Pantomime – an under-appreciated form

‘He’s behind you’; ‘Oh no he isn’t’; ‘Boooooo’; ‘Hissssssssss’;’ Yeeeeeeyyy’. There is nothing more satisfying or deliciously child-like than screaming this at a performer at the top of your voice; releasing an un-self-consciousness flow of energy and emotion and somehow believing fully in the actions of the absurdly dressed residents of the stage. 

Pantomime is a peculiar creature: it exists as its own categorisation, has its own ‘season’ and it does wonders at the Box Office; but in terms of credibility and integrity it has almost nil, sitting behind the Musical, and it is never going to win any serious writing or acting awards. Yet as a form it is very intricate and complicated and is much beloved in British culture, indeed, it is a very British form – chock full of irony, innuendo, role-reversals, cultural references and a ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ form of participation and is heavily steeped in tradition, while remaining perpetually modern.  I instinctively think that pantomime as a form in the theatre is thoroughly under-appreciated and has the potential for a much greater synthesis. 

A regular night out at the theatre, in my experience as a constant attendee and reviewer, is one of a pursuit enjoyed quietly in the dark – a very restrained, bourgeois activity to be reflected on and discussed thoughtfully in corners at the appropriate time after the show. I know this isn’t always the case, and there are a lot of exciting shows that break this mould, but the image of theatre, or Theatre, as a high-brow, scholarly endeavour, is alienating and exclusionary to a lot of people; which is a tragedy considering utterly unique and transformative power of the stage.  Live theatre has the advantage of taking place in the same space and time as the audience which means they can interact in ways that are immediate and transformative – at the cinema you cannot cause a change in dynamic of the actors onscreen, at a concert there is rarely a narrative to respond to, and books certainly don’t allow for any collective connection. I think it is time for theatre to move further away from its crusty image and, in this brave new world of youth, digital media and interactive content, I think theatre is in a very privileged position to forge something new and innovative. In this respect Pantomime, as a form, is trying to show us the way.

When I refer to Pantomime as a form I don’t necessarily mean the content (the childish themes, linear morality that lacks subtlety and celebrities dressed in sparkly costumes), but the open, inclusive, interactive entrance into a narrative that had connects both tradition and the present with a community of engaged participants. I was recently an usher at the Iris Theatre in Covent Garden as they put on a promenade theatre piece of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. During the play, which moved around several areas of the garden and church, the audience was just as much part of the action as the actors; they were a riotous mob on the steps of the Forum in Rome, they were conspirators plotting outside Brutus’s house, they were members of the roman senate – some even sat in thrones on-stage; this was done in a much more subtle way than a pantomime, but the result was the same, a blurring of the line and a communal, interactive experience. In fact if we look back in time to the performances of Shakespeare’s plays at theatres during Tudor/Jacobean times, they were often riotous affairs, the hoi polloi would be in the pit closest to the stage eating and shouting and drinking, emitting various bodily liquids – the actors of the time would have had to be adept at dealing with the heckling and noise – the audience were involved in the performance in a way that is nothing like the quiet enjoyment Shakespeare demands now.  This is what seems odd about the theatre: despite the fact you may be incredibly moved and inspired, existing in a realm of experience you didn’t even know could be possible, you must remain quiet and subdued, keeping all the wonders inside; the sense of a Dionysian collective connection is stifled. Pantomime doesn’t demand this, it says: interact, let out your feelings, chant, heckle and laugh: be at one with the crowd.

It is this sense of ‘line blurring’ that is pantomimes greatest potential and if we look at Baudrillard’s  theory of hyperreality we can get a clearer picture of how panto represents and fits into the contemporary world of multiple and digital existence that is becoming ever more smudged together with daily lives. The concept of hyperreality is a complex ever evolving one, but the most relevant notion here is the disappearance of the distinction between real and illusion – in this context: between the audience, safe in their role of spectator, and the actors, part of the construct that constitutes the play. According to Baudrillard, the digital, simulated nature of our existence, in many areas of our lives, has made the real/illusion distinction erroneous, ‘we no longer exist as playwrights or actors but as terminals of multiple networks’. He states ‘there are no longer either actors or spectators; all are immersed in the same reality’. The form of the pantomime lends itself to this, the audience are just as much part of the show as the performers, the actors make no attempt to pretend the show isn’t a construct they are acting out, they talk to the audience, respond to their shouts, occasionally throwing things at them or brining them up on-stage. The distinction that exists in more ‘serious’ forms of theatre between, real/illusion is blurred and exploited, it can be seen as playful and, in a way, subversive.  

