- May 2022
An Open Book is a Wildean farce set in modern-day Cambridge.
Professor Ernest Gray stands for academic rigour, discipline, and truth. He avoids frays on Twitter. His moral backbone is widely considered to be as inflexible as a Scudamores punting pole. Yet when a St John’s librarian - half-mad with dreams of power, conquest, and chapel-to-library conversion schemes - uncovers scandalous relics from his wild youth as a Master’s student, Ernest is forced into quandary. Does he bend to blackmail to save his reputation and his (almost-existent) love life? Or does he dare to be an open book?
- May 2022
The Chair traces the key transitions in a Singaporean family’s ancestry, observing the evolution of a bloodline from rough immigrant labourers to educated businessmen and women. The members of the family gain affluence, survive war, and fight among themselves, with a chair being passed from generation to generation, witnessing it all. The importance of this story lies in its characters and how they are portrayed, the nuance of Singaporean behaviours and relationships, and the shared history of the nation. This show is meant to provide an insight into what makes Singapore and its people the way it is.
- May 2022
How to right the wrong of insatiable money-hungry men when you’re a powerless student? Easy. Kidnap a billionaire.
Brian Henry is a member of the upper echelons of British society. The unparalleled success of his social media company Voyeurme has given him a net worth of £4.4 billion – Leigh, Robyn and Sophie have had enough. These modern-day Robin Hoods set out to solve this financial imbalance by kidnapping Brian, holding him to ransom and redistributing his billions amongst the employees he has so grossly underpaid.
This darkly comic piece of new writing explores the power dynamic when age, class and gender norms are instantly subverted and asks how far do you have to go to make a change?
- May 2022
What happens when you combine a lifelong goody-two-shoes with a girl who just keeps digging herself holes? You get Maria, chattering on at you for an hour about all the times she’s got it wrong before getting it right. Join Cambridge Footlight, Maria Pointer in her one-woman show ‘Say it Loud!’ as she lets you in on all the chaos of her life and what it’s like to live in the shadow of a certain musical number…
Come and have a laugh (at Maria’s expense) and join in the fun for one night, and one night only!
- May 2022
My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time.
– Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
A precocious young man on the cusp of adulthood, Artem grapples for a sense of purpose. Estranged from his father, dismissed by his lover and disillusioned by the world around him, he exists in a limbo that is hard to escape. But as a political campaign threatens to turn things sour, Artem must confront his priorities and carve out a path of his own.
However Belligerent the Cactus is an original drama that deals with ambition, idealism, and the search for identity. In a time where life itself can become a performance, learning to be authentic is no simple task.
- May 2022
“What if I said you could go back in time. For just one hour. And change the course of your life, forever...”
Mild-mannered Ned Burger is 57 years old, happily married and runs a sandwich shop in San Francisco. However, he’s still got a chip on his shoulder from his high school rivalry with world-famous baseball player Garry Bonds. Following a visit from the ghost of baseball legend Lou Gehrig, Ned is given a unique opportunity: to go back in time to his high school days and show Garry who he is, once and for all…
This original comedy-drama by Rishi Sharma asks a fundamental question: what will you sacrifice to be the best? The play is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, and, most importantly, requires no knowledge of baseball, its rules or its history.
- May 2022
The young white looking guy who swears he's an Arab really does a funny show about being an Arab but not really.
semi-finalist- chortle 2019
quarter-finalist - Leicester square new comedian 2022
quarter-finalist - the Musical comedy awards 2022
quarter finalist- Sketch off 2022
This performance is recommended for audiences aged 15+
- April 2022
'What on earth’s the matter with these people? He took absolutely no notice of me. Like I didn’t even exist... You can see me. Can’t you? You two? You can see me? Can’t you?'
Melanie believes she has foreseen the future. But has she really? Or is it all in her mind? True or false, she has seen events which threaten the life of one she secretly loves and she feels they are in terrible danger. What can she possibly do or say to prevent things happening and who will even believe her?
This amateur production of Consuming Passions is presented by an arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd.
