secrets is brought to light. The young Marlowe writes of his time as a penniless and foolish undergraduate at Corpus, recruited by the Privy Council to investigate a series of suspicious goings-on in an isolated convent in France.
Marlowe is plunged into a scandalous world of lies, treachery and mad nuns. King Henry IV of France is planning an invasion, and the Queen of England is in danger...
Now Marlowe must escape using only his wit, charm and rugged good looks – and, perhaps, a healthy dose of cross-dressing. But even if he makes it back to English shores, can he trust anyone he finds there…?
The Corpus Freshers’ Show will be performed, directed, produced, designed and crewed entirely by those new to Cambridge drama.
- October 2013
HATCH. returns- all new for Michaelmas 2013!
Cambridge's number one new writing showcase features extracts from plays, poetry and prose... All performed by HATCH's wonderful troupe of HATCHling actors.
Come one, Come all
- October 2013
Find out what happens when you send a playwright to go and interview thirty 10 year olds across Britain about their life and turn their thoughts into a play. In Monkey Bars these children words are spoken by adults. Not adults playing children, but adults playing adults, in adult situations. Be ready for a play which reminds us what being a child was like, and forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about adulthood. 'Fresh from a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival, Fringe First 2012 Award-winner, Monkey Bars is a revelatory verbatim show that is funny, touching and endlessly surprising.'
- March 2013
Helena Montague has wanted to be a coroner since she was a little girl. And she's now got a degree and some relevant experience, so what's stopping her? The thought of morgues? Hoards of mannequins? Latent feminism? Or something more or less sinister?
Join some inexplicably talented Corpus Christi College first years at their one and only Playroom for a confused evening of bewildering new drama:
POST MORTEM
'I think we're going to need a fresher body'.
- February 2013
"I view this as the biggest accomplishment of my life: I married a man who is not a psychopath."
Becky used to be a big shot, Max thinks he still is. Suzanna's a would-be psychologist who wishes she could cure everything she can't. Like her chemistry with Max. Or her husband Andrew's penchant for vulnerable women. Women like Becky. Confused? They are too. Especially when Max and Becky go on a disastrous blind date that pushes them all a little too close to breaking point.
This dark American comedy, 'as engrossing as it is ferociously funny' (New York Times), provides a contemporary and often unsettling take on the perks and pitfalls of relationships with the opposite sex, and might just leave you wondering whether there is such a thing as a clean slate.
‘dazzlingly written’ -Financial Times
***** Time Out
- January 2013
Jamie Fraser (Footlights Smoker, Corpus Smoker) and Ben Pope (Wolfson Howler, Clare Comedy) are part-time comedians and sort-of friends. They've swapped phone numbers. They've been to Subway together. Jamie has complimented Ben on his scarves at least once. Now they're bringing you an evening of hilarious buddy comedy. Featuring their trademark stilted delivery and awkward personalities, these plucky standups are gracing the Corpus Playroom for one night only. Witty observations! Self deprecation! 100% genuine audience interaction! Ben and Jamie think it might be good. These people agree: 'genuinely hysterical’ - The Cambridge Student ‘provoked the loudest guffaws of the night’ - The Tab ‘left the audience gasping for breath’ - Varsity
- October 2012
Britain is Broken. Mary has recently lost her husband, a pseudo-intellectual named Gaston feels quite good about being indentured to the illegal drug trade and the neighbours are finally getting round to organizing a sex party - but not the good kind of sex party.
And on a day when everything seems to be getting distinctly odd: a representative from the Local Council has come round to make sure the walls don't collapse and terminate the lives of everyone inside. It almost sounds a bit exciting, but as Mary so rightly points out: 'the minor necrophillic orgies don't really do it for me.'
'Pop Not Broth' is an unrelenting farce, a comedy tailor-made for the blithe age. It contains language making a good show of acting tough and is not suitable for anyone.
- October 2012
Having written and performed stand-up and sketches at Smokers throughout Cambridge (Corpus, Christs, Magdalene, Newnham, Kings, Clare, Wolfson, ADC), Ben Pope presents his first full hour of stand-up at the Corpus Playroom for one night only.
Ben is quite unsure about almost everything. Come and have some thoughts from his head for a small fee.
'Very funny', 'very competent' – Tab 'Superb', 'Liam Williams in the making' - Varsity 'Ben Pope is a terrible comic and a worse person' - Anonymous Gender Studies student
- June 2012
Following its run at the Corpus Playroom, Zombie Haiku was selected to be one of twenty shows performing at the International Student Drama Festival.
You are so lucky | That we cannot remember | How to use doorknobs.
