- January 2017
doppelgänger (noun): an apparition or double of a living person.
Join Luisa Callander, Footlight and small-scale woman, for an hour of slightly odd comedy – starring some characters who all look just a smidgen too much like her.
Previous nods, winks, and tips-o'-the-hat:
“Callander exhibits a relaxed and effortless quirkiness on the stage, making her instantly likeable” – TCS
“surrealist, occasionally dark, yet somehow always light-hearted and innovative” – The Tab
“moments of comedic genius” – Broadway Baby
- January 2017
Simone's Speaking Service organises for inspirational speakers to talk to high-performing undergraduates at universities both in the UK and abroad, encouraging students to think about their lives, their careers, and their futures.
Join Cambridge comedian John Tothill for an hour of absurd character monologues in this hilarious, bizarre and heart-warming one-man show, playing for just two nights at the Corpus Playroom. Meet Professor Julian Pringle, academic and public intellectual, as he ruminates on the key to a happy life with his inimitable flair. Or local councillor John Higgins, who this year is running for the esteemed post of Mayor of West Fumberland. And, of course, Simone-Diane le Roulé, the unbelievably successful businesswoman-cum-impresario who brought these extraordinary men and women together.
It’s a show that you’d be mad or busy to miss. John Tothill reminds students that to have these speakers give up their time to talk to you is a privilege, so get your tickets now.
Previous praise:
‘A triumph of character comedy’ – EdFringeReview ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
'Simply delightful' - The Tab ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
- 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?
- January 2017
In 2014 Mark Bittlestone Came Out As Gay, As If Being An Orphan Wasn't Funny Enough!!
Which is worse? Losing both your parents in awful circumstances or being gay? Sadly, Mark Bittlestone doesn't have the luxury of choice. Join gay orphan Mark Bittlestone for an hour of laughs based on a lifetime of horrible tears.
Of course, people with Mark's colossal misfortune need your help. Well...Mark doesn't, but he's acutely aware that others do. For this reason, all proceeds from 'Pity Laughs' will go to the charities Just Like Us and Cancer Research UK.
"All the homosexuality of comedian Alan Carr with neither of the parents" - The Tab
- January 2017
Enter into the world of a Euclidean textbook in the early seventeenth century, where a melancholic young square named Quadro dreams of becoming the perfect circle. Meanwhile, his dastardly friend, the base Rectangulus, decides to seek revenge on the entire shape-world, turning Quadro, Line and Circulus against their weary sovereign, the Compass. Geometric chaos ensues, as the characters in an overused textbook are finally given the chance to rebel against their lot in life.
Transcribed and published by the Malone Society in 1983, ‘Blame Not Our Author’ has not been performed since it was penned in the Jesuit English College in Rome circa 1630. Written for students some 400 years ago, it is packed with visual gags that are farcical, witty, and still eloquent to anyone familiar with school geometry lessons.
- January 2017
In 1950's Hazlehurst, Mississippi, the three Mcgrath sisters have returned home, awaiting news of the family patriarch - their grandfather - who is living out his final hours in hospital. Lenny, the oldest sister, is unmarried and facing dwindling marriage prospects; Meg, the middle sister, has returned after a failed stint in Hollywood, and the youngest sister, Babe, is out on bail after shooting her husband.
Their troubles, serious and yet hilarious, unravel throughout the play; as past resentments bubble to the surface, the sisters are forced to face the consequences of the various “crimes of the heart” that they have committed.
An example of black comedy at its finest, Crimes of the Heart is a comedic exploration of loneliness, deceit and ultimately what it means to be a family.
- January 2017
‘You’re right. I may forget who you are. I may bring other women here, to this place, and I may tell them I love them, and make love to them. But they will be imposters. And I will be a ghost.’ A man takes his lover to a remote fishing cabin for a romantic getaway. He claims she’s the first and only, but is there more to the river than meets the eye? Big Squirrel presents the Cambridge premiere of Jez Butterworth’s latest play The River, a haunting new drama by the writer of Jerusalem starring Robin Maurice Owen, Emma Von Schreiber and Kattreya Scheurer-Smith.
- December 2016
Join Santa and his assistant, Ellie The Elf as they try to get everything ready for Christmas in time.