- April 2022
Castlemore is currently being ruled by the evil Queen B! She plans to get rid of all the children in the land! (Boo!) Who can stop her? Is it that funny Nanny Doolittle (she says she can talk to the animals!) Or maybe the new mysterious Prince Theodore who's just come into town? Or maybe even her younger sister... Princess Ella? 'SuperElla' is jam-packed with songs, action and some good old family entertainment! A year round panto! Oh yes it is!
- April 2022
- March–April 2022
"I'm warning you, don't weep. That's what they want. So don't cry. Laugh. Do you hear me? Laugh." Stop us if you've heard this one before. An Englishman, an Irishman, and an American... are locked in a bare call, political prisoners captured by Lebanese terrorists. Over time, the three men overcome their personal, cultural and religious differences to lean on each other in order to attempt to survive their horrific ordeal with their minds intact. Based on a true story, this play by classic Irish playwright Frank McGuinness celebrates the strength of the human spirit and the power of laughter in the face of oppression.
- March 2022
‘This is not the story of how they died. This is the story of how they lived.’
It’s time to tell a story that you’ve never heard before. A story that is not only culturally significant for Jews but also important for all of us as human beings. It is a story about resilience, about the best and worst we as people have the potential to be and, most importantly, it is a story about stories.
The story we want to tell takes place in Warsaw during the Second World war, more specifically the brutal Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews of that great city were forced to live during the Nazi occupation. Our protagonist is Emmanuel Ringelblum. Through his creation of the Oyneg Shabes, a secret group of archivists, he would fight the Nazis by collecting and burying thousands of essays, articles, poems, payslips, photographs, songs- testimony to Jewish life and living- so that if indeed the Jews were wiped out of history by their oppressors, their true voices would survive in some capacity.
This devised piece of theatre celebrates life in the face of certain death. It celebrates Jewish culture as beautiful, wonderful and full of stories. Ringelblum understood and celebrated this more than anyone.
We intend to honour his legacy.
- March 2022
The Captive is a play first staged in 1926 in Paris which, upon being staged on Broadway, was one of the first to have an explicitly lesbian character. It’s a play with an amazing history: after 160 performances, the show was not only shut down but led to the passage of the Wales Padlock Act banning depictions of homosexuality on Broadway stages. Part of a canon of LGBT+ plays from an era pre-empting a more repressive time in American theatre, this show is being staged with an all-female/NB cast with an emphasis on its historical context.
The play tells the story of Jacques, a man in love with his friend Irene, who in turn is a lesbian struggling to hide her lover, Madame d’Aguines. The play is a compelling story of unrequited love and the navigation of relationships and homosexuality in the early twentieth century.
- March 2022
...it’s such a relief to have love again and to lie in bed and be held and touched and kissed and adored and your heart...
From a desolate and unnamed city, four voices emerge. A, C, B and M desperately seek out love and light, in the process finding life’s many ecstasies, horrors and heartbreaks. Sarah Kane’s Crave is a beautiful and unnerving one-act play, meditating on desire, belonging and obsession.
- March 2022
We've taken Henrik Ibsen's "unstageable" drama and Edvard Grieg's classical incidental music, and turned it into a brand new, original jazz reinterpretation. Performed live by a three-piece jazz band and a cast of three, 'Peer Gynt' is half-way between a piece of theatre and jazz gig.
Peer Gynt supposedly lives a life alongside princes, trolls and magic animals -- but everyone knows he’s lying!
His story, a tragic comedy, a realistic fantasy, and a satyrical biography, spans an entire lifetime and half the known world. Along the way, he procrastinates, flees, explores, loves, regrets, and learns.
- March 2022
- March 2022
A hard thing has come under the people of Briggsley village: the soil they have ploughed for generations now rejects their tools impenetrably. It won't be shovelled, scraped, swept, moistened or wormed into! Every crumb of the earth refuses to budge.
Nina is a tyke or an oracle (depending on who you ask) and tries fervently to advise her folk. But who will listen? None! Except for Orla, of course.
As farce becomes famine and horizons prove tough, frustrations become frenzies and enough becomes enough becomes enough!
