 The ADC Theatre is the home of the Footlights. | |
| Formation | 1883 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Purpose | Amateur theatrical club |
| Location | |
| Website | https://www.cambridgefootlights.org/ |
The Cambridge Footlights, commonly referred to simply as Footlights, [1] is a student sketch comedy troupe located in Cambridge, England. Footlights was founded in 1883, and is one of Britain's oldest student sketch comedy troupes. The comedy society is run by the students of Cambridge University. [2]
Footlights' inaugural performance took place in June 1883. For some months before the name "Footlights" was chosen, the group had performed to local audiences in the Cambridge area (once, with a cricket match included, at the "pauper lunatic asylum"). They wished to go wider than the University Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC), founded in 1855, with its membership drawn largely from Trinity College, and its theatre seating only 100. They were to perform every May Week at the Theatre Royal, Barnwell, Cambridge, the shows soon open to the public. A local paper commended the club's appeal to the "general public, the many different classes of which life in Cambridge is made up". [3]
The club grew in prominence in the 1960s as a hotbed of comedy and satire, and established a permanent home in the basement of the Cambridge Union. [4] Having established a tradition of performing at the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the club entered the mainstream when its members formed half of Beyond the Fringe , the hugely popular stage revue which toured Britain and America in 1960. The 1963 revue then followed in the footsteps of Beyond the Fringe, appearing in Edinburgh and London's West End, before travelling to New Zealand and the United States, where it made appearances on Broadway and The Ed Sullivan Show and received a full-page review in Time .
The first woman to be given full membership was Germaine Greer. She joined in October 1964 on the same day as Clive James and Russell Davies. [5] There had been women before that time who had been allowed to join in, including Eleanor Bron in the late 1950s, but Greer was the first to be billed as a full member. [6] Apparently Tim Brooke-Taylor was instrumental in having women admitted. [7] She was part of the Footlights' 1965 revue My Girl Herbert. [6]
Over the next decade, Footlights members came to dominate British comedy in the 1970s, creating and starring in shows such as Not Only... But Also , I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again , At Last the 1948 Show , That Was the Week That Was and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy , forming comedy groups such as Monty Python and The Goodies, and generally fuelling the satire boom. [8] [9] [10] During the 1980s, Footlights reinforced its position at the heart of British comedy. The 1981 revue, featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Tony Slattery, Penny Dwyer and Paul Shearer, [11] won the inaugural Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and spawned Fry and Laurie, the first in a long line of popular and successful double acts formed at the club including Armstrong and Miller and Mitchell and Webb. [12] [13] [14] Their revue, The Cellar Tapes, at St Mary Street Hall was billed as "the annual revue: one of the strongest casts for several years, has already toured in southern England with great success." [15]
Former members have gone on to win Oscars, BAFTAs and other awards and enjoy success in the entertainment industry. [16]
During term, Footlights produce the regular "Smokers"—an informal mixture of sketches and stand-up—at the ADC Theatre. The club also produces the annual Pantomime (in collaboration with CUADC) and the Spring Revue, as well as staging the winning entry of the Footlights Harry Porter Prize; a competition in which any student at the university may enter a one-hour comic play. The Footlights International Tour Show takes place from June until October, and travels to Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and venues across the United States. For information about individual Footlights revues, see Cambridge Footlights Revue.
Potential members apply to the organization at two times during the year, once at the end of the university's Lent term and the other at the beginning of the university's Michaelmas term. Students who study at Cambridge University and Anglia Ruskin University are able to apply for membership. Students must be at least in the third year or above in their undergraduate studies to apply for membership. Postgraduate students are also eligible to apply to be members of the Footlights comedy society. [17]
This is a list of former members of Footlights who achieved notability after graduating from Cambridge University.
The elected leader of Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club is known as the president, who is assisted by a vice-president, treasurer, archivist and several other posts to form the committee.
Notable past presidents have included the following:
The Goodies were a trio of British comedians: Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie. The trio created, wrote for and performed in their eponymous television comedy show from 1970 until 1982, combining sketches and situation comedy.
Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It debuted at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and went on to play in London's West End and then in America, both on tour and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satire boom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain.
David Graeme Garden OBE is a Scottish comedian, actor, author, artist and television presenter, best known as a member of the Goodies and a regular panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a “skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. Sketch comedy is a genre within American television that includes a multitude of schemes and identities.
I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again was a BBC radio comedy programme that was developed from the 1964 Cambridge University Footlights revue, Cambridge Circus., as a scripted sketch show. It had a devoted youth following, with the live tapings enjoying very lively audiences, particularly when familiar themes and characters were repeated; a tradition that continued into the spinoff show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor OBE was an English actor and comedian. He was best known as a member of The Goodies.
Tony Declan James Slattery is an English actor and comedian. He appeared on British television regularly from the mid-1980s, most notably as a regular on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?. His serious and comedic film work has included roles in The Crying Game, Peter's Friends and How to Get Ahead in Advertising.
Colin Sell is a British pianist who has appeared on the radio panel games Whose Line Is It Anyway? and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. He has become famous mostly for his long service on the latter show, where he is frequently the butt of the host's jokes about the supposedly poor quality of his playing.
Josephine Mary Kendall was a British actress and writer. She was known for her work on the BBC radio comedy show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, which debuted in 1964, and for her role as Peggy Skilbeck on the ITV soap opera Emmerdale from 1972 to 1973, in which she also spoke the programme's first line of dialogue in the inaugural episode.
Sir David Edwin Hatch, was an English broadcaster, involved in production and management at BBC Radio where he held many executive positions, including Head of Light Entertainment (Radio), Controller of BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4 and later managing director of BBC Radio.
The Experimental Theatre Club (ETC) is a student dramatic society at the University of Oxford, England. It was founded in 1936 by Nevill Coghill as an alternative company to the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), and produces several productions a year.
The Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society (CULES) is a student drama society at Cambridge University. Notable alumni include Douglas Adams, John Cleese, Prince Edward, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Andy Hamilton and Graeme Garden.
Pembroke Players is an amateur theatrical society in Cambridge, England, founded in 1955 and run by the students of Pembroke College, Cambridge. It is the most active College drama society in the university, staging or producing over 25 drama productions and comedy smokers every year. It is also the only College drama society to run its own international tours. During its lifetime it has been the starting point for many prominent actors and comedians, such as Clive James, Peter Cook and Eric Idle, and more recently Tom Hiddleston, Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas. The Society celebrated its 60th birthday in 2015.
Neil Mullarkey is an English actor, writer and comedian.
The Edinburgh Comedy Awards are presented to the comedy shows deemed to have been the best at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Established in 1981, they are the most prestigious comedy prize in the United Kingdom. The awards have been directed and produced by Nica Burns since 1984.
The Oxford Revue is a comedy group primarily featuring students from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University, England. Beginning in 1953, The Oxford Revue has produced many prominent comedians, actors and satirists - as is the case with their Cambridge University counterparts, the Footlights. The Revue writes, produces and performs several shows each term in the pubs and theatres around Oxford, as well as touring to cities in the United Kingdom and performing a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year.
James Hamilton Bachman is an English comedian, actor and writer. He has written for and acted in many British television and radio programmes, including That Mitchell and Webb Look, Saxondale, Bleak Expectations and Sorry, I've Got No Head. In 2014, he had a small role in the film Transformers: Age of Extinction.
The Cambridge Footlights Revue is an annual revue by the Footlights Club, a group of comedy writer-performers at the University of Cambridge. Three of the more notable revues are detailed below.
Anthony Walter Harold Buffery was a British actor, comedian, and writer who also had a career in academic psychology.
Penelope Rosemary Dwyer was a British comedy writer. She was a member of the Cambridge Footlights revue The Cellar Tapes which won the inaugural Perrier Comedy Awards in 1981. The other performers in The Cellar Tapes were Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Tony Slattery and Paul Shearer.
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