An original adaptation of Ryan Mecum's book, Zombie Haiku follows one lone survivor's journey through ruined houses, decimated cities and abandoned airports as they contend with exploding petrol stations and reanimated work colleagues. Bringing the humour, emotion and darkness of the book to the stage, this production blends physical theatre, music and (of course) haiku for an entertaining exploration of what happens when the living clash with the undead.
The city is dead | Streets are filled with people | Who aren't quite people.
- May 2012
‘We are all born mad. Some remain so.’
Audiences have been waiting for Godot for decades. But they never get bored of doings so. Comic, tragic, sophisticated, bawdy, cheerful and terrifying by turn, this is a play in which nothing and everything happens. But mostly nothing…
Vladimir. Estragon. An unforgiving wasteland. And a tree. Time passes. Others come and go. But nothing really seems to change. How near is death? How unreachable is repentance? How long have they been waiting for Godot? How long will they wait?
Relishing the play’s joyousness and desperation, this production brings freshness to this modernist masterpiece. It presents the audience with a deteriorating, but youthful Vladimir and Estragon, a failed pair of entertainers, whose comic clumsiness as young adults makes their gradual wilting all the more tragic.
Come and be amused and bemused by the deteriorating youth in this production of Beckett’s timeless classic.
- May 2012
“...i’ll tell it once. one time because it deserves to be told, and then never again. fair enough?”
Three plays. Three violent crimes. Three victims. Or is it more? A man in a plain suit confesses the tragic results of a friend’s practical joke to a stranger in a hotel room. A young woman in an interrogation room describes her relationship as a 13 year-old with her high school teacher and the consequences it had for them both. A young couple recall a memorable high school reunion, but end up telling chillingly different stories.
Neil LaBute’s collection of short plays ‘bash’ is an uncompromising dive into the darkest recesses of the human psyche and the evils that lurk just under the surface of everyday life. It is raw, unflinching and mesmerising. What exactly does it take to kill?
- April 2012
'They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past.'
Osborne's famous, autobiographical piece presents the unhappy, unfulfilled marriage of Jimmy and Alison, the failures of the British middle class and the crumbling of family life. Sex, violence and trumpets combine in a defining piece of British theatre which coined the term 'angry young men'.
Set in the intimacy of the Corpus Playrooms and using an all female cast to get a unique perspective on this masculine piece of theatre, the production offers an intense perspective on the tragic farce of a failing young relationship.
- February 2012
The machine can predict, with complete accuracy, how you are going to die. It gives no date, no specifics, only a slip of paper upon which are printed the words DROWNED or HEART ATTACK or CHOKED ON A PRETZEL. Machine of Death presents a world in which everyone knows how they will die. The stories based around this idea are morbidly interesting, but often amusing and thought-provoking as well.
Sid loathes Norma’s endless party games, but how far will he go to sabotage them when a machine of death gets involved? Can Dunmere be elected prime minister despite his embarrassing demise? And how will Simon cope, knowing he's going to be torn apart and devoured by lions? Join us to find out the answers to these questions, and more, in Week 3 at the Corpus Playroom.
- February 2012
- November–December 2011
"He pats her... his patting becomes beating and he continues beating her even though she's screaming..."
Nancy’s existence is on hold until she finds her missing 10 year old daughter. Agnetha wonders if her work investigating the minds of criminals is starting to affect her own thoughts. Meanwhile Ralph, sitting on a bench, feels the hot sun on his face, and spies the next little girl he’d like to keep him company for a while.
Frozen dares to ask whether it’s possible to understand the minds of serial killers, and ultimately to forgive them.
Frozen has previously been performed at the National and on Broadway. It was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and won the Theatrical Management Association’s award for Best New Play.
- November 2011
Duologues. The greatest invention in theatre since the monologue.
This will be the first ever annual Playroom Duologues Competition, in which dramatically-minded pairs shall battle it out against each other in a contest where you, yes you, are the judge. There shall be a cash-prize for the winner so it’s a given that there will be some raw and uncut passion on display. They’ll make us laugh, they’ll make us cry and they’ll make us question why anybody would ever bother with a soliloquy.
A must-have ticket for those of you out there that like the idea of drama but just can’t commit to the notion of a full-length show.
- November 2011
- June 2011
The story of the lovers Acis and Galetea is a tale set in an idyllic pastoral utopia, where the love is free, innocent and passionate. The shepherd boy and the beautiful nymph inhabit a bucolic dream until their romance is destroyed by a powerful monster, the cyclops Polyphemus, whose rage and sexual jealousy threatens to tear their world asunder.
Come and enjoy the beautiful setting of Corpus' Master's Lodge Garden, which will be transformed into the "pleasures of the plains", and enter into a landscape inhabited by nymphs, shepherds and fantastic monsters. The plot boasts love, envy, rejoicing and mourning, and with some of Cambridge's finest singers and players, this fiery retelling will take a fresh look at Handel's classic.