'Unsoiled' is an original drama, but will it break ground?
- February 2022
Smörgåsbord is a night of new writing, hosted by the Fletcher Players in the Corpus Playroom. We are committed to bringing you a taste the freshest writing in Cambridge, ranging from 5 to 15 minutes.
This term, as LGBT+ History month is around the corner, we are particularly interested in putting on pieces of writing with LGBT+ characters and themes, but we really want to work from people from all marginalised backgrounds, including BAME , working class and disabled people. There is no experience barrier - I really want the perspectives which we haven’t seen enough of on Cambridge stages.
- February 2022
Alex DiMaggio has made the most important discovery of their career. The identity of the Blue Lagoon statuette, one of the 21st century’s greatest archaeological mysteries, has finally been revealed. Tomorrow, Alex will unveil their discovery at an exclusive event within the prestigious Blast Museum to a select entourage of VIPs, reporters, and historical experts. Years of diligent work are finally paying off. That is, until Alex’ old friend, Susan, comes to call. Now the famed Blue Lagoon is shattered to pieces, and it’s up to Alex and Susan to try and replace it. And all the while they’ll have to dodge overbearing bosses, psychotic security guards, and a litany of ridiculously demanding VIPs. Will they get away with it? Or be strung up as yet another one of the museum’s artifacts, caught in the spotlight and judged by the world.
Based on farcical British comedies like Fawlty Towers, Blue Lagoon is a homage to the creative style of playwrights like Peter Schaffer, showcasing two character’s descent as they dig deeper and deeper into their own lies in the attempt to save their skin.
- February 2022
A summer evening. Hazel and Robin are two retired nuclear engineers, living in a remote cottage on the coast. They live in the shadow of a recent meltdown at the plant where they used to work: a disaster responsible for the devastation of the local landscape.
But their ambling life is interrupted by the arrival of Rose: a former colleague, unseen for 38 years. Rose has come with a plan to compensate for the mistakes that led to catastrophe. But it is an unpopular one: it is a plan that threatens to completely shatter the comfort of Hazel and Robin's previously peaceful retirement.
Lucy Kirkwood’s drama plays out hugely far-reaching contemporary generational tensions within the contained sphere of the claustrophobic domestic space. It is a play that offers us a terrifying glimpse into a hypothetical future of environmental collapse: one in which interpersonal relationships are left just as precarious as the natural landscape that surrounds them.
- February 2022
Alex wants to chat. You can say no. Obviously, you can say no. You can leave, even, if you wanted
to—it’d be inconvenient and strange and awkward, but you could. Because being told what to do is
wrong, like morally and stuff. Alex hates it.
They also hate stripes. And small spaces. And loud noises. And loud silences and the phrase ‘suck it
up’. And people or things touching theirs or other people’s eyes, especially when theirs or other
people’s eyes are already red and puffy, and they or other people just want to be left alone with
their puffy and red and watery eyes.
Needless to say, Alex is dealing with some stuff—family stuff, world stuff, other stuff.
LOUD is a blend (or clashing, maybe) of different styles: part stand-up, part poetry, audience
interaction, The Sims-esque riffing of instructions, and, of course, just some normal dialogue. It’s as
clear or metaphoric or anecdotal or just plain evasive as Alex needs it to be, as they accept what’s
happening in their life, and who’s in it, and who’s not.
- February 2022
Locked away in Baghdad Mosque is a beautifully intricate Quran, complete with 6,000 verses of elaborate calligraphy and 600 pages of decorative motifs – a marvel in artistry that would surely be celebrated by Muslims and artists around the world if it were not written in Saddam Hussein’s blood. Now its artist lives in the US, where he restores old paintings for a living, but in every step, he’s still followed by the walking, talking, blood-drenched Quran that has haunted him since.
The Calligrapher is a new, award-winning, student-written play by Abraham Alsalihi that explores the theme of artifacts, whether in the form of grand pieces of art or old slabs of stone; whether celebrated like a great painting or shunned like a bloody Quran. And, of course, those unseen artifacts we carry around with us every day. Selected as the 2021 CUADC Fringe play, this is a brilliant piece of new writing that raises challenging questions about identity, art, and morality. Its Edinburgh run sadly got cancelled this summer due to covid restrictions, but we’re back and we couldn’t be more excited to get it on the road again at Corpus!
