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Directing a play for a full five-night run to packed houses of Cambridge students can seem a daunting prospect. That is why REDs aims to support anyone thinking of directing in Cambridge, however much - or little - former experience they have.
The first step is to choose your play: be it one you have always loved, or one you discovered leafing through an anthology. It’s probably a good bet if you find yourself visualising the action as you read.
In order to put on your play, you will need two essentials: a performance space, and funding. Performance spaces in Cambridge include the ADC Theatre (the biggest and most prestigious), the Playroom, Robinson’s Brickhouse, Emma’s own Queens’ Theatre and BATS’ auditorium at Queens. The ADC and BATS have large seating capacities and are proscenium arch spaces; the Playroom and the Queens theatre are more intimate spaces. Each of these spaces will advertise its available slots for performance [usually of five days’ duration, from a Tuesday to Saturday] the term before you want to stage your show; adverts for applications to use the spaces will appear in Varsity and TCS, as well as on the Directors’ mailing list the ADC sends out – which it’s vital to get on in order to keep advised of the opportunities open to you.
Funding can be obtained from a number of college societies, including, of course, REDs, as well as from the ADC if your play is going to be staged at the ADC theatre. Applications for funding will come up towards the end of each term, and you should apply the term before you intend to stage your play. The application procedure will involve two stages: there’ll be a form for you to fill out, in which you can summarise the play, talk about your enthusiasm for it and interpretation of it, your ideas for lighting/set/sound and publicity, the size of your projected budget and how you’ll distribute it. The relevant funding committee will then invite you to an interview of about 15 minutes to talk in more detail about your plans. The committee won’t expect your ideas to be completely firm, but they will want evidence that your production will be both profitable and exciting.
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