Arts Week at Trinity

Arts Week at Trinity, 22 February–2 March, offers talks, workshops and performances, spanning poetry, jazz, drama, photography, fine arts and more, which are open to all Cambridge students.

The first-of-its-kind programme is a collaboration between Trinity’s various arts societies, and testament to the vibrancy of artistic endeavour at the College, said Owen Wright, a third-year English student and Publicity Officer for Arts Week.

With increasing financial pressures on the arts sector and closure of some university English Literature courses and drama school training, it would be easy to become despondent.

That’s why it is even more important that Trinity supports and celebrates the arts, which everyone at the College can dip into or get more involved in, whether you study the humanities or the sciences, said Owen.

I know Engineering students who have embraced student theatre, Medical students who have become cinephiles and Maths students who have joined the Trinity College Music Society.

While Isaac Newton looms large in Trinity’s history, so too do famous writers – the butterfly on Arts Week posters is actually the Karner Blue identified by Trinity alumnus, the writer and amateur naturalist Nabokov. Owen, who designed the posters, said:

With our alumni stretching from Lord Byron and Alfred Lord Tennyson to Eddie Redmayne and Mel Giedroyc, it is clear that Trinity has always been a college that nurtures and supports creativity.

Arts Weeks includes talks with alumni in different arts sectors. Rupert Goold, who is moving from the Almeida Theatre to Old Vic, will be In Conversation at Trinity on 26 February.

Poets Mona Arshi, James Harpur and Rebecca Watts will read their work at an event on Friday 28 February.

Rebecca, who studied English at Trinity and has just published a new collection The Face in the Well, said: ‘Arts Week is a wonderful reminder of the contributions Trinity and its alumni have made, and continue to make, to the creative arts.’

James will premier his new verse memoir, The Magic Theatre, which recounts ‘in gory detail my three years at Trinity in the late 1970s.’

It was a time of great social, cultural and political change, with a soundtrack ranging from the Sex Pistols to the Bee Gees. I was over-awed by College, not knowing what to study, what to wear, who to hang out with, etc – I felt like an actor who had wandered onto an exotic stage without knowing what his part was.

My book recounts what happens – from weird lectures and scary professors to mad parties, toe-curling auditions, and crashing May Balls.

Third-year students, Sophie Rayner and Alexander Velody jointly devised Arts Week, galvanized both by the enthusiasm for the arts at Trinity and the frown of some Cambridge academics at student involvement in theatre rather than, for example, rowing.

For Sophie, directing and producing numerous plays in Cambridge not only helped her studies  directly and indirectly – enabling her to return to her laptop refreshed – but also cemented her plans post-graduation. She said:

Perhaps more than directing itself, I have loved the people and organizational aspects of the arts – plus I have found I like being busy!’

I hope to go into events management in the arts in my near future and have the abundance of opportunity that Trinity offers to thank for that.

Before coming to Trinity Alexander had limited experience in the arts. But now he is keen to pursue a career in directing or producing theatre and film. He said:

Directing film and theatre had always been a background dream, but I was unsure how to pursue it. Just a year at Trinity – surrounded by opportunity and an uplifting creative community – I co-directed my first production, God of Carnage, in Trinity’s Fellows’ Garden.

He went on to produce and direct several plays in Cambridge, with Trinity’s support, and took Julius Caesar on tour to America.

Alexander’s sell-out production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (ADC Theatre), set in 1980s’ New York as the HIV/AIDS crisis burgeoned, won critical acclaim as well as support for the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Getting involved in theatre provided a community of like-minded people, a fulfilling creative outlet and helped with Alexander’s studies. ‘In my final year, it is especially rewarding to explore theatre in my degree explicitly, in my dissertation.’

Find out more about book tickets for Arts Week at Trinity.