- December 2016
Blasted Heath, has never truly recovered from the strange days of madness, meteorites and that indescribable colour out of space.
Live Foley sound effects and intense, dramatised readings bring to life this Lovecraftian masterpiece. As the lights dim you'll be left shrouded in darkness, allowing Shedload’s uniquely vivid method of storytelling to paint otherworldly horrors before you. Live sound effects crafted by some of the most unassuming objects of the everyday and more, help create an atmosphere which never fails to place the spectator into the belly of the story- therein lies the mystery of ‘The Colour out of Space’...
- December 2016
- December 2016
“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused” Join Paper Planes for a heartfelt and joyful improvised story based on A Christmas Carol. Watch our character's journey as they encounter three spirits - one each of past, present, and future. One-by-one, the spirits takes them through a Christmas which has, is and could have been, leading to a change of heart... An improvised musical Christmas adventure, with a puppety flavour.
- 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–December 2016
BATS presents....
"I was arrested last week. I haven't been able to book any flights. I can't take out more than £20 at the cashpoint in one transaction. Also my Boots card used to have 1900 points on it, and now they've all just vanished from the system."
On his thirtieth birthday Joseph K is arrested and nobody will tell him why. Thrown headlong into a confusing and illogical maze of bureaucracy and strangeness, K faces the impossible task of holding onto an ever- shifting reality.
Tom Basden's darkly comic adaptation of Kafka's classic novel The Trial relocates the story to twenty- first century London, collapsing the boundary between K's world and our own and tapping into the fear that our lives are not our own.
- November 2016
August 1939; three days into her job as a journalist, Clare Hollingworth is sent to Poland to report on the growing tensions. It is there she discovers a line of German tanks lined up on the Polish border, poised and just awaiting the order to strike. It is there she warns the entire globe that World War Two has just begun. It is back in her English newspaper office, however, that her contribution is glossed over, her name forgotten and her story erased from our history. All because she was a woman in the male dominated, cutthroat newspaper business.
Right Place Wrong Time tells the remarkable true story of how one woman saved the world and how the world repaid her by forgetting all about her. The story is presided over by present day 104-year-old Clare and told through a series of flashbacks acted out by her younger self and an ever changing cast of characters.
- November 2016
“Are you my Butterfly?” Rene Gallimard’s dream is to love and be loved by The Perfect Woman, but he expects little after a lifetime of rejection. So when he is sent on a diplomatic mission to China only to be entranced by actress Song Liling’s alluring performance in Madame Butterfly, he assumes that his advances will be rejected once more. To his great surprise, however, Song suggests that the feelings might be mutual. Blinded by joy, Gallimard catapults into a torrid love affair without hesitating to consider that things may be too good to be true. Unwilling to accept anything but his dream woman, however, Gallimard ignores the widening cracks in order to preserve the illusion that he has yearned for all his life. A play about deception, stereotypes, and the power of blind belief, 1988 Tony Award winner M. Butterfly observes the collision between expectation and reality and the wreckage left behind.
- November 2016–April 1908
Hatch is a collection of dramatic student writing - between five and ten minutes in length - of all different genres and styles that make up over an hour of some of Cambridge's most creative student written theatre.
- November 2016
The Marlowe Showcase is an opportunity for 12-14 graduating actors to perform one or two monologues or duologues in front of industry professionals (including agencies and casting directors) and be directed by a professional Director. Returning as 2015's professional Director is Nicholas Barter, former Principal of RADA (1993-2007) and former Artistic Director of the Arts Theatre.
- November 2016
You are cordially invited to the weird and wonderful world of Crazy Walls!
For the very first time since 'The Reckoning', two urchins are opening the blast doors to their underground bunker which looks a lot like the Corpus Playroom.
With so many characters to re-live and such little time before the radiation curfew kicks in, treat yourself to an hour of fast-paced, action-packed, utter nonsensical character comedy.
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll probably get radiation poisoning.
Join Riss, join Henry and leave your sense and sensibility at the door.
- November 2016
"A job is a wage and a wage is a cage in a town like mine."
Carl doesn't fit in at home. He doesn’t fit in anywhere. When he signs up for the army, he sees it as a chance to escape the grim reality of life in his hometown. But the army takes him to Afghanistan. And when he comes home, it’s not as a war hero but as a changed man. Winner of a 2011 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Britannia Waves the Rules is an arresting look at conflict and its effect on soldiers returning home to a world they no longer know how to cope with, and a society that doesn’t know how to cope with them.
