h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Secrets of Pantomime - A2203831
Author: Shadowbane - U549600

Dudes! after days of work The Secrets of Panto is here. I have taken care to use subheadings and be impersonal this time but please tell me if I've spelt something wrong as I will have no idea at all!

My only experience with pantomime is with Monty Python's Queen Victoria cup and the Queen stalking her wild breakfast. In these, nobody but the narrator talks. Do real pantomimes not actually have mimes?

There isn't an entry on Pantomime in the Guide that really explains it.

I always got the impression from seeing snippets of Punch and Judy shows that there is an expected, almost ritual audience response to certain lines and actions. (I've never seen an entire Punch and Judy and never in person). Is this true of Pantomime? Since your article is about writing these, perhaps a listing of some tried and true calls/actions and expected responses would be helpful to the novice writer, just in case they forgot one that they need somewhere?

A couple of points to consider.

Firstly, please, please, please, please, please put the entry through a spell checker. It does get distracting reading all those typos.

Secondly, you said that it's important to consider the Disney version of any fairy tale, and further down the entry mention 'Dick Whittington', which I am sure they have never touched. Also 'Mother Goose' is a panto classic, but has (mercifully) never been Disneyfied. Or 'Babes in the Wood' for that matter. Or 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.

Special mention must be made, I feel, of Berwick Kaler. He has been playing the Dame in every pantomine at the York Theatre Royal for the last 25 years. The panto this year is called, therefore, 'Mother Goose's Silver Jubilee'. Here's a couple of links about it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/stage/2003/pantos/york/goose_ytr.shtml

http://www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/archive-news/news39.shtml

And this link is quite interesting too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/stage/2002/panto/pantotrads.shtml

I do think you've got a good structure to the entry, but it does need a little more work. As Sea Change intimated, panto is not widely understood beyond these shores, so you may need to explain the basic concept somewhat.

I hope you persevere with this entry, as I think there a lot of potential here.


Geggs

Hi Shadowbane

I can't find the thread where I posted those spelling corrections for you!!!
Implement them soon and put Greggs out of his misery.

Watermusic

I've been to at least one panto almost every year of my life so far, and the things that should always be in a panto are:

A Dame (a man dressed up as a woman, so everyone knows it's a man really, and he wears very over the top dresses and make-up)

A principal boy (a girl dressed up as a boy, wearing tights and usually slapping her thigh at least once)

A wedding (Usually between the main female and male characters, although sometimes the dame gets married too)

A baddie (male or female, someone everyone can go 'boooooo' and 'hisssssss' at whenever they come on stage)

Comedians (in semi-main roles, they take the mick out of the audience members and make the adults laugh with lots of innuendo)

A song (where they ask whose birthday it is and 4 terrified 5-year-olds have to go on stage and help the comedians sing a song)

Sweet-throwing (normally done by the dame, but not so much in recent years due to injury fears)

Outrageous dresses (worn by the dame, and themed, so that if the action is on board ship, the dame's dress will have a big ship on and her hat will be the smoke coming out of the funnel)

It's behind you (shouted by the audience to a cast member who doesn't realise the person they're looking for is right behind them)

Oh no it isn't (the reply to 'it's behind you', to which the audience reply 'oh yes it is...')

There's probably lots more, and I'm not sure if some of this is included in the entry already, but I just thought I'd chip in

All of this is included except sweet throwing. Sweet throwing is now either scaled down or left out because of health and saftey and writers being more keen to add new elements to the panto formula and show off than stick to basics. Audience reaction is pretty much taken for granted however in my experiance it is always best to get the cast to yell backstage and those on stage to make gestures. "What do you think of it so far" "RUBBISH" is also worth mentioning. Thanks for the hints dudes!

At the panto I went to this year they had a good alternative to sweet-throwing - hundreds of blocks of foam were handed out to the audience by the cast, for us all to throw, on cue, at the baddie I have one of the blocks at home and now I don't know what to do with it...

How about lobbing it at a couple of real bad guys?

I don't think a bit of foam would scare them off... plus it may or may not have been touched by Lee from 911 which is very cool...

It would be good to include some history and appropriate links. As has already been said, although we know them well in the UK, they're not so well known overseas, and this entry assumes prior knowledge from the outset, it seems.

Here are a couple:

http://www.its-behind-you.com/

http://www.author.co.uk/lesleycookman/history.html

It would also be good to name a few of the more popular pantomimes and maybe also mention some of the more famous people who have appeared in pantomime.

Some more links:

http://www.hissboo.co.uk/pantomimes.shtml

http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3mime.htm

http://www.danbbs.dk/~erikoest/pt_uk.htm

http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/links/panto1.htm

http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/links/panto2.htm

Here's a great quote:

'Pantomime is the last living folk art in England.'

from this really neat site:

http://www.cix.co.uk/%7Enickmel/panto.htm

This sounds very like Irish pantomime, although there seem to be one or two differences. In Ireland:

- the Dame may be a man or a woman
- the principal boy is never a woman dressed up
- there is always music, usually involving a song which is currently popular and as often as not only very vaguely tied in with the plot.

Wheres the fun in that? Things shouldn't be what they seem!

The point of my article is a study of how panto works with a veiw to writing them so the history of panto is not particuarly important to it. As for adding more famous people in pantos I don't like too much showbiz name dropping and the thought of Richard Wilson in drag is enough to put anyone of mentioning celebs. Thanks for the links though. I just need to work out how to incorparte them into the article.

Traditional pantomime does not require some television star to come on wittering his catch phrases, and proffering nudge nudge wink wink remarks to the adults and patronizing the children.

Written down pantomime sounds perverse, but at its best its a family entertainment that will span generations.

Panto Baddie - "If you don't be quiet I'm going to lock up all the Grandmas....." (kids go quiet but elderly man in front row starts cheering) Audience and cast crack up.

Priceless!

I *do* think that the history of pantomime is relevant and that something about it should be included, even if it's only a short bit.

I agree that is a classic bad guy line but I don't think it has ever been written into the script. In my experiance a lot of the "oh shut up" lines are improvised on the spot by talented bad guy actors. Although some panto writers write in bad guy's who love getting booed! In my experiance although they may seem annoyed on stage most bad guy actors judge success by the number of screaming children in the audience that hate them! As for the history of panto I may add in a breif section on this with a view to how panto has worked!

I've put a link in but for some stupid reson it's turned it's self invisable! Help!

Shadowbane
I saw your cry for help on Frenchbean's dig for victory entry and thought I'd check out what problem you were having.

By using <./>test2203831</.> to see your GuideML I saw the link you're having problems with. Easily solved! You need to put some text between the opening tag and the closing one. This will appear as the hyperlink that you can click on.

The format for external references is: a Pantomime site. nb Don't forget the backslashes in the address.

As I said to FB you can make the link title appear as something other than "a Pantomime site" by adding something like TITLE="It's Behind You!" in the LINK opening tag.

Hope this helps

Pimms
(internal references to h2g2 EG entries use H2G2 rather than HREF in the link tag and the A number between the quote marks and automatically come up with the h2g2 title in the link references - you'll still need something between the opening and closing bits though)