Pembroke Players (formerly Pembroke College Players) is an amateur theatrical society in Cambridge, England, founded in 1955 and run by the students of Pembroke College, Cambridge. It is the most active College drama society in the University, staging 10-15 drama productions and comedy smokers every year. It is also the only College drama society to run its own international tours. During its lifetime it has been the starting point for many prominent actors and comedians, such as Clive James, Peter Cook and Eric Idle, and more recently Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas. The Society celebrated its 50th birthday in 2005.
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Pembroke Players was founded in the Autumn of 1955 in Room F3, next to the chapel bike racks. In addition to theatre, the underlying purpose of the society was to enable students at the then all-male college to meet ladies from across the University, and accordingly the first meeting was attended by 5 Pembroke men and 48 assorted New Hallers, Girtonians and Newnhamites. (This first meeting subsequently culminated in several marriages.) The first theatre production, 'Ring Around the Moon' (Anouilh), took place in snow-struck Blinco Grove in February 1956. (College guarantee £50, bill for damage to hall £18.) The history of the society has also been documented in Pembroke In Our Time (2007, Third Millennium Press).
Pembroke Players also has many distinguished alumni. Recordings survive from early productions and Smokers in the 1950s and 1960s featuring original material written and performed by, inter alia, Peter Cook, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Eric Idle, Germaine Greer, Clive James. Pembroke Smokers were also the first meeting place for the Monty Python group. Innovation was not limited to the performances either; a poster from a 1970 production features one of the earliest examples of computer generated ascii art in advertising.
In the early 1980s, Robert Bathurst was a prominent member of the society.
Whilst a term's worth of shows constituted one or two productions and involved a dozen or so people back in 1955, 50 years later the story is much different. The society now holds up to 8 theatre and comedy events per term, along with an annual College Pantomime, student poetry evenings and the Pembroke Players Japan Tour. Pembroke Players also hosts a termly Black Tie Smoker in the tradition of the '50s and '60s Smoking Concerts [1], with performances from both college and Footlights regulars. The current president of the Pembroke Players is Michael Cotton (Pembroke College).
The first Tour of West Germany took place in the summer of 1957, after one of the founders of the Society became the unintended recipient of a letter addressed to the Cambridge Mummers, inviting them to record Hamlet for German radio. Following a little moonlighting the Pembroke Players secured the tour for themselves instead, playing at venues in Bielefeld, Essen, Düsseldorf and Cologne. The tour was recorded in its entirety for Nord West Deustche Rundfunk and was conducted under the auspices of 'Die Bruecke', a spin off of the British Council.
Many other tours have been run since; the most recent being "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde in 2005. However, in recent years, the German Tour has been superseded by the Pembroke Players Japan Tour.
The Pembroke Players Japan Tour was conceived by a small group of Pembroke students in 2006 and spun off from the main committee as a separate body. It was launched with a vision of youth exchange via a modern, accessible Shakespeare production and accompanying workshops. The tours build upon Pembroke's long historical links with Japanese institutions. The society has enjoyed the patronage of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the GB Sasakawa Foundation since its inception.
The inaugural tour of Romeo and Juliet staged five performances in Japan, visiting Tokyo, Wakayama and Kochi. It also held UK performances at the Embassy of Japan and the Barrandov Opera in Needham Market. Press and public reaction was highly favourable.[2] An edited record of the performance is on You Tube: Romeo & Juliet
The Midsummer Night's Dream tour expanded in September 2008 under the auspices of the British Council's UK-Japan 2008[3] project, with nine performances at universities across Japan[4]. UK productions were held in King's College Chapel, Cambridge and the Greenwood Theatre, London. The tour was also offered a BBC weblog [5] which it maintained in conjunction with its first Japanese language blog[6]. It was directed by James Lewis and Lauren Cooney.
The Tempest was the chosen production of the PPJT tour this year, with the company performing in Tokyo, Nagoya and Yokohama[7]. The production, unlike previous years, was a pre-existing show, directed by Oscar Toeman, and which had previously played at the ADC Theatre, Cambridge, receiving critical acclaim[8] and sellout crowds[9]. The 2009 tour was supported by the Japan-British Society.
The fourth tour staged seven performances of Much Ado About Nothing (directed by Alice Malin) at venues in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kochi and Tateshina-Kougen. UK performances took place at Ely Cathedral and Pembroke House in Walworth, along with an October home-run in the Howard Theatre, Downing College, Cambridge.
The fifth anniversary tour took a production of 'Twelfth Night' (directed by Chloe Mashiter) to Japan in summer 2011, with a preview performance at Ely Cathedral followed by shows in Yokohama, Yoyogi, Ochanomizu and Kichijoji. The final show at Seikei University on October 1st formed part of the university's 100th anniversary celebrations and was attended by an audience of over 600. Typhoon Roke caused problems for the group with two actors trapped on a bullet train for 11 hours near Nagoya.
The sixth tour is currently being planned for September/October 2012.