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NOTE: traditional panto = Family panto for kids and stuff
student panto = Musical comedy with knob gags
When writing any fiction, the most important aspects are always narrative and
character. If the narrative is not consistent as a whole, or if it deviates
too far for too long, you will lose the audience. Likewise, one should make
the characters sympathetic (or at least the heroes of the piece), or the audience
won't care what happens to them. All the characters must be consistent (sudden
character-reversals from evil-to-good are fine as long as they don't happen
too often and are at least vaguely explained).
If these points are kept in mind, then the rest of the points of guidance here
can be broken to some degree without greatly upsetting the audience. A balance
must always be struck between surrealism/silliness and believability/consistency.
Humour
Panto is essentially a comedy. It needs to be funny. This humour can be of
any type. Typically, family panto has more satire and obviously bad puns than
student panto, and is aimed at both adults and children. Student panto is aimed
somewhere in between. Therefore, it tends to have fewer political or current
affair jokes (though this is only an observation - there's no real rule here)
and can contain more subtle and sophisticated humour than family panto. The
puns in student panto are normally very bad still, but they are mostly innuendo.
Lots and lots of innuendo :
Sophisticated humour is all very well, but the tone of a panto needs to often
be much lower. For instance, slapstick definitely has a part to play. It is
traditional to have at least some element of farce and "whoops, lost my
trousers again" shenanigans. This is because it's too much fun not to and
there's always some damned fool desperate to get some (or all, rob) of their
kit off on stage.
As a caveat to that, panto is not really a peep show and people expect the
naughtiness to be hinted at but not generally displayed. The limit is somewhere
around wandering around in pants or seeing naked buttocks. There is a fine line
to walk and the aim should be to keep on the right side of gratuitousness.
Randomness
Much humour comes from "unexpected juxtaposition", often in the form
of random and surreal occurrences. These events are excellent to have in a panto,
but they must be explained or justified in some way. For instance, if "death"
wanders in and then out again, then that's random. The audience may even find
it funny. But it will leave them waiting for an explanation or reoccurrence.
Without these, the audience don't know that it was supposed to be random, so
a large part of its silliness is lost on them.
If however, death comes in, asks for directions and then leaves, the audience
has an indication that it's supposed to be random, are therefore comfortable
with its incongruity and are free to laugh lots. This example may still leave
the audience slightly uneasy, an indication of how hard it is to leave enough
unexplained to give that air of surrealism whilst explaining enough to satisfy
the audience's subconscious questioning.
To use random events to create an unexpected juxtaposition, there must be an
initial state from which to base this comparison; events are only random if
beforehand the situation is relatively normal and there is the impression that
this state will be returned to - too many non-narrative occurrences immures
the audience to them. This is because consecutive random events, especially
if they are not immediately resolved create a narrative tension that comes from
the diversion from the main perceived story. If the audience has confidence
that the original narrative still has life and that it will be returned to or
explained, then events can get very surreal and the juxtaposition will get larger
and larger, with luck getting even funnier. But there is a fine-line to be walked
here, because if events do not eventually begin to follow the main narrative,
then the golden rule of story telling is broken and the audience will tire of
the randomness quite quickly as they stop caring what happens in the story.
Music
Showing its Vaudeville and music-hall roots, panto usually has a number of
songs. These can form part of the audience interaction… or not. Not may
be a safer option. Student panto is very suited to having songs with popular
known music but changed with lyrics. About 6 songs in a large panto is a good
average, though this can vary greatly. 6 gives you an opening number, a solo
or two, large chorus numbers at the end of the first half and at the end and
a spare.
Live band or no live band?
Audience Interaction
Characters and Cast
When writing the panto, it is a good idea to keep in mind the type and number
of parts you are creating. If possible, apart from the principles and walk-ons,
there should be quite a few middle sized parts to let as many people as possible
have a sizable part. Don't get carried away with this however, as lots of characters
that all seem as important as each other could make the panto very muddled!
Also, the likely demographic of your actors should be taken into account. If
you expect mostly women to audition, don't have an all male cast - while some
of them can cross-dress, you're only making work for yourself trying to shoe-horn
the actors you've got into the parts available.
Chorus
The chorus plays a very important part. Aside from their role in the performance
as minor characters, traditional chorus reaction to action and as spectacle
in the larger numbers, the chorus allows a large number of people who may not
be able to perform a main part (normally due to lack of available parts), get
on stage and enjoy themselves.
Panto Traditions
Cross dressing
It is traditional to have cross-dressing characters in the panto - normally
the lead boy will be a woman, causing much thigh slapping of shapely legs, and
the dame is traditionally a man in a good deal of dress and makeup. The first
of these traditions is often ignored in student pantos as we don't have to entertain
the children's fathers and there are often quite suitable men that the women
won't mind a closer look of (though comeliness in the principle man is an added
quality, it's not strictly necessary in a panto - look at Jim Davidson for f*dge
sake).
There are other characters who traditionally cross-dress such as the ugly sisters,
however, don't even think of putting on any panto without a
Dame
The dame must be volumously jolly, larger than life and almost certainly have
polka-dot bloomers that the audience may get to see at some point. The main
role for the dame is audience interaction. They can be the warm-up (not necessarily
at the beginning) and in a family panto they lead the big sing-alongs (err…normally
for the kids but may be useful hehehe).
It is advisable for a dame to be practiced in responding to heckles and of
ways of getting the audience going. Some of this can be scripted, but a little
practice at real-life heckling wouldn't go amiss. Typical story-roles are as
fairy godmothers, wise women, nurses, mothers, cooks etc.
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