Nab A Seat In Stephen Fry’s Oxford Lecture

Tickets have been released for students to attend a lecture by Stephen Fry at St Catz.

The actor was appointed to the position of Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at St Catz in 2013.

His first lecture in the role is set to take place on Thursday of 5th week this term (20th February). The lecture is open to all current students at all colleges.

Tickets for students were released online on Monday. However, St Catz was unprepared for the level of Fry mania that had swept through the university by the point. The flood of students keen to see the national treasure overwhelmed the site and caused it to crash.

Fry is set to deliver his first lecture in 5th week

A balloting system has now been put in place for students to try and get their hands on one of the hotly sought after tickets.

In a message from Jennie Younger at St Catz’ Development Office distributed throughout the university by Drama Officer Mary Flanigan, the college has asked that students should follow these instructions:

1. The booking procedure will take the form of a ‘draw’. Please read the details below on how to enter carefully, as any applications that do not adhere to them will be ignored, due to the vast number of requests we are expecting.                               
   1. This is open to current University of Oxford Students only (if you are a not a current University of Oxford Student, please see our website for details on how to enter the General Public Draw)
   2. Please email [email protected] to enter
   3. The email subject should be ‘UNI STEPHEN FRY RSVP – YOUR NAME’ for example, ‘UNI STEPHEN FRY RSVP – JOE BLOGGS
   4. There should be no text in the body of the email.
   5. Only one entry per student. Duplicate entries will be taken out of the draw completely.
   6. Entries are open now and will close on Friday 24^th January at 17.00. Entries received after this time will not be counted.
   7. If you have not heard from us by Friday, 7^th February, you have been unsuccessful.

Stephen Fry has yet to reveal what will be in his lecture but he stated at the time of his appointment, “Dance and music will feature little in my time [at St Caz], I am sorry to say, but I hope to help students devise comic and dramatic pieces, talk through rehearsal, writer-performing techniques and procedures, and give what benefit I might have to offer from over a quarter of a century of larking about on stage and screen”.

“Above all I hope we’ll all have fun. It’s not by accident that dramatic pieces are actually called ‘plays’ and that in Shakespeare’s day actors were ‘players’.