- 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
- November 2016
I want to tell you a story. It will be creepy, it will be unexpected, and it may just drive you crazy.
Roald Dahl delighted our childhoods with little Charlie Bucket and sparky Matilda Wormwood, but in the adult world, the end is not always happy. Comfy yourself on cushions with a warming mug of something and watch Roald Dahl’s short stories explode before your eyes with film, music and physical theatre. Terrifying and exhilarating, this is one golden ticket.
- November 2016
Auguste Deter is the first patient recorded to have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Before giving a diagnosis, Dr. Alzheimer recorded extensive interviews with Auguste Deter, many of which ended in her exclaiming "Oh, God!...I have lost myself, so to say"
Modern day Britain. A man explores a dusty apartment. Each object thrusting him back into his past.
Follow Augustus as he pieces together fragments of a life he has forgotten, a life full of love, loss and heartbreak.
He is on a collision course with his past. If only he could just remember...
- November 2016
We’re all just big babies with puberty hairs aren’t we?
A child giggles and breaks into a broad grin, revealing not only the remains of their fish-finger sandwich, but also a prized set of gleaming, pale yellow baby teeth. They flash their glinting, porcelain pegs like the proud owner of a fully stocked china shop.
The lower middle teeth are the first to go. The top-centre is next. We shed our skin of youth and progress, tentative and mouth-bald, into adulthood. Join these four diphyodonts as they lose their baby teeth in Corpus Playroom, and attempt to tackle their big teeth, and the big questions of life. John, Christian, James and Eve present Milk Teeth: a deciduous sketch show.
From the people who brought you VOXPOP: A Sketch Show, Black Comedy, Judge Judy’s Buzz World: The Footlights Harry Porter Prize Winner 2016, Walnut Sanchez and The Macaroni Saga: Edinburgh Fringe 2016, Black Tie Smoker 2016 and various Footlights smokers.
‘Christian Hines is tightly wound’ - The Evening Standard
‘Christian Hines has rebelled disastrously but intelligently’ - The Reviews Hub
‘Delaney is a studious goody-two-shoes’ - bargaintheatreland.com
'John Tothill brought his own saucy flair to the proceedings' - CTR
‘Everything I wanted a Cambridge sketch show to be: it was intelligent, entertaining and oftentimes bizarre. Probably in that order. Well worth attending if you want an evening of laughter, and potentially frozen peas’ - CTR
- November 2016
“I used to think I could just replant myself – that exile was a new garden in which to grow. But now my roots are rotting. I’ll stop being a tree and turn into sand.”
Six women meet in exile. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know when, or who, or why. Stuck in this place of placelessness, enclosed and without borders, they search in the sand for memories of home as their identity slips through their fingers. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Medea feels entitled to the last drop. Antoinette is trapped in the attic. Agave is haunted by the image of her son’s severed head. Samasti just got her period. Abhita thinks this is a joke. And Elaheh wants to write down the desert. As tensions run high and the water runs out, the women are forced to unearth their stories.
- October 2016
The Cambridge Impronauts present a pirate-inspired epic created live on stage from audience suggestions with maybe a couple improvised sea shanties too. All acting, words, twists, music and lyrics will be made up on the spot. Don't believe we're improvising? Well, just to make sure, you tell us the treasure we seek, our pirate names, our characters' backstories (and more) and we will create an hour long swashbuckling adventure in which we attempt to include it all. Who will make the crew? Where will we be setting sail? All this is in your hands!
- October 2016
This is the tale of Jonah, Sophie, and a fox called Scruffilitis. It's a love story. A dysfunctional, voyeuristic and darkly funny love story, but a love story all the same.
- 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
~ cn ~
this is not a play.
You expected something.
You expected something else perhaps.
You expected objects.
You expected no objects.
You expected an atmosphere.
You expected a different world.
You expected no different world.
In any case, you expected something.
It may even be the case that you expected what you are hearing now.
But even in that case you experienced something different.
You chuckle-heads, you small-timers, you nervous nellies, you fuddy-duddies, you windbags, you sitting ducks, you milksops.
