When reading the article titled ′Reflections of a retired thespian’ in Michaelmas term, I couldn’t help but relate to the writer’s thoughts – I am, after all, a thought daughter. Having felt that theatre would always play a big role in my Cambridge experience, I never thought I’d ditch Larkum for the MML Library. But after coming back from my year abroad and being lobbed into a speaking exam in Week 0 of Michaelmas this year, I realised that maybe I’d lost the battle of balancing the two – or rather that I shouldn’t attempt to try, when final year accounts for 100 percent of my grade. I put my thoughts to the test and interviewed three Cambridge finalists, to dissect their experience of maintaining harmony between work and play.

The first person I spoke to was Francesca Lees, a third-year student at Medwards who ventured into theatre through the unique premise of an advertisement for A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Queerbridge. Since then, she’s been continuously involved with theatre, sometimes doing three plays per term. On prioritising theatre over coursework she tells me, “If you do badly on an essay, that’s not up there for the public to see, but if you do badly in a play, it’s really obvious that you haven’t learned the lines. It takes precedence, and you end up putting your friends on the backburner.”

“If there were fewer shows – which sounds weird to say – there would be more opportunity to make rehearsal processes longer and reduce stress”

Fran echoes many Cambridge actors in her retelling of scrambling to learn lines last minute: “I’ve had a few plays where I’ve had my phone in my shoe… and I whip out the Google Doc. When I played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I had this mask on, and I had the script in the mouth bit… I kept putting my hand in the head and flicking the page.” She summates: “Line learning is definitely difficult.” This balancing act reached a tipping point when Fran’s DoS caught on: “[He] had to pull me aside in a seminar, quite publicly, and was like ‘You have to come to lectures, you have to start doing work.’ He said, ‘Where have you been? ’ And I was like… ‘I’ve been doing get-ins.’”

But it’s not just the academic side laying on the pressure. Fran recalls that, “I had a compulsory dissertation meeting, and it was the get-in for a show of mine, and [the production] said ‘You can’t go’… I didn’t go because I was really scared of the director.” She incarnates a familiar feeling – being caught between angry Outlook emails and passive-aggressive cast group chats.

Finalist MML student Ebenezer Boakye, who began his theatre journey with BME Shakespeare and has most recently performed in the Marlowe Showcase, has a similar sentiment. While he speaks highly of Cambridge theatre, he admits the difficulties of managing deadlines alongside the immense time commitment theatre requires: “It’s been hard to manage stress with theatre, especially with get-ins and get-outs that impact sleep schedules”. Though he has enjoyed the experience, he recognises the need for a better balance: “If there were fewer shows – which sounds weird to say – there would be more opportunity to make rehearsal processes longer and reduce stress.” Ebenezer has decided that the Showcase was his final show, recognising that in final term, academic priorities must take precedence.

“Cambridge lends itself to burnout culture because theatre can feel like a full-time job”

For Sofya Boruleva, who directed Three Men in a Boat, and has more than 14 Camdram credits, the pressure to balance academics with theatre has also caused some drama. “When I submitted an essay late, my supervisor said, ’You need to rearrange your priorities.” With this year’s workload mounting up, Sofya has become more selective about the shows she does, ditching the temptation to go for “really big productions or landing a big role.” Her most recent show Macbeth in King’s Chapel, embodied her new interest in unique settings, outside the microcosm of the ADC Theatre.

For Sofya, the fear of failure in the theatre sometimes outbalanced a bad essay. When her directorial debut in second year had to be cancelled, “That moment of rejection was hard to come to terms with.” As she puts it, “It wasn’t that theatre and academics weren’t compatible,” but that Cambridge theatre brought unprecedented challenges with it. Despite the setbacks, she has continued to pursue theatre, finding joy in writing sketches, directing, and acting: “I would love to do theatre in some capacity in the future.”

When catching up with another student, who wishes to remain anonymous, a sentiment became very clear: “I definitely think Cambridge lends itself to burnout culture because theatre can feel like a full-time job.” Maybe it’s just the Cambridge way – the constant urge to give everything your all, which often ends up with students over-doing it. I feel a deep nostalgia for my time in the theatre scene, and though each interviewee paints a complex, sometimes thorny picture of juggling Cambridge theatre and academics, it’s clear why they keep coming back. Eventually the stress of get-ins, essays and lines melt away and what remains are the fuzzy feelings of being backstage. Balancing both, though? It’s not for the faint-hearted.