The conventions of panto are bewilderingly complex to the layman, even explaining them becomes a tad galling: the main protagonist is a girl dressed as a boy, that everyone knows is a girl but has to pretend they don’t; there is more often than not a ‘dame’ who is a man dressed as a lady in the most conspicuously ridiculous dresses and make-up, again we are all in on the conspiracy and there are often several jokes based around the ambiguous gender of these characters. The stories are loosely based on a set number of well known fairy tales, but are cut up and amended in an infinite number of ways, jokes and references are made to current events, some real and some imaginary; the narrative involves a mixture of the world of the fairytale and the current digital world we inhabit. Sometimes people or celebrities appear as themselves or the characters they play elsewhere, sometimes they are the same characters but under a different guise. Sometimes audience members are invited on-stage to take part in the action, or invited to make collective decisions about the narrative. 

Pantomime is more akin to a hyperreal environment and this is what it has to teach us: real and illusion is becoming irrelevant in our everyday lives, why should it be maintained in a ‘fictional’ environment; This is not a call to turn every play into a pantomime – but more like a big comedy rubber hand pointing towards the potential of something new. Theatre has the great advantage of happening in the here and now of a person’s perception, it should play to this; in a way theatre should become less real; we have enough reality on TV and at the cinema, we need a new form of theatre, with the atmosphere of a football match, chants and emotion, spontaneous unique events – not like the X-factor, Big Brother kind – but a new credible form, a synthesis: Ibsen plays incorporating pantomime dynamics: A Deleuzian intersection of two lines of flight assembling into a new becoming; a theatre for everyone where audience and actor are one and the same event. And I’m sure there have been many experiments along these lines in small dark rooms at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and who’s to say these brave pioneers are not the avant garde taking the first steps into no-man’s-land?

Pantomime is under-appreciated for the glut of possibilities it contains, and I’m not suggesting that panto isn’t based primarily on a Pavlovian response to recognised conventions (‘yeyyyyy’ to the good guy, ‘booooooo’ to the bad guy) and lacking in subtlety; but the form, the potential of the playful, inclusive, community-based engagement that can transform the narrative and therefore produce a unique, affecting event is the golden goose to be set free. 

The Things You Didn't Read

I was uneasy, fidgety, lower abdomen nervous; I have a weird compulsion where I methodically stroke the end of my nose over and over, and on this day it was red and getting sore. The interview was to take place at 5:45, it was a day of drizzle and grey moving objects; I started drinking about 4:30 while on the train to the theatre: my special brand of cider that makes everyone else turn up their nose, but I like it, it does the job as quick as possible. I know all this seems melodramatic – I was simply going to interview an actress at a small theatre in central London– but being a fellow of slow meticulous procedure, the first time of anything is always an ever slipping trauma as my lacklustre methods of containment grope at stability, always too late. I simply don’t trust my unconscious, it has a proclivity for spazzing out when faced with the unknown like a tourettic hobo suddenly spurting antisocial invective. My fear, which kept playing in my mind, was that any moment during the interview my nerves would boil over and I would do something silly like punch her in the face, get her in a Kata-ha-jime and make her pass out – and I wouldn't class that as a good interview.  So, you see, a little bit of cider – being part of the meticulous procedure – just takes the edge off and saves a lot of embarrassment and possibly lives; and of course we must always remember the advice of the famous scientist and doctor* Charles Baudelaire:

Some people are improved so markedly by [cider] that their legs grow steadier, and their hearing becomes more acute. I once knew a fellow whose weak eyesight was restored to its original keenness whenever he was drunk.# 

The Dutch-courage, along with a few words of encouragement from a friend via text, was enough to get the beast subdued enough to get me to the doors of the theatre at the correct time. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise the theatre wasn’t open yet so I pushed the door way too hard and way too loud 3 or 4 times before realising I had to be buzzed in – once inside I made a ‘oh aren’t I silly and borderline mentally retarded’ face to the box office woman before informing her of my plight – to interview the Star of the show – which was met with a raised eye brow as she turned and, followed by a splay of tight curls, flounced out from her cubicle and ushered me into the foyer while she disappeared  behind another door.