Come be offended!
- 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.
- October 2016
'Someone's after you, you're hunted.'
Meet the Howie Lee and the Rookie Lee, two men with nothing in common except a last name and an ill-fated spiral of events. Celebrated Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe's 1999 critically acclaimed drama is a two-hander of two halves, taking a nightmarish dive into the darkest depths of human behaviour. Known for his intense, lyrical verse and blistering imagery, O'Rowe litters this visceral tragedy with ruinous violence and surprising comic twists.
- October 2016
'O heart of mine, steel thyself!'
Euripides's dark and brilliant tale of sexual revenge comes to the Corpus Playroom for the first time.
Medea is a foreign woman in a hostile country. For the sake of her husband Jason she has betrayed her family and left her homeland. When she is abandoned by him in favour of a younger wife she is left with nothing. Facing banishment and separation from her children Medea begs for one day's grace. It is enough. Propelled into action by her unflinching sense of justice and constantly affirmed by her desire to see it done, she sets to work to exact a terrible revenge.
- October 2016
Debut ego-trip from Footlight Ruby Keane. Join this self-proclaimed human for an hour(ish) of surreal(ish) stand-up(ish) comedy. All proceeds from the show will go to The Little Princess Trust: http://www.littleprincesses.org.uk
Kind words from strangers:
“It is extremely refreshing to see such absurd humour” - The Tab
“Surreal is taken to new heights” - TCS
"A unique and hilarious brand of slow, absurdist comedy" - Broadway Baby
- October 2016
The last time Detective James Macaroni saw the evil drug baron Walnut Sanchez, it was at the centre of the earth.
Years later, in a town full of cops who don’t play by the rules, Macaroni’s obsessive respect for due process makes him the greatest maverick of all… Still haunted by his past, investigates a spate of missing persons - but as the witnesses pile up, it seems all is not as it seems. Or so it seems…
Like a psychic at a salsa class, Sanchez is always one step ahead. Slowly, Macaroni meanders to redemption, but not before meeting a whole host of offbeat characters: a couple of country club toffs; a mad old lady hellbent on wasting police time; a charity worker with the unfortunate voice of an evil genius; and many, many more. It’s all quite weird. But we think you’ll like it.
Previous praise:
“Puns that melt your face” - CTR
“Fresh, original, and brilliantly self-aware” - Tab
***** - BroadwayBaby, EdFringeReview, Varsity
- July 2016
- June 2016
Kenneth Watton, five-time [###SYSTEM ERROR####]M.ï√°c@fireside3>â¶åûÛÔWarm///wet///GñIP¨ûêüúü$///winner of love/Ω®ú)42424242/shining array of guests. This may well be your last opportunity to see í’‰¨’=¸ôH¿~Œ±M"ù2óP'îÜ¿ [Sandra, what’s going on where are my] «àÇ£x˛∑í-?±0D+˛YPƒ slippers: flÓóàøÄ*≤t’|ZÁ most famous beard. Cast away your catalogues >ˇª˜àŸnHP©—Ë°ÚÛ€"U9YcUœEèıRŒ come all, to the Cprous Playroom! ‘;∆ˇ?®ê&ÆD$’TtNfl›ß62 the man himself.
Retiring host Kenneth Watton stretches out the laugh lines one last time. Join a sparkling line-up of guests for a final fling with the madrigal maestro.
- June 2016
Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Woman in Mind’ is a painful comedy about the breakdown of a middle-class housewife, Susan, presented from her perspective. Two families cohabit in Susan’s mind: her real family (her dreary Reverend of a husband, insipid sister-in-law and son who's disappeared after joining a cult) and her imagined family (the ‘perfect’ husband, doting brother and admiring daughter.) Gerald, the real husband, is apathetic, unsupportive and unsympathetic. His sister is a pain. Meanwhile, the GP is trying to flirt with Susan. As Susan gets worse, the two worlds begin to blur: the imagined family becomes nightmarish, no longer under her control.
Mock the dysfunctional which resembles your life all too much! Bask in the satisfaction of watching supposed perfection fall apart! Reflect upon the pain behind the humour. What better catharsis than comedy?
Swinging between the poignant and the ridiculous, this play is as heart-breaking as it is hilarious.
