Welcome to CADS -
Royston's amateur drama group!

We've just wrapped up the 2026 Royston Town Pantomime Dick Whittington (Oh, yes, we have!) by local (and entirely pseudonymous) author Martin E Rosso, and are planning our next production(s) which we hope will include performances of Mark Evans's hilarious Dickensian parody Bleak Expectations and possibly a one-act play to be entered in this year's Welwyn Drama Festival

We've also recently revived our occasional series of play readings. We started last May with the aforementioned Bleak Expectations and followed this with Tom Stoppard's Night and Day and Noel Coward's Blithe Spirt, both at the Coombes Community Centre. Our next is on Thursday 26 February and will feature one of Terry Johnson's fact/fantasy plays, Prism - see here for more details of these and other meetings

Prior to that we had a sell-out production of the 2025 Royston Town Pantomime, another smash hit by Warren McWilliams (his brand new version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears), and staged the riotous and bawdy fantasy comedy Six Dead Queens... and an Inflatable Henry!, which drew enthusiastic and appreciative audiences to Icknield Walk School. Our latest two radio plays were broadcast on Royston Radio (now, sadly, in temporary shut-down) as part of last year's Royston Arts Festival - a one-act comedy Losing the Plot by our old friend Nick Warburton, and the thriller Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucille Fletcher - and plans are afoot for more in this medium, possibly for broadcast on Royston Radio or Cambridge Radio.

Our previous pantomime was The Little Mermaid by Warren McWilliams, which was more or less a complete sell-out and was recently nominated in the Best Pantomime category at the annual NODA East Awards!

Our last production prior to that was the "Two Short Comedies" show, which consisted of a live performance of Nick Warburton's one-act comedy Don't Blame it on the Boots  - our award-winning entry to the 2023 Welwyn Drama Festival - followed by a screening of the film Seven Movies by Roy Maddox, which won three awards at the 2021 Welwyn Drama Festival, and received glowing praise from adjudicator Walker Ewart! If you missed the film at the festival, you can catch it on YouTube at https://youtu.be/MyL2L04uefA

In 2022, the one-act drama The Blonde Bombshell by local author Roy Maddox, was awarded Best Unpublished Play after it was performed for the very first time at that year's Welwyn Drama Festival. The group came fifth overall in a very strong field of fourteen plays.

Our production in 2021, Strangers on a Film - which won two awards (including Best Individual Performance)  and received three other nominations at that year's Cambridge Festival of Drama - was subsequently recorded for radio and was first broadcast on Royston Radio at 2.00 p.m. on Wednesday 23 August. (It gets repeated from time to time, so do listen out for it!) We also performed it as part of a unique evening's entertainment at the 2021 Royston Arts Festival, and you can listen to it, too, on our YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/fMVDxa9912Y

We also produced, during lockdown, two versions of our virtual cabaret CADaret!, which we posted on YouTube, one during the 2020 Royston Arts Festival, and one in time for the Christmas period. These were both a mixture of songs, poems, sketches, monologues and general silliness,  recorded on film and edited together for posting. Both are still available; to view them, search for "CADaret" on YouTube, or just click here

We have a varied programme and always welcome new members. Our pantomimes are always child-friendly, focussing on family entertainment (for which we've gained an excellent reputation locally in recent years). Our performers (children and adults) are all local amateurs, yet we all aim for high quality in as many aspects as possible - acting, script, lighting, sound, special effects, and of course our live band...