I laid out my pad on a table in the bar, checked my phone for the sound recording software I had downloaded that morning, popped a mint into my mouth and sat back to ruminate. What was I expecting? I had been replaying scenes in my head all day where she was sat opposite me at the table, being all respectful, naturally beautiful and charismatic, just like all the pictures I had seen during my research, while I asked my questions in a style that varied to bumbling and inadequate to confident and charming – obviously the default position in my fantasies is the former. The box-office girl reappeared, with her hair, to inform me the Star would be a few minutes; I waited, I strolled around the foyer, looked absently at leaflets for other shows in other places, I waited some more. The nerves were starting to return; the door kept opening and closing, each time causing a peak of adrenaline in my body, but, no, just boring normal people: no stars. I left my pad and phone and went into the toilet, the last thing I wanted was to be desperate for the loo while attempting to capture a perfect crystal moment of pure truth from my interviewee, and wetting oneself does not mix well with the truth; cans of cider also tend to make toilet visits more frequent and more pressing, so I was well prepared. Sadly, all I managed was a rather unsatisfactory trickle of peaty yellow liquid, not what one wants to see, but oh well. I finished up and returned to my table. 

After more dawdling and pacing, my box-office friend reappeared, with her hair – which really was amazing, to tell me there had been a change of plan and shepherded me through the big black door, I felt a tad intimidated by this fact, like I was plunging forth into the forbidden – that meticulous method of containment I had built up was unravelling pretty quick and there were no knitting needles in sight, just the brute force of the unknown. We went down and down metallic stairs, there was banging and clattering and the occasional wail and screech from the contorted mouths of actors from somewhere in the distance. We continued down a dingy hallway with pipes running along the walls, a light bulb flickered overhead – we got to a door, box-office girl knocked then looked inside, it was empty; we went to the next, she knocked again, there was a muffled response from inside and in we went.

And there she was, hair splayed in many directions, wiping her face with a wipe, her face twisted into a perturbed madness. She sprung into action. ‘Oh, hello...hello...hello’, I leaned around a clothing rail populated with a panoply of colours and materials to shake her hand, it was brief and limp. Her attention was taken by a klunk and a bump coming from the corner of the room. She went over to the source, a tumble dryer, she started pressing buttons, looking at it from several different angles, my box-office friend joined in as still the rumbling continued: ‘sorry, sorry, oh god, someone’s shoes got wet and they are trying to dry them’. I sort of stood, awkwardly by the rail, smiling and laughing in my usual ‘ha ha everything’s fine everything’s fine’ kind of way. Eventually box-office girl simply pulled open the door of the machine and two more klunks and two soggy grey bodies lay sprawled on the bottom of the bowl. There was a moment - a couple of beats as we all stared, feeling something like a shadowy intoxication. Box-office girl disappeared and the pleasantries began. 

The Star returned to her seat and continued wiping her face and tending to her hair. I sat on a fold-out chair next to the clothing rail, half my shoulder being eaten by a pink voile garment that kept catching the corner of my shirt. We looked at each other in the mirror as she performed her preparations – which was for, I was told, a following interview that was being videoed.  I turned on my recorder, crossed my legs, popped a mint in my mouth and prepared to begin: ‘Ok so, I’m just gonna ask so some questions’.

...opposite of all the slick head shots and...

