Corpus Playroom lateshow We Will Meet Again, a rare exception to the lack of original student-written dramaJohannes Hjorth

The line-up of plays for this term is almost entirely bereft of original student writing. Of course, sketch shows, including the Footlights Spring Revue, which concluded last term, are exceptions. Outside of this category, and especially outside of comedy, Cambridge theatre has seen the performance of relatively few original student plays. I suspect there are two main reasons for this. The first is time, and too little of it. The second is that student plays must hold their ground against the works of such respected names as Shakespeare, John Ford, Arthur Miller and David Hare, to name a few whose plays were performed last term. Alongside Jacobean masterpieces and modern classics, most juvenilia may seem doomed to mediocrity.

Usually, there are very few applications for student-written shows in the more high-profile performance slots. After that, many of the remaining applications for student-written shows are rejected by the ADC selection committee. This sort of quality check is justified; the novelty of new theatre ought not to be sufficient grounds for its inclusion ahead of shows that directors, actors and audiences might get more out of. But great plays have been written by Cambridge students. One famous example is Stephen Fry’s Latin! or Tobacco and Boys, which he wrote in his final year at Cambridge, in 1979. The play premiered at the Corpus Playroom and went on to win the Edinburgh Fringe First prize in 1980.

This year, Jamie Fenton’s ‘tragic-farce’ Picasso Stole the Mona Lisa and Jamie Rycroft’s dark comedy Midnight Café, are two of the Cambridge shows which have been awarded funding to go to the Fringe. Last term there were also some non-comedic offerings from Cambridge students, such as Nathan Miller’s spy thriller We’ll Meet Again, but, as a rule, such shows tend to be few and far between.It may be that comedy is easier for students to write. For a start, sketches are short, and they do not need to transition seamlessly from one to another to amuse. Comedy tends to often represent a distortion or exaggeration of some aspect of real life experience.

For tragedy to be successful, by contrast, it must be entirely credible. An audience may laugh at something beyond the realms of credibility, but they may only empathise with characters whose experience appear rooted in reality. So too, an audience may laugh at a character they’ve only just met, but they tend only to sympathise with characters developed over a period of time. Of course, writing successful comedy offers its own challenges, but the cohesion and credibility required of tragedy arguably makes it more difficult to write in the frenetic, disjointed student lifestyle that Cambridge appears to proscribe.

In any case, a solution to the void of original student theatre seems desirable, not only to feed an appetite for novelty, but also to create an environment in which would-be playwrights can further hone their skills. Awards such as the Harry Porter Prize – set up by the Footlights in 2003 for a one hour comic play – are vaulable. The lesser-known Other Prize, co-ordinated at Churchill and adjudicated by the Royal Shakespeare Company, offers a £500 prize for an original play of any genre. Other, similar means of encouragement would be welcome.

There is, however, a third obstacle facing would-be student playwrights, and that is proximity to the people who, in many cases, would form the main inspiration for characters. Nowadays, it seems that writers are forever encouraged to write about what they know and, by implication, who they know. But in Cambridge, where inspiration and audience inevitably overlap, this advice may be dangerous. Jack Kerouac, who developed his ‘spontaneous prose’ method while writing On the Road, was a master of writing from reality. After struggling for years to invent convincing characters and events, he determined at last, “I’m going to forget all that horseshit. I’m just going to write it as it happened”. In this spirit, Kerouac completed the first manuscript of On the Road in less than a month. The final draft was, in many ways, a simple cipher; he replaced real names with fictional ones, but many of his characters’ diagnostic features remained intact.

But that’s not so easy to get away with in Cambridge. Fiction explores human vulnerabilities, weaknesses, mistakes and conflicts, so noses might be put out of joint if a playwright’s friends (or acquaintances, or enemies) recognise themselves in a scenario that isn’t entirely complimentary. On top of that, I for one don’t feel sufficiently equipped with experiences to write a gripping narrative based solely on real life; as it stands, my life consists of a lot of beginnings and a few middles, but not very many ends, and I have found that, for me, invention is not just advisable, but necessary.

The way to overcome the obstacles of original theatre in Cambridge and, perhaps – if I might be so bold as to suggest – the heart of good writing, is to write convincingly about what you don’t know. Or, at the very least, to weave what you do and don’t know into a compelling melange (this is, after all, what I attempt every week in supervision essays). So, if you might be interested in writing a play, set aside the time and embrace the unknown, and if the powers that be could find more ways to encourage and reward original student writing, that would be great too.