- February 2022
A one-woman show about a girl and her dad. Her dad is strong, intelligent, funny, brave. Oh yes and wears a skirt!
A comedy show about growing up with a transgender dad: the highs, the lows and the heels.
Enjoy a fun evening that explores what it means to be a 'normal family'.
- February 2022
A witch coven consisting of three friends, Margaret, Emily and Lawrence, are highly unsuccessful in their activities. Margaret, the leader of the coven, takes her magic seriously, while Lawrence can’t tell the difference between magic and life hacks, and Emily just wants to keep their friendship alive. But when they summon a demon called Graham, master of banal evil, with grand, but underwhelming plans, their friendship is tested in ways they previously hadn’t thought possible.
This fantastic new comedy by Barnaby M. Evans draws on themes of friendship, witchcraft and Shrek 2 to weave a tale of magic and mirth.
- February 2022
Romance writer Godfrey has run off to Venice with his mistress, actress Lydia Hillington, but after a year she’s bored of Venice – and increasingly bored of being Godfrey’s muse. Hearing that casting is in progress for a new play, Lydia decides to return to London in secret to audition for the lead role. Meanwhile, Godfrey, hoping to secure divorce papers from his wife, also returns secretly to London...
In this anti-romantic comedy from the 1930s, Dorothy L. Sayers explores our gendered beliefs about whose work is important with insight, compassion – and a wicked sense of humour.
“Every great man has had a woman behind him.”
“And every great woman has had some man or other in front of her, tripping her up.”
- February 2022
Who are The Landsmen? Working-class heroes or satirical figures of fun?
Haz is a young research student who thinks he has uncovered some uncomfortable truths about Graydon Brookfield, the author of a 1920s novel about a workers’ commune that has a cult following. But David, an eminent expert in the field, seemingly isn’t ready to entertain new perspectives on the matter.
Ruth is close to Emma, her supervisor, but wants to ditch the study of literature altogether. Can they renegotiate the terms of their relationship without straying into ethical trouble and without alienating themselves from their peers?
A play about idealism, power dynamics, bruising compromises – and a mysterious fiction-within-a-fiction about a secret society of brooding, violent rebels.
- February 2022
"I have to form myself, and to try to help you to form, some sort of reasoned estimate of the most romantic figure in the recent history of mathematics." —G. H. Hardy on S. Ramanujan, 1936
In 1913, a young, self-taught mathematical genius in India named Srinivasa Ramanujan is invited to Cambridge to work with G. H. Hardy, a professor at Trinity college and established mathematician. Over the next five years, they worked together to produce hundreds of important results, and Ramanujan is today heralded as the greatest Indian mathematician of all time. However, their partnership is threatened by Ramanujan’s failing health as well as the two men’s vastly different cultural and religious backgrounds. At the same time, shadows of the first world war looms over the world.
Partition is a deftly imagined, multileveled drama on faith, mathematics and a tentative friendship between two of the greatest minds in scientific history.
- January 2022
Money money money. Moolah. Dinero. In the immortal words of a certain rap crew, Cash Rules Everything Around Me.
Join Cambridge Footlight Chakira Alin in her debut stand-up hour as she takes a deep dive into that slippery substance that makes the world go round. Clutch your pearls AND your purse as she puts the class in class conflict. For one night only.
- January 2022
In a small town in New England, five unlikely strangers come together in their community centre for a creative drama class for adults. The free-spirited Marty, recently divorced Schulz, former actress Teresa, the self-conscious high school student Lauren, and Marty’s quiet husband, James. Over six weeks of drama exercises and games ranging from the hilarious to the heartbreaking, their lives become entangled and transformed in the most humorous and moving ways.
