- 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.
- November–December 2021
The eponymous Eurydice is tricked by a Nasty Interesting Man and separated from her lover Orpheus as she is sent down to the underworld. As she reunites with her dead father in the underworld, Orpheus repeatedly attempts to communicate with and rescue her, culminating in the familiar and inevitable tragic ending. The play follows themes of loss, forgetting, separation and memory, all in a surreal underworld which drips and creaks as if it is a pipe about to burst, bringing people together and pushing them apart.
- November 2021
Who is Anne? Is she the danger or the victim? Does she even exist at all? Attempts on Her Life is a pertinent exploration of identity, culture and gender, brought to life through a series of unique vignettes, each spotlighting a different facet of society. While the scenes are seemingly unconnected at first, other than by the elusive recurring protagonist Anne - sometimes a terrorist, sometimes a pornstar, sometimes even a car - they are masterfully woven together as the play progresses to create the sense of a cohesive whole, despite the absence of any singular narrative weaving the scenes together. 17 interlinked scenes attempt to define and label Anne, all the while questioning whether it is really necessary to pinpoint Anne at all. Anne is an utter enigma, at once art and artist. ‘And the frightening thing is she could be any one of us.’
- November 2021
Four sisters - Joy, Storm, Sage and Maya Pelican – have returned to their childhood home to celebrate what would have been their mum’s birthday. They’ve brought their partners, a ‘shit-ton of shitty prosecco’ and a whole lot of emotional baggage with them. Also, literal baggage (they’re staying the night).
The Last of the Pelican Daughters is a comedy about family, loss, and what and how we inherit.
- November 2021
Somewhere in the freezing wastes of the tundra, two weary researchers have been left at the edge of the world for... how long now? A year? A decade? A lifetime?
As cabin fever begins to set in and the walls of their reality start to crumble, Mov and Ramsey are forced to confront the nature of their stay at the Arctic Research Centre, and whether or not it, or they, have meant anything at all.
- November 2021
Still reeling from the loss of his wife, Grandad (David) has become obsessed with a documentary series whose narrator – a rather famous one – shares his name. Caught between persisting grief and the daily dramas of family life, Grandad learns to navigate his new reality with the help of his grandchildren, his daughter, and some Emperor penguins.
Funded by the Lady Margaret Players.
- November 2021
- November 2021
Two short farces by Chekhov, ostensibly exploring themes of love and loss, but with a heavy dose of materialist conflict - a commentary as applicable to today as to Chekhov's Russia.
- November 2021
It’s 1932, prohibition has swept New York, and Tony Morino owns a small underground speakeasy in the Bronx, selling bathtub gin so steeped in ethanol it could easily kill you. Business is terrible, so along with three friends, he hatches a plan – take out life insurance on the drunken, good-for-nothing new employee at his bar, Michael Malloy. The crew successfully take out $68,000 of insurance on Malloy’s life, and the three get to work on murdering their target, with freedom from financial worry surely around the corner. However, it seems some people are more difficult to kill than others…
The Man Who Wouldn’t Be Murdered is a new comedy musical full of murder, jazz and drink, based on the true story of Michael Malloy and his infamous life, and death.
(CN: death, violence/murder, alcoholism)
This exciting production is an original student-written show! With a cast and crew entirely made up of freshers/ those new to theatre, it's the perfect introduction to Musical Theatre at Cambridge, and of course, the magic of CUMTS.
- November 2021
The Fletcher Players Present: Smorgasbord! An evening of new writing from the brightest, freshest writers in all of Cambridge!
- November 2021
The Nature of a Curve is a brand new play exploring the fractious and often ignored world of Welsh politics.
It’s election night in Wales, and Vicky Evans MS is seeking re-election to the Senedd. She is gunning for promotion in the government and will do anything to make sure she consolidates power.
Accompanied by her team of advisors, they progress through the evening, grappling with all the excitement and tension of the count. However, when her aide, Carys, discovers a shocking truth, all of Vicky’s ambitions are threatened to be derailed…
- November 2021
In the late 1960s, towards the end of the Biafran War in Nigeria, Agnes, a novitiate nun, experiences a complete nervous breakdown. Her path crosses with Taiwo, a photojournalist reporting on the brutality of the conflict, who quickly forms an attachment to her. After Agnes is largely shut away from human contact, he becomes her confidant, uncovering the malevolent reasons behind her mental deterioration, and the secrets of the convent she belongs to.
This is a play on turmoil, both internal and external, and the difficult choices people are forced to make for survival.
- October 2021
Stuck in a house, surrounded by death, strangers fight to hold off the undead and hold on to sanity. Tensions rise as society crumbles and the argument turns from survival to power.
Adapted from Romero's immortal Night of the Living Dead (1968), this immersive play re-examines what makes us afraid, how society falls apart and the power of solidarity in the face of the inevitable.
- October 2021
How do you take a photo of a ghost? Rose must find out to take revenge on her sister, but what lengths will she go to? Join four friends as they tell you a story spanning seven centuries and four generations, from the stealing of a child, to a tragedy at a subway station. Ghost Quartet in an intoxicating song-cycle with live music and strange tales of love, revenge, and spirits - alcoholic or otherwise…
- October 2021
- October 2021
Oi! You! Think you know your history? Well you’ve got it all wrong, buster! Let us show you how things REALLY were - Churchill? Abe Lincoln? Guy Fawkes? BORING! Who you really want to know about is Janice, the village witch of Bognor Regis. Or Petunia, the true author of Bible? Or perhaps if Queen Liz the first was really short for Lizard? For the answers to all this and more, come to Horrible Herstories, where the women of history set the record straight!
- October 2021
Am I the devil? ...You don’t need be the devil, I been hurt by men.
Set against the backdrop of a 17th-century witch hunt, Vinegar Tom depicts the lives of women on the fringes of society. Alice sleeps with a mysterious man. Joan throws curses at her enemies with her old tomcat by her side. Susan is burdened with an unwanted pregnancy. As these women’s lives intertwine, they find themselves subject to all the horrors of hysteria, superstition, and patriarchy as they are pressured to confess - are they a witch?
- October 2021
- October 2021
Gerald Nest, kleptomaniac and erstwhile owner of the inimitable Historical Hotel. You haven’t heard of it? I don’t blame you. Nobody has.
Today it lies in wrack and ruin, a burning woman stalks its halls, and an endless war is waging over the mountains of memorabilia. As clearance officer Martha crosses the threshold, extinct birds whirling overhead, she becomes the first guest in over thirty years.
But in Gerald's shifting kingdom, walls have ears, and as Martha tries desperately to trim the family tree, she learns what happens when the roots fight back…
From the writer of The Man in the Air Balloon and The Backwards People comes Bricks and Mortality, a brand-new, surrealist play about loss, legacy, impossible decisions, and a world teetering on the brink of destruction.
- October 2021
'Horse Girls' is a dark, satirical comedy which tells the story of the Lady Jean Ladies, a group of pre-teen girls who devote their lives to their horses. Or, as Ashleigh would say, her horses – most of the girls borrow their horses from her stables, remember? The girls all dream of becoming Olympic-level riders in six years’ time – once they’re 18 – but when the very thing they love the most is threatened to be taken away, things quickly turn sour between the Lady Jean Ladies. After all, nothing can come between a girl and her horses…
- October 2021
