Friday, November 20, 2020
Panto in a pandemic: honks not hisses and an unprecedented cow
Panto season | The Guardian: Iain Lauchlan has been putting on panto in Coventry for almost 30 years. Whenever he starts rehearsals, the writer, director and uproarious dame gives his actors the same advice. “I say we’re not going to have the full pantomime cast until the first night because you need the audience,” he explains. Whether they’re being showered with sweets, dragooned on stage by Widow Twankey or bellowing “It’s behind you!”, audiences always ramp up the voltage.
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I love that they are working to still bring Panto to people this year! Panto is Pantomime and in the UK it is a form of theatre for families and relies heavily on audience involvement. So to see the practice still being done and making people smile is awesome. I appreciate that there are different approaches to how it will be done and love the ides of doing it in a car park. Letting people respond with car horns is a fun way to include them from a distance and lends itself to fun moments that can be done in response to the horns.
During this holiday I think any attempt to brighten the lives of families, especially those with young kids, will do wonders for peoples' psyche. I hope they have all the success and can use it in the future.
So is pantomime just children’s theatre, or is it a specific style? It looks like a silly, exaggerated form, and reminds me of the little troupes that would visit my elementary school. I suppose I have done children’s theatre that is not as participatory, but it never seems as fun to me. Pantomime is almost a mix between theatre and circus, and appears to draw on traditional forms like Commedia. I guess that it makes sense that without physical proximity, pantomime is just not as fun. The kids are all contained within separate boxes (cars or houses), rather than swept up together in a sea of chaos. For the parents, maybe it is easier: there is less risk of things getting out of hand, with a child having a meltdown, or with an accidental elbow thrown by a performer or the kid sitting next to them. I wonder if there is a way that people can share laughter live. I think contagious laughter (although the phrase twinges a little given our present reality) is what makes these shows so fun.
Yay pantomime! Love this stuff, even though I am always anxious about audience participation. I do agree with the article that filming these types of shows are very rough. The audience participation is what really drives the story. That energy is vital for pantomimes and other commedia related shows. The performers feed off of that energy which drives the show into any and all weird directions. Also, putting in laugh tracks just feels weird, to be honest. It feels so forced and not authentic. They really only sort of work in sitcoms and such.
I have seen other theatre artists doing parking lot theatre, and that always seems fun. I personally think you kind of have to play to that, especially with these types of shows. I know the article says otherwise, but there is still some fun to have with that undeniable fact. It is sort of like a drive in movie, except live theatre.
I will be honest and say that this is a type of theatre that I haven't thought of much since the start of the pandemic. But I am very glad that it is not disappearing and that there is an effort being made to keep it alive and making people smile. Starr is right in saying that Panto is escapist in nature and I think that it is a good thing that he is finding a way to keep putting on shows in unconventional ways without reminding the audience of the reason for the odd setting. Right now in the world people, especially families, need a good distraction every once in a while, and theatre and panto are really wonderful ways of providing that short escape. I think that Starr is right in saying that an art like panto does not quite have the same delivery over a virtual format but I do think that virtual panto can still be a fun way for many people and families to enjoy the theatre and the art that comes from a performance.
The part about the laughter tracks really stood out to me because I often find that laughter tracks force where you find humor in a piece of media and sometimes it's there when the joke falls flat and you don't find it funny. I think that this concept of a digital panto, based on this article and looking into it a bit, because I wonder how it has affected the performer? Did they have people in the room with them that could provide the feedback and interaction needed, or was it just them and the recording staff? I think that the app is also a cool idea because it still links the viewers to the performers with sounds provided by the show itself. I also like how the article kept mentioning how there is direct addressing of the camera, so that the audience knows that even remotely, they are still apart of the show, no matter where they are viewing it from.
About once a year, I see something that reminds me that pantomime exists as an art form, and it just cheers me up for some reason. I’m not sure why, but the idea of these shows and their audience participation just seems like such a fun tradition to me, and on opening this article, I wondered how they could possibly replicate that experience online. The lack of live audience reaction is something that comedic theatre has been struggling with with the shift to being virtual, and pantomime requires that even more so, with the audience shouting being a vital part of the show experience. I thought there was an interesting dichotomy between the two styles of dealing with that presented in here - to make the different style part of the joke in some way, or to not call attention to the different format and let it stand on its own. I think both styles have merit, and it’s certainly a question that is coming up in virtual shows in all types of theater.
With the way things are going during this pandemic, it doesn’t seem that things are going back to normal anytime so I think it's important for everyone to start adapting to this new life and find ways to make normal feel like a feasible feeling again. Especially going to a theatre school, not doing shows is odd and sad because we have nothing to work for or put our energy into like we used to. I think this virtual broadway-a-thon where you can stream things live is a way of making this the new norm even for broadway. And if broadway does it, then a lot of other theatre members are going to be more opening to exploring virtual entertainment as well. Although that might be in the near future, it's exciting to see that theatre is still alive and that people have not lost hope and that there are platforms like this.
How interesting! This is an incredible way to adapt to the pandemic. I am always quite avoidant of experiences that involve audience participation, but, if that is your jam, I understand how this could be a fun experience. I have definitely spent some time thinking about the role of the audience in comedy. At the start of the quarantine, I watched some late night shows that were happening audience free in the host’s home, but I could not stand it for long because of how uncomfortable the silences where the audience usually had some kind of reaction. I am glad this pantomime tradition has still found ways to survive and include an audience in a distanced, but still involved, manner. As I thought about this article, the truth is that, even though it is hard for the late night train to continue, they would go on. These small pantomime groups are desperately in need of their audience to survive.
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