It was a dark and rainy Sunday night when I met Cecily Chitty. The President of the Emmanuel College Revived Dramatic Society (REDS), we met in the unconventional interview environment of her kitchen, which was piled up with unwashed pots and pans. With the relative peace of the weekend drawing to a close, Cecily kindly traded her R and R for our interview, on the provision that she could meal prep while we chatted.

So it was while Cecily started chopping up the tomatoes for her mum’s signature sauce that our interview got under way. This is at least the second time that REDS has been revived, so I started by asking about the history of the society. “The last time that REDS was fully active,” Cecily tells me, “was February 2020 when we performed Accidental Death of an Anarchist. So, we have been inactive for five years. I think people have tried to bring it back but it effectively got killed by COVID and the people who were in charge at the time then graduating”.

“People take interest in trying to revive it, then it looses steam”

Dicing onions, Cecily explains that the reason the society has been so on and off is that “people take interest in trying to revive it, then it looses steam. It’s particularly hard to revive a theatre society because theatre is so expensive compared to most societies. If you are not already on a model like Pembroke and Corpus, it is quite hard to start, because it’s difficult to convince the college that it’s going to be worth it”.

Just as I began to ask about how Cecily’s experience of Cambridge theatre last year has driven the re-birth of REDS, the sauce began to bubble over, and Cecily rushed to turn down the hob. Crisis averted, she tells me: “I wanted to make sure that we could try things out and feel less pressure. Take lighting, for example: it would be crazy to go straight to lighting an ADC main show. College societies give you a chance to learn the ropes. It’s a chance for people to get to grips with Cambridge theatre for the first time”.

Next, I asked about REDS’ Christmas production: “We are doing a production of Box of Delights, an adaptation of the classic Christmas novel by John Masefield which was made into a BBC show in the 1980s. I first saw the adaptation we are using when it was in its original production in 2017. My dad read me the book when I was a kid; I’ve always loved Christmas!”

She continued over the sound of the sizzling pan: “I love theatre that makes me feel something, that sparks something in my imagination. This show is very magical, and in terms of how you bring that to life, if it were a TV show you could now do it with CGI and it would be very literal, but the theatre is very much about imagination, and that brings the audience into it a lot more”.

“I love theatre that makes me feel something, that sparks something in my imagination”

Building on our earlier discussion about how difficult it is to get a college theatre society off the ground, I wondered how running a theatre society in college differs from the larger venues. “It’s very different,” Cecily told me earnestly. “A big issue is that we don’t have the kind of equipment available that you would have doing a show at the ADC or at Corpus where there are lights already in the building. Whereas here there are a few lights, but we don’t know exactly what they do and we’re going to have to rent some which will be expensive. And, it is more difficult to use a space in the college that wasn’t design for theatre”.

The funding process, too, is especially difficult for drama societies to navigate. While washing a bruised pepper, Cecily tells me: “We’re still working it out. It’s all about keeping the momentum going because the college is so unused to having a drama society. The most expensive things are the rights to the play, which costs hundreds of pounds and the need to rent lights for three days, if not four days. There hasn’t been a truly active drama society under our current Master, so the college just isn’t used to having a theatre society’.

But the complexity of starting out has not at all dimmed Cecily’s passion for theatre and vision for REDS. REDS is set to be so much more than just its termly production: “We’ve had a social in Emma Bar. We have a play reading of The Importance of Being Earnest next week. Excitingly, we are collaborating with Emma Puppetry Society to bring the play to life, it is a big team effort and the wider social events are so important for that, for giving people the confidence to get involved in the society”.

After we had finished cooking, and had a kitchen chit-chat while rinsing our pans, Rosie, the society’s Secretary, came to join us before they went straight into a committee meeting. The overall impression of our stove-side chat is that Cecily and the team are driven, excited and ready and rearing to go for their debut production at the end of the month.

Box of Delights runs from the 22nd November to the 23rd November with a 14:00 matinee in Emmanuel College’s Queen’s Building.