Last term’s audition season during May Week was perhaps the most chaotic time in the scope of Camdram casting. Auditions and recalls were held in a span of a few days, and self-tape extensions were all the more relied upon. The sudden quiet as I returned home for the summer and had to wait on casting decisions was certainly unnerving. Then the email came: I had been cast in a week five show at the Corpus Playroom, Negotiating With the Dead. I was relieved to have a show in the diary for Michaelmas, let alone one with such a fun name.

“I was relieved to have a show in the diary for Michaelmas, let alone one with such a fun name”

The synopsis of NWTD seemed right up my classicist alley — the show is about a group of archaeologists who find an artefact called the Templar’s Cross linked to the Crusades. As the play dives into discussions surrounding religion and its manipulation for political gain, the action splits between modern day and the historical Crusades. I was very glad to be cast as Aliya, one of the archaeologists involved in the project. Some of my friends had been involved in the first run of the show last year at Pembroke New Cellars, so I was very excited to be cast in this developed version of the play. Since my most recent Camdram exploits had been more traditional texts (Shakespeare and Sophocles were my allies in theatre last term), I was also glad to make a return to the world of student-written drama, especially since my first ever production in Cambridge was a student-written show called Etheridge at Pembroke New Cellars.

Like our last edition of the Camdram Diaries explored, there is a difficulty in retaining momentum when there is a three-and-a-half month gap between casting and the beginning of rehearsals, yet given that the show is in week five, it made sense for rehearsals to begin once everyone had arrived in Cambridge. This didn’t stop our director though, who was very on it in creating the cast WhatsApp and kept the show’s Instagram alive and intriguing. Our prod team has been expanding by the day, and I was further elated to discover that so many of my fellow Camdram warriors were also involved in the show, and we immediately messaged each other to express our excitement about working together.

“One cast member messaged me during the read-through to express how much they had already fallen in love with the script”

As a cast, our holiday workload involved one read-through of the script over Zoom. It was lovely to see everyone’s faces over screen, including our AD Olympia who joined the project after the audition cycle. It was comforting to have the script in hand so early on (the start of August!), and to get a gauge of the role of my character as a whole within the production. One cast member messaged me during the read-through to express how much they had already fallen in love with the script, and it is this positive and enthusiastic environment which has already been established that will carry us forward and hopefully save us from the week five blues.

As for now, since everyone has made their triumphant return to Cambridge, it’s time to press the accelerator. Our teaser trailer has just been released; the cast group chat has once again come alive. A Calltime has just been sent out, and all the memories of scheduling rehearsals amid my timetable have come flowing right back to me. I am not a fan of empty days (I will procrastinate my work even more so than usual), so an impending rehearsal schedule is exactly what I need to renew my work ethic. In-person rehearsals begin next week, leaving plenty of time for us all to meet each other, play around with our roles, and immerse ourselves in the script before we take to the stage in five weeks’ time.