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Traditions, Pantomime
 It's a format of comic family
entertainment, usually involving some character
stereotypes, particularly a pantomime dame (a man
playing a comical middle-aged lady) and a principal boy
(a girl playing the hero).
Being family entertainment,
there is often a range of types of humour. This can
include innuendo , most of which goes over the heads of
the younger children in the audience. The story of Aladdin is one
pantomime, originally set in a Chinese laundry!.
Puss in Boots is a common European folk tale, complete with a ritual
dual of magical beings in this case the cat and the ogre. As with
Aladdin, the original story has little or no role for the dame, nor is
their any requirement for a pantomime donkey, thrown in for good
measure... The origins of British Pantomime or "Panto" as it is known
here, probably date back to the middle ages, stories that they performed
in fairgrounds and market places. Often the touring troupes were made up
of family members who would inherit their characters, costumes, masks
and stories from their parents or grandparents.
Within two days of a new performance opening at Lincoln's Inn Fields
Theatre in 1716, a show with an almost identical title opened at the
Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. That was the first tenuous beginning of
English pantomime. And now this peculiar form of entertainment is as
much a part of Britain's heritage as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding
In Pantomime it is the tradition that the Fairy always enters from Stage
Right and the sinister character from Stage Left. If the two should meet
the Fairy passes her wand from the right hand to the left, to protect
her heart from the dark forces |
