For some months before the name "Footlights" was chosen, the group had performed to local audiences in the Cambridge area (once, with a cricket match included, at the "pauper lunatic asylum").

They wished to go wider than the University Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC), founded in 1855, with its membership drawn largely from Trinity College, and its theatre seating only 100.

But Also, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, At Last the 1948 Show, That Was the Week That Was and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, forming comedy groups such as Monty Python and The Goodies, and generally fuelling the satire boom.

The club also produces the annual Pantomime (in collaboration with CUADC) and the Spring Revue, as well as staging the winning entry of the Footlights Harry Porter Prize; a competition in which any student at the university may enter a one-hour comic play.

The Footlights International Tour Show takes place from June until October, and travels to Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and venues across the United States.

The elected leader of the University of Cambridge Footlights Dramatic Club is known as the president, who is assisted by a vice-president, treasurer, archivist and several other posts to form the committee.