Wiki explains Pantomime

 Last night we went to the Kampala-based Pantomime at the National Theatre in Kampala. Sad to say, I don't have photos of being at the theatre as it would give you a better sense of things. But I think the experience is in our minds, and I do wonder if I'm sometimes planting some vision for Daniel who I feel might have that dramatic strain in him a bit. I have this memory that my dad may have been in some Gilbert and Sullivan productions, but don't know if I've conflated some parts of stories I heard growing up. But in the production, Daniel enjoyed watching some of his teachers and some kids who attend his school. And I feel a sentimental attachment to the pantomime as part of my way of staying connected with the Buttons who I trust are attending a pantomime somewhere in England in the coming weeks... Maybe more than one??? Anyway, below you'll see the Wiki description of a pantomime and I can assure you that most parts described were in the play--which might beg the question of how age appropriate it is... I'm trusting that the right parts went over Daniel's head!

Pantomime traditions and conventions

Traditionally performed at Christmas, with family audiences, British pantomime is now a popular form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, cross-dressing, in-jokes, topical references, audience participation, and mild sexual innuendo.

[edit]Traditional stories

Panto story lines and scripts usually make no direct reference to Christmas, and are almost always based on traditional children's stories, including the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, Joseph Jacobs,Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers - plus tales from the Arabian Nights. While the familiarity of the audience with the original story is generally assumed, plot lines are almost always 'adapted' for comic or satirical effect, it being common for characters and situations from other stories to be interpolated into the plot. Certain familiar scenes tend to recur, regardless of plot relevance, and highly unlikely resolution of the plot is common. Straight re-tellings of the original stories are rare in the extreme.

Popular titles include:

• Aladdin (sometimes combined with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and/or other Arabian Nights tales. It is traditionally set in China - following the original tale - rather than the Middle East, as in Disney)
• Babes in the Wood (often combined with Robin Hood)
• Beauty and the Beast
• Cinderella, the most popular of all pantomimes and first shown in 1870 in Covent Garden, London
• Dick Whittington and His Cat, first staged as a pantomime in 1814, based on a 17th century play.
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Jack and the Beanstalk (Sometimes including references to nursery rhymes and other children's stories involving characters called Jack, such as Jack and Jill)
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Peter Pan
• Puss in Boots
• Robinson Crusoe
• Sleeping Beauty
• Snow White
• The Snow Queen

[edit]Performance conventions

The form has a number of conventions, some of which have changed or weakened a little over the years, and by no means all of which are obligatory. Some of these conventions were once common to other genres of popular theatre such as melodrama.

• The leading male juvenile character (the principal boy) - is traditionally played by a young woman, usually in tight-fitting male garments (such as breeches) that make her female charms evident.
• An older woman (the pantomime dame - often the hero's mother) is usually played by a man in drag.
• Risqué double entendre, often wringing innuendo out of perfectly innocent phrases. This is, in theory, over the heads of the children in the audience.
• Audience participation, including calls of "He's behind you!" (or "Look behind you!"), and "Oh, yes it is!" and "Oh, no it isn't!" The audience is always encouraged to boo the villain and "awwwww" the poor victims, such as the rejected dame, who usually fancies the prince.
• Music may be original but is more likely to combine well-known tunes with re-written lyrics. At least one "audience participation" song is traditional: one half of the audience may be challenged to sing 'their' chorus louder than the other half.
• The animal, played by an actor in 'animal skin' or animal costume. It is often a pantomime horse or cow, played by two actors in a single costume, one as the head and front legs, the other as the body and back legs.
• The good fairy enters from stage right (from the audience's point of view this is on the left) and the villain enters from stage left (right from the point of view of the audience). This convention goes back to the medieval mystery plays, where the right side of the stage symbolised Heaven and the left side symbolised Hell.
• Sometimes the story villain will squirt members of the audience with water guns or pretend to throw a bucket of 'water' at the audience that is actually full of streamers.
• A slapstick comedy routine may be performed, often a decorating or baking scene, with humour based on throwing messy substances. Until the 20th century, British pantomimes often concluded with a harlequinade, a free-standing entertainment of slapstick. Nowadays the slapstick is more or less incorporated into the main body of the show.
• In the 19th century, until the 1880s, pantomimes typically included a transformation scene in which a Fairy Queen magically transformed the pantomime characters into the characters of theharlequinade, who then performed the harlequinade.^[10]
• The Chorus, who can be considered extras on-stage, and often appear in multiple scenes (but as different characters) and who perform a variety of songs and dances throughout the show. Due to their multiple roles they may have as much stage-time as the lead characters themselves.

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