Many Cambridge English students arrive with a passion for drama that flourishes while here, albeit sometimes in ways that make Directors of Studies rueful. There are opportunities to act, direct and produce and write within colleges and at the ADC, which is run almost entirely by students. Inevitably not all can go on to successful careers in theatre, but the opportunities here are recalled fondly by actors as prestigious as Sir Ian McKellen. Stephen Fry, another alumnus, enthusiastically advises: 'Cambridge is a time when you can play characters three times your age (in the professional world there is a ready supply of sixty year olds) and experiment and live up to the Elizabethan word for “actor” which was “player”. Play, my children, play. Play gracefully and play disgracefully.' 

Successful alumni frequently reflect on how their degree directly influenced their career. Ken Ludwig, who has been lauded as 'America's most celebrated comic playwright', recalls how he benefited from 'the intellectual rigor of Cambridge' which 'helped me understand the structure and meaning of plays and novels to a degree that I had never understood before.' While Robert Icke, the youngest Olivier Award-winning director, argues that 'Cambridge English is really good preparation for being a director – you’re given the confidence to read texts in your own way and to have a relationship to texts that is potentially iconoclastic and disrespectful. You’re able to say, ‘You know what? Everything else that everybody thinks about this text is all wrong.’”