Footlights, etc.

I'd REALLY like to get involved in drama side of things and i was wonderin if anyone here knew much about it? is it really hard to get good roles in Footlights and all the other drama societies?

Reply 1

thefish_uk

cooldudess

I'd REALLY like to get involved in drama side of things and i was wonderin if anyone here knew much about it? is it really hard to get good roles in Footlights and all the other drama societies?

Loads of drama going on in Cambridge.

http://www.camdram.net/ has a lot of information on it... go on the "Shows" -> "Forthcoming" section and "Jump to term" to last Michaelmas to see how much stuff there is in the average term. Easter term is a bit quiet though, due to exams, and next Easter term the ADC (the main university theatre) will be closed for some redevelopment.

Footlights is all comedy and have a "Smoker" sketch show at the ADC roughly every two weeks which anyone can go and audition for with a piece they've written themselves. They also have other shows including the "Spring Revue" and the tour show which goes to Edinburgh. They have a reputation for being a little overrated though - sure, they have famous alumni, but they are known for often being weird rather than funny. Haven't seen any of their stuff myself though.

Also there are other university-wide societies such as the Amateur Dramatic Club, Cambridge Uni Musical Theatre Society and the Gilbert & Sullivan Society. The standard of these are generally very high though, especially for the musical ones which only do a couple of productions a year. There's also loads of college societies, some of the best known being BATS (Queens'), Brickhouse (Robinson), Fletcher Players (Corpus) and HATS (Homerton). There's also touring shows to Edinburgh, the side of a cliff in Cornwall, round this country, round Europe, America, Japan... exciting and challenging for both actors and techies!

Basically there is no shortage of drama things to get involved with in Cambridge whatever your theatre interests!

I'm sure FadeToBlackout will add more, anyway. He's lighting designed a few shows in Cambridge.

Good luck.

Reply 2

cooldudess

thanks for the info!

Reply 3

MC REN

Just to follow up on thefish's pretty thorough reply, footlights is pretty easy to get onto - anyone can audition and basically anyone who does will get on

and yes its perhaps overrated, but with their open policy this should probably be expected. Even their famous alumni were probably hit and miss when students, not to mention the less famous ones...

A lot of colleges put on plays, Churchill (which is all my field of knowledge really encompasses) puts on a play specifically for freshers to produce, etc.