- January 2022
Jewish teenagers Esty, Allister, Danny and Sara are sitting in a revision session about to take their GCSEs when the terrorist alarm rings. And this time it might not be a drill. Trapped in their RS classroom they have all the time in the world to think. Flipping back and forth between their different perspectives, in the past and present day, they must decide, if they come out the other end, what they will do differently, what risks they will take and most importantly what lines they are willing to cross. Set in Manchester 2016 during the rise in antisemitism, Life Before the Line is a deep insight into what it means to grow up during politically charged times.
- January 2022
Katie became bored of her life just as The Man walked into it and announced that he had sold his life on eBay for a couple of million quid. Suddenly, boredom is no longer in Katie's vocabulary as she begins to fall into the farce of friendship and mystery that The Man carries with him.
Who is The Man? Why did he sell his life? Could his idea of buying a Caribbean island be everything that Katie has longed for? Is Ben Shephard from Tipping Point just a rip off from Bradley Walsh?
These are all important questions that are asked and answered in this intimate, entertaining play about love, friendship and the sheer boredom of everyday life.
- January 2022
If a single blood test could tell you everything about your future, how you were going to die, who you should fall in love with, would you take it?
The Phlebotomist is a gripping Dystopian Love Story set in a near future where genetic testing is starting to divide British society. It’s thought-provoking, sexy, and leaves you with that unsettling, Black Mirror-esque feeling of questioning everything you thought you trusted.
- January 2022
Still stunned by the failure of her childhood YouTube channel, Cambridge Footlight Katie Devey takes to the stage to tell her story. Her debut solo show seeks to answer questions such as ‘Is ‘Camel’s Mum’ a principal role in the Nativity?’, ‘Why would a young woman develop a fear of katsu curry?’ and ‘What to do if your little brother asks for cable ties for Christmas?’. Find out all of this and more with an hour of energetic, explorative, and downright stupid stand-up comedy at the Corpus Playroom.
- January 2022
Every Wednesday, married couple Simon and Claire invite their friend Roger to dinner. He is always punctual, arriving at precisely 6.30 every week, without fail. They so look forward to Roger’s visits that Claire suggests he visits twice a week. Simon isn’t so sure and he starts meeting Roger on his own, at the squash court. Claire begins having Roger round for coffee during the day and their relationship soon develops into something more. But Roger doesn’t exist. Robert Shearman’s quirky comedy explores how fantasies designed to spice up a marriage quickly spiral out of control, becoming something altogether weirder.
- December 2021
A strange scent… An eerie sound in the darkness… A hauntingly quiet memory… What did you just see in The Shadows?
Down a narrow alley, through a creaky old door, in a confined space, a truly terrible event awaits...
A new twist on tales of old; an uncomfortably intimate, unique horror experience that is not for the faint-hearted.
Are you brave enough to endure three terrifying Cambridge stories which will take your breath away?
ACT 1- ACQUISITION by Sara-Jane Arbury
Jenny is attending a talk at the Fitzwilliam Museum and custodian Jeff is going to escort her there. Whilst waiting for the lift, they ruminate on life and death and share past traumas before being subjected to a supernatural haunting!
ACT 2- THE CHAMBER by Matt Wilkinson
Three students on a ghost hunt have found their way into an ancient abandoned chamber under St John’s College. But why have they been allowed in? And what do the scratches on the walls mean? They’re going to discover that there are some doors that should never be opened.
ACT 3 – DRIVE by Leigh Chambers
A woman with a guilty secret seeks refuge in a hotel room, but soon discovers that there’s nowhere to hide when those beyond the grave want vengeance, and are willing to use all their powers to get it.
The show runs without interval and contains strobe lighting
- November–December 2021
The cult of Cicada’s Children has just been discovered. The revered leader Stanley Cicada and most of his beloved children have been arrested and imprisoned. But one remains. Bella.
The world is new and a little alarming but Bella knows what she wants to do, all she needs is an unsuspecting idiot.
Danny is sweet, naive and a little bored of his life. When he meets the bubbly unorthodox Bella he is struck by her free-spirited nature. She is so beautiful and no one else ever seems to notice!
Come into the minds of Danny and Bella to see if Cicada’s Children is really dead.
