The Shaft of Darkness Club (or SoD for short) is the unofficial Technical Theatre Society of the University of Cambridge. Membership is comprised of a range of current students and alumni who regularly come together for drinks, dinners, garden parties and the occasional get-in/overnight. The SoD has a rich and long history dating back more than 50 years and as such, has a variety of idiosyncratic traditions. This site atempts to demystify some of them and act as an unofficial public web presence for the club.
For questions or comments regarding the content on this site, please contact webmaster@shaftofdarkness.club.
The SoD has a long list of facetious awards that people can be nominated for if they do something particularly silly in a theatrical context. These awards are usually joked about in the bar after they happen and written up in the aptly-named 'Bar Book'.
Once during each of Michaelmas and Lent terms the SoD gathers for a formal dinner somewhere in Cambridge. During Easter Term we meet during May Week for a garden party.
The Gossip List is a mailing list run for the benefit of the SoD and its stragglers. The word 'gossip' is a bit of a misnomer as no actual gossip is permitted; instead the list is used for general discussion of topics of interest.
You can request to subscribe using the interface at https://lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/info/soc-adc-gossip.
The SoD is not a registered society of the University and has no formal committee. Instead it is run as a benevolent dictatorship by an individual(s) called the Chief(s). Every summer, the current Chief nominates their replacement who is announced at the garden party in May Week. The Chief SoD can be contacted at chief@shaftofdarkness.club which forwards to shaftofdarknessclub@gmail.com.
Some photographs that are pertinent to the SoD can be found at the page below. Some of these are taken at SoD Dinners whilst others are from elsewhere.