And it was nothing like I had envisioned – it was almost the opposite of all the slick head shots and performance photos I had seen online; there were clothes and detritus splayed around the room, a wanton smash up as it were, as well as the sound of a particularly screechy children’s party coming from the speaker in the corner was relaying happenings on the stage. The Star was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a zip hoody, she was present in all her imperfections: her wild hair, her unmade skin, herself in all roughness and spontaneity, and I suddenly felt privileged, I was getting much more than the guys with the video interview. This was where she was really exquisite, not on the stage under the lights. Then I realised, despite the questions I asked and what I eventually wrote up in the interview, this is what I wanted to capture; not the trite words that passed between us; but her youthful energy, the tenor of our combined laugh, the connection, the imperfection and the vulnerability; the moment of truth. This is what interviews should be about: the naiveté and beauty of someone when they are not being watched. 

And all of a sudden it was over, she ran out of words and I ran out of questions and rather than explore the silence between us, we said goodbye; I left, went back up the stairs, through the foyer and out into the rain. Then, I’m not sure why I did it, maybe it was the release of the nerves, but I looked up at the sky and held out my arms, opening my hands, as the rain peppered my skin and with that my mind lifted and disappeared into the ether and the pricks of water felt like a million kisses.

But I didn’t put this into the interview, I couldn’t, it would be too radical, they wouldn’t understand and it wasn’t the time or place; so I wrote up the interview in all of the tenets of a text of pleasure, in the same way it has been done a thousand times before, I ticked all the boxes and it was an OK piece. The above are the things you didn’t read. 

*I'm being jocular of curse, Baudelaire is indeed a poet, far better than a scientist or doctor.

# Baudelaire, C. Artificial Paradise - On Wine and Hashish. 

Blowing Your Nose On Stage.

I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Caesar,

And things unlucky charge my fantasy: I have no will to wander forth of doors, Yet something leads me forth.

Cinna the Poet – Julius Caesar – William Shakespeare

The broad imposing figure of Mark Anthony stands before the mass of faces, at the apex of everyone’s vision, he holds up his arms as passionate invective is pulled from his lips into the ears of the ravenous horde. Caesar is dead and betrayal and lusty ambition are to blame.

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

The stage is set out around the ornate white coffin of Caesar as Mark Anthony speaks into a big vintage silver microphone, holding aloft the perished blood splattered robe of Caesar, pointing out each bloodied slash in turn, his voice rumbling out into the dusky cloud-scarred sky. Looming over him is the concrete frame of the church with two large bullet shaped windows either side of him and big iron bells sitting 10 ft above his head waiting to ring out at the death of Caesar. The throng, increasingly rowdy shout and call for retribution, baying, the brethren is cocked:

All - Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live!

Behind Mark Anthony goat-masked figures prowl under the great black doors of the church plotting and fomenting the unrest with pointed thrusts:

All - We'll mutiny.

First Citizen - We'll burn the house of Brutus.

The multitude is ready to blow, the masked men shout and stamp their feet, betrayal, corruption, villainy, between the masks and the shouts stands a sweet elderly gentleman, wearing a black ill-fitting suit and full of doddery shaky fragility, he pulls a hanky from his pocket, scrunches it up in his rubbery old-man hand and casually blows his nose. There is...

Hang on a minute...

What was that?

***

I  was volunteering at the Iris Theatre at the Actors Church in Covent Garden and the following is something that happened that you won’t read in the news, but if the world was indeed in my command, you jolly well would be. Reality was at stake. *

I was an Usher, presiding over a production of Julius Caesar, fully comfortable with my role wearing black and standing in the shadows, when a little old man reached into reality and blew his nose with it.

Already leaning on the side of danger, the show was a promenade theatre piece that took place in the grounds of the church and moved around the garden with the different scenes of the play; the audience were told when to move to a new area and several of the spectators were recruited for small non-speaking parts. 
In terms of the potential flammability of reality, the 'dramatic petrol' had already been spilt but in none of the previous 15 performances had anyone dropped a match, I guess we had somehow got used to the acrid smell and didn’t see it coming.

During Act 3 scene II, after Caesar has been killed and his coffin is in the middle of the scene, there is a piece where Mark Anthony says this:

You will compel me, then, to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?

