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Maya Calcraft (MML (Spanish and Italian) 2021) is excited about returning to student theatre following her year abroad. She is directing a production of Lucy Prebble’s play The Effect which will run at the Corpus Playroom next week (November 5 to November 9).

Theatre has been a lifelong love for Maya, who attended a performing arts school between the ages of 10 and 16, studied A-Level Drama and made at the ADC Theatre in March 2023 with her production of the Victorian farce Charley’s Aunt. She first encountered The Effect while reading plays during her year abroad in Rome and was immediately captivated by its potential for a staging in Cambridge.

“I was reading lots of different plays, and when I read The Effect I just saw it in my mind,” she says. “I saw the way that I could stage it, the things I could do with the props, and I just thought, ‘Fabulous, that’s clearly the choice that I should make’.”

The play revolves around a clinical trial for a new antidepressant. It follows two patients in the trial who begin to fall in love with each other but are left questioning whether their love is only a side effect of the drug. Meanwhile, two doctors debate the ethics of using medication to manage human emotion.

“I’ve never read a play that’s so heartbreaking and funny and so well-paced,” Maya adds. “On the one hand it’s a very emotional exploration, but it is funny and it’s thrilling, and it was great to find a play that’s so multifaceted.

“It opens up so many conversations that are really interesting. Why do we fall in love, what’s the logic and how does it affect us as people? Are we over-medicating for depression, are we under-medicating? What are the ethics of clinical trials, are they outdated, do we need to change? You get so many conversations and so many ideas presented to you in one sitting that you couldn’t possibly be bored.”

Besides Maya, two other 91ֱ�� students are involved in this production. Georgia Beale (ASNaC 2021) is acting as the show’s Publicity Officer, and Olivia Khattar (Theology, Religion, and Philosophy of Religion 2022) is playing the role of Connie, one of the two volunteers in the drug trial.

It is the sense of a collective endeavour which Maya finds so special about theatre as an art form. “I’ve been particularly lucky with The Effect. Everyone is so dedicated to exploring what each scene means and how it changes if you play it differently,” she says. “It’s one of those plays that has no fixed meaning: everyone brings their own contexts and their own interpretations to it, and so it feels like a team effort in such a nice way.”

Returning to directing after her year abroad has also allowed Maya to reflect on the importance of making the most of everything that student theatre in Cambridge can offer. She says: “Coming back to Cambridge having not done theatre for a year, it really hit me all over again how amazing it is that we get given these opportunities, that we get given the stages to perform on and the actors and the money and the costumes and everything else – it’s such an amazing opportunity, and I’m really grateful for it.”

The Effect will run from Tuesday 5 to Saturday 9 November at 7 p.m., with tickets available from .