About

Bawds has staged many plays by classical and contemporary authors. The company has used various types of venues for its productions, ranging from college gardens and studio spaces to traditional proscenium arch theatres.

Now recognised as a leading Cambridge dramatic production company, we present two or three major productions a year, often at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge.

BAWDS?  A bawd?  A board?  Or perhaps a bit of both.

Why ‘Bawds’?  Isn’t that something to do with a house of ill repute?

Funny name for a theatre group!

Well, yes.  The word ‘boards’ is an old theatrical term for the floor of a stage.  The familiar expression ‘treading the boards’ refers to actors literally walking upon the wooden planks of the stage.  The use of boards to mean a theatre stage dates from the 18th century, with examples recorded from around 1768.

But that’s a different spelling!

‘Bawd’ is a much older word.  It appears in English in the late medieval period and came to mean ‘a disreputable woman’.  The precise etymology is uncertain, but it is probably related to the Old French baud, meaning ‘bold’, ‘lively’ or ‘licentious’, which may itself have Germanic origins connected with the idea of being bold or daring.

Over time, the word acquired its more familiar meaning — and, by around the 18th century, bawd had become specifically associated with women.

So, beneath the word’s association with loose women lies an older idea of being bold, lively and audacious.

Ok, this is starting to sound appropriate for theatre.

The word ‘bawd’ appears prominently in the works of Shakespeare and other dramatists, particularly in plays such as Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida(both works that stretch the boundaries of comedy and tragedy.)The bawd is often a comic, worldly and shrewd figure: someone who operates outside respectable society and exposes its hypocrisies.

This is an interesting ambiguity.  A bawd can be a figure of ridicule, but also a figure who understands society — and its double standards — rather better than the respectable characters around them.

That ambiguity is particularly appropriate to the theatre.  The stage has always had a complicated relationship with respectability, morality, sexuality and social convention. Theatrical characters labelled as bawds can be comic, transgressive, knowing, manipulative or surprisingly perceptive.

And, of course, for centuries actresses themselves were subjected to accusations of impropriety simply because they performed in public.  The theme of a reputational ‘fall’ is a common point of dramatic action in both comedy and tragedy.

So ‘BAWDS’? sits somewhere between BAWD and BOARDS?

Yes.  It evokes the boards upon which actors perform, while deliberately embracing the older, more provocative word bawd — a word associated with boldness, transgression, theatricality and the questioning of respectable conventions.

Our company has its roots in Restoration drama, a theatrical tradition famous for its wit, satire and fascination with the boundaries between respectability and scandal.  Though we now aim to offer a range of historical and contemporary shows, our roots are showing!

So, BAWDS is not a spelling mistake?

No – it is a theatrical pun with a rather long history.