{"id":29159,"date":"2014-12-12T00:03:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T05:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29159"},"modified":"2014-12-11T07:42:43","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T12:42:43","slug":"the-british-pantomime-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/12\/the-british-pantomime-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"The British pantomime tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ozy.com\/performance\/holidays-in-drag\/37741.article\" target=\"_blank\">Tracy Morgan<\/a> looks at a British holiday tradition that didn&#8217;t seem to travel to the rest of the empire:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An actor in drag endowed with enormous boobs stands alongside an actress in male britches. Every year they tell the same jokes, flirtatiously sing silly tunes, bring a good-over-evil narrative to life and comment on everything \u2014 except much about Christmas. Yet theatergoers consider it a great holiday tradition, because nothing says Christmas to Brits quite like cross-dressing slapstick, screaming children and sexual innuendo.<\/p>\n<p>British pantomimes run from late November through mid-January, and the question is not are you going, but which panto are you seeing? \u201cFor many people, a trip to the theater to see the pantomime is as big a part of Christmas as roast turkey dinner,\u201d says Simon Sladen, assistant curator of modern and contemporary performance at London\u2019s Victoria and Albert Museum. \u2019Tis the season for the goodies to take the stage to cheers while baddies slink into view amid boos. A man plays the leading dame, and a woman often plays the starring male role, retelling classic fairy tales like <em>Cinderella<\/em> or <em>Jack and the Beanstalk<\/em> with a comedic twist. Chants from ticket holders include \u201cOh, yes it is\u201d to \u201cOh, no it isn\u2019t,\u201d or the classic \u201cIt\u2019s behind you!\u201d to warn those on stage of imminent danger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;d always wondered where those phrases came from&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Unlike its silent namesake, these colorful productions \u2014 aka <em>pantos<\/em> \u2014 are a mishmash of very verbal theatrical genres, from Italian <em>commedia dell\u2019arte<\/em>\u2019s slapstick to the medieval mystery plays and the Everyman play\u2019s morality. <em>Pantomime<\/em>, which originally meant \u201cimitator of all,\u201d is \u201creflective of the world around it,\u201d says Sladen, referring to how it incorporates contemporary political and cultural jokes, modern music and fashion. Members of the audience are meant to see aspects of themselves in the characters and identify with their struggles and successes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tracy Morgan looks at a British holiday tradition that didn&#8217;t seem to travel to the rest of the empire: An actor in drag endowed with enormous boobs stands alongside an actress in male britches. Every year they tell the same jokes, flirtatiously sing silly tunes, bring a good-over-evil narrative to life and comment on everything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[345,262,381],"class_list":["post-29159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-media","tag-christmas","tag-culture","tag-theatre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Aj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29160,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29159\/revisions\/29160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}