Before they head out on the road for their first international tour show in two years, Are We There Yet?, Miriam Balanescu catches up with Cambridge’s best-known comedy troupe
It’s a busy period for The Cambridge Footlights, squeezing improv sessions between mock exams, crafting comedy sketches during their rare moments of downtime in an otherwise hectic term. The student-led comedy group has been in operation since 1883, seeing the likes of Olivia Colman, David Mitchell, Mel Giedroyc and Richard Ayoade rise through its ranks.
The Footlights International Tour Show has been on hiatus due to the pandemic for two years, but 2022 sees these student comedians once again unleashed. Presided over by tour managers Kitty Beck and Arianna Muñoz, the show will be directed by Molly Taylor. With the return of international flights and freedom to cross borders, Are We There Yet? will be aptly travel-themed – expect plenty of vacation-related material woven through with pointed political remarks.
Starting off with a week-long run at the ADC, followed by a two-week tour of the UK, the group will eventually head to the USA on a truly American road trip. Before they began their journey, we checked in with The Footlights and their feelings about the journey ahead.
@Maria Woodford
What made you each want to be involved with the footlights?
Molly: I like to try out a bit of every kind of show in Cambridge theatre, and what appealed was both the opportunity for travel and the opportunity to work on a show for this long. It’s running for three months, which you really don’t get the opportunity to do much as a student director. You have one idea, you have to stick with it, it goes on stage for a week and then that idea is done with, so I thought the opportunity to run with the show for three months and keep developing it, becoming really familiar with it, was a really cool opportunity.
Adam: The tour show in 2019, when I came to Cambridge, was the very first show that I saw – I literally saw it the day that I got here. I did my undergrad at the University of York and our comedy society just had access to a lecture theatre and we did shows on a very low budget. Our lights were just what we found on eBay. Then, coming to Cambridge and seeing this proper professional show in a professional theatre, I was completely floored. Immediately I thought, ‘This is what I want to be in.’
Molly: We’ll see whether it’s a full professional show or not.
It must feel strange having it all ahead of you. Are there any destinations you’re looking forward to?
Kitty: It’s pretty much around the corner now, our first leg at The ADC, which is very exciting because I know it’s so soon, but we’ve been working on it for so long. We started the process with the tour managers in December and then the cast came on board in late January – so we’ve been working on this already for four or five months. We’re obviously excited for London, which will be a highlight of the UK tour, then we’re off to the Edinburgh Fringe for a month in August, which I think will be fantastic because a lot of other Cambridge shows are also going. It will be a great opportunity to get to know other people from Cambridge better and people from the wider UK theatre scene too. Then we’re going to the USA for a month in September. Of course, we’ve got to look forward to New York and LA, but we’re also going to my fellow tour manager’s hometown of San Antonio in Texas. We’re doing lots of community work there, community theatre workshops and school workshops as well.
Is that a new destination?
Kitty: Bless Arianna, because of the pandemic she hasn’t been able to go home for the last two years. She hasn’t seen her family so it will be really nice for her to combine this with seeing them.
How has it felt to be operating in The Footlights during the pandemic, with virtual shows?
Molly: It was great that we were able to do it, but it’s not the same. I hate sketch writing via online mediums, because you don’t have the same feeling of a relaxed group where you can all feedback, improvise and bounce ideas off one another. It’s difficult to direct online. You don’t have the feeling of support of a community, which is one of the best things about sketches. It’s exciting to have such a big show back in person – it’s been two years now since the tour show happened. Kitty has been building back the connections.
Adam: I became a Footlight last year, in the middle of the pandemic and it was a weird experience, because every single thing that’s set up for The Footlights is always in person. It was a struggle adapting to being online. It’s a completely different skill. None of us really knew what we were doing.
@Maria Woodford
How does it feel to be anticipating heading out on the road again? Does it feel extra special because you’ve had such a long break?
Molly: I did fringe last year, when the fringe went ahead in a small format, and we were one of only two shows from Cambridge that went up. Twenty are going up this year. It’s really special to see stuff slowly coming back to life. We’ve all got used in theatre to last-minute cancellations. Once we get going and have our first road trip moment, that will be a relief.
Kitty: It’s extra special this year because it marks the first of many things: the first summer of normal international travel from the UK, then the first summer since 2019 that the tour show has been able to go ahead. We’re can’t wait to get through exams and then go ahead and start hitting the road.
What’s the creative process been behind the show?
Molly: We did several rounds of auditions, the first one using the glorious Zoom audition function, which is ideal for comedy. Then we had a round of in-person live auditions. We wanted to make sure we had the right five people for months of travel as well as putting together a show quite quickly. We had weekly writing check-ins, where we started to gently introduce sketch-writing, then we did a writing week – an intensive week of sketch workshops, improv workshops, playing games together, writing sketches slightly more intensely and some feedback sessions – and we’ve still got some of the show to write.
Adam: I think it’s been going well. We’ve been writing sketches together as a cast as well as individually. We’ve got a big folder online where we upload everything.
Molly: It says ‘Keep Out Molly’.
What’s the importance of the history of The Footlights to you?
Kitty: One thing that’s particularly important to me is the fact that it’s produced so many amazing female comedians, some of whom have come from my college, like Emma Thompson. I think it’s a great community setup where once you’ve been involved with The Footlights in some capacity, you’re always involved with The Footlights; you can always say that you’ve been a part of making that history, which is continuing to progress.
Molly: The Footlights has had an image of being made up of white male comedians. We have a really diverse tour group this year and I think you can see that a lot in the topics that we’re able to chat about in sketches and the diversity of the ideas that we’ve been throwing around as well.
Kitty: What’s also exciting about this particular tour show is that we have an all-female led production team. I’m not sure if that’s happened before – there’s definitely been all-male led production teams.
How is The Footlights working otherwise to counter a historic lack of diversity?
Adam: Because The Footlights is such a complicated entity (you’ve got the committee and you’ve got members which aren’t related to one another, and then for the tour show you don’t have to be on committee or a member to be in it), the influence that we have as a show is completely separate to the influence that the committee will have, but I think our directors have done a great job of making sure that the cast is incredibly diverse. As a mixed race northerner from a very poor town, I’ve never felt that I’ve been put away from something because of my race or my upbringing, both of which probably would have been factors in the past.
Molly: We did our best to ensure it was a fair and transparent audition process. We had an anonymous audition feedback form, which we had some lovely responses to. You can also see that from the fact that we have a wonderfully diverse sketch group as well.
Kitty: As a tour show something that we’re committed to is access, because in each of the locations we go to, we are hoping to run educational workshops for students from diverse backgrounds in order to improve access to comedy. We feel that comedy is a really powerful tool for social change. It’s something that can serve to empower, inspire and enlighten students. We want to make sure that people, regardless of any demographic issues, can access our workshops. We’re running a series of completely free complimentary workshops.
We feel that comedy is a really powerful tool for social change.
The Footlights is known for a slightly surrealist style. What would you say the style of comedy is at the moment?
Adam: I always find it hard to analyse my own work, but I do think The Footlights tend to still be more surreal. It definitely tends to be a little bit absurd, but most sketches will have some kind of background in reality – although it’s absurd on the outside it has a meaning behind it.
Molly: We’re careful about keeping it balanced so that it’s not just wacky ideas, or message-based comedy, or observational comedy.
Adam: We all have different styles as writers as well.
Molly: I think that’s again what you get from having a relatively varied and diverse tour group – you get people who have very distinct styles. Hopefully, you won’t be able to tell when you see the eventual show, because everyone does their own editing. Every sketch does become a group project in the end.
Tickets can be purchased here: adc.com/whats-on
