The crafty art of Pantomine

Pantomine is known to usually take part around Christmas time and are usually based of a well known childrens story. It is still seen as quite a British tradition although it origniates from Italy. First becoming known in the 16th century but was very different to how we know Pantomine to be today. For example, they used a lot of mime and music to show the audience what was happening instead of speaking. In the 17th century Pantomine started to be known all round Europe and then in the early 18th century it started to appear on Londons stages. During this time Harlequin was the star of the stage being very popular with audiences. Up until 1843 theatre licensing had restricted the use of spoken word in performances, until The Theatre Act lifted the restriction which allowed any theatre without a royal palet to produce a play with spoken dialgue. Shortly after this word play and auidence participation were introduced to Pantomine which both play such big part now in Pantomine and it wouldnt be the same without. By the late 19th century Pantomines could last up to 5 hours in the biggest of Londons theatres and it became tradition that they would open on boxing day. The main charaters in Pantomine are... Principle boy/ girl which is the hero. The Baddie who always get a "Boo" from the audience when they walk on and always get defeated by the hero at the end of the Pantomine. The Dame who is the comdeic part and is always played by a man dressed up as a woman. A Double Act are also a comedic part of Pantomine and often help the Baddie do there work. The Fairy Helps the good happen in a Pantomine and usually speaks in rhyme. Comedy figure normally a friend to the audience to get them engaged with big ambitions which they achieve at the end. Me and my friend Izzy had to take on the role of children because we had a limited cast and could not use actual children like Pantomines normally do. They would cast children that are closer to the age but because we couldnt do that i took on the role of Pip(8) and Izzy took on the role of Penny (6). For a lot of young actors thier first time on stage is a Pantomine and I think it is a really good experience to have from a young age. We didnt have many lines beause we were children and the role is meant for people a lot younger than us so we had to work on our facial expression a lot. Although we didnt have much to say we were still on screen a lot! When we werent main characters in a scene we took it upon ourself to still do childlike things such as when Robin was holding his meeting we were pulling silly faces at the Merry Men who didnt even notice!