The crucial bit here was about making a ring around Caesar (the coffin), ordinarily a few people in the front row, crept up self consciously and knelt in a semi circle on the steps around the coffin, all the while looking back at their friends and family giggling. There was no danger they would break through that film of the imaginary world and discard reality like a soiled tissue, they were mere visitors, fully secure in their role.

On this night however, the audience was a little too eager and with an unfortunate hand movement from Mark Anthony, the crowd thought it was time to move on and surged towards the stage, only to realise pretty quickly that the scene was still going.  Their faces moved in two directions at once and they did a strange dance of indecision, as two forces worked on them at once – fight, flight, fight, flight; chicken-like they prowled the stage. 

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent...   

They were suddenly trapped between worlds; actors mixed and collided with non-actors – people collided with characters, bodies with bodies – there was a moment of pure spontaneity and perplexity, a pause of infinity when no one knew what was going to happen.  Would the audience fight, push forward into the scene, take their mistake to the end, grab the microphone and overthrow Rome three acts before it should have been done – in a moment of pure hyperreality, reality and illusion disappears into each other and the play becomes all and nothing of our immanent perception; and for that transient recess in certainty, it seemed possible.

As they collided the two imaginary domains became no more real or present than the other - nobody knew who they were and confusion was the new emperor, we all waited for someone to take charge, reinstate reality and bring us all back to that sturdy plane of consistency. 

That person was inevitably Mark Anthony, his voice faltered for a second before restoring a sense of solidity as Shakespeare’s realm won out, putting everyone back in their place, and the new possible world of multiplicity and uncertainty died rather quickly. 

The misplaced audience, coming back to themselves, sort of awkwardly stood next to the coffin, with some going straight back to sit down, but our elderly hero had gone too far and had managed to get himself stuck behind the actors, the show went on:

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

And as Mark Anthony was lamenting, and gesticulating and wailing at the unsavoury death of Caesar, there stood our man, just off to the right, shuffling with his hands in his pockets; one last vestige of infinity, he had the look of a defeated man, a dribbly eyed silhouette, stood behind his wife, humming, waiting like a obedient puppy, while she talks to her friend in the street.  

He had sweetness about him that contrasted the incendiary mood of the context, but he was still caught in-between and he had a decision to make. To stay or to go, the show or the audience? In a moment of pure genius he sidestepped any decision and made all other reality redundant. 

There was nothing of a pretence, just serenity as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a hanky, blew his nose with it, in that strangely violent, trumpetty, old man way before putting it back in his pocket; and with that action he had created a third way, a new reality unhampered by expectation.  He blew his nose with convention and as Mark Anthony was holding up Caesar's blood splattered toga, our hero was holding up his soiled hanky and saying: ‘Yes, I am an uninvited audience member on-stage; yes, I am trespassing on the steps of the Forum in Rome during a state funeral; yes I am that sly shadow, that inky excess, to be hidden under, words and clothes and things and opinions and Yes! Yes! Yes!, deal with it’.

The juxtaposition was fantastic: death, betrayal, strength – vulnerability, hankey, doddery old man.#

The show went on and he still stood in utter tranquillity, other actors moving around him, he kept looking around, occasionally making a movement to tease a jump back into the audience. On went the show:

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it: they are wise and honourable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:

By now we were all getting used to him, he was a presence in his own right, no longer a mistake, he had won, he had defeated our collective binary perception, cracked it and smelted it into something new and shiny like it was the most normal thing in the world, his magic hanky had worked. 

And it was only when we were no longer looking that he disappeared from the stage, I scanned the crowd but he was nowhere to be seen, he had gone like some kind of mysterious saggy-faced shaman.  Of course the gap he left very quickly caved in, the scene ended and the play moved on to Philippi and the eventual tragedy ensued, but when the actors took their bow and the audience clapped and applauded I think we all knew who the real star of the show was.

*I refer to ‘reality’ here as a structure of expectation, the collective ego wrapping any given scene or situation in an imaginary certainty.

#I understand that Othello has that handkerchief malarkey going on, but at no point is it brandished and used, quite vigorously on-stage by an ageing man in an ill-fitting suit.