Pirate-y Reading!
Pirateology, part of the Ology series of books, takes a peek into the world of pirates. While navigating the trail to discover the hoard of pirate Arabella Drummond, readers can unlock clues, uncover details of ships and pirates, and open a letter from their shipmates of a black mark! The detail work and design are fantastic and will make a pirate enthusiast out of the a desert-dwelling landlubber!
Click here to visit the Ology book website. If you’re interested in reading more about pirates, be on the lookout for the Treasure Island Discovery Guide, coming soon!
From Senior Dramaturg Lee Devin:
The Panto: A Long-Standing Tradition
Coming out of the commedia dell’arte, the Twelfth Night holiday (with has reversal of roles as a tradition), the Festival of Fools and Epiphany, the Christmas Panto is today the most popular theatre form in Great Britain. In a single year, 19 pantos played in London and 187 in the rest of the country. At many theatres, the Panto subsidizes the productions for the rest of the year.
The tradition has developed some fairly rigid conventions of plotting, casting and story. The favorite stories, which have inspired countless different Pantos, are Aladdin, Robin Hood, Cinderella, Dick Wittington, Jack and the Beanstalk, Mother Goose, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and Snow White. These familiar stories form the basis for exaggeration, variation and topical social commentary, as well as outrageous jokes, humorous songs, sprightly dances and, sometimes, a strangely affecting love story.
The tradition includes some conventions of plot and casting. Each Panto, depending on the story, includes some or all of these:
- A comic duo
- The Principal Girl, according to Julie Andrews (who played a lot of them), “the rather wet role, you know, where you were always bland and not terribly glamourous.”
- The Dame, played obviously by a man in outlandish woman’s clothing, and
- A pantomime horse or cow
The plotting of these stories will include a battle between good and evil, often employed by a good fairy and a villain, plus several conventional episodes:
- An opening chorus of Townspeople
- A “Slosh Scene” or Messy Bit: in which two comic characters are drenched in water, paint, soapsuds, custard pie, or something else icky.
- The Community Song or Silly Song, which the cast teaches the audience to sing along, sometimes dividing them into competing teams, often inviting children on stage to help and rewarding them with toys and candy.
- The Walk Down, at the end of the play, in which the entire cast comes downstage to the very edge. Usually this contains a wedding of some kind and a musical reprise.
- All kinds of audience participation, including comment on the action, warnings to endangered characters, candy handouts and singing along, enhance the performance.
Since the 18th century audiences have gathered in droves to enjoy the songs, jokes, costumes and treats of this Christmas celebration. At People’s Light we’re having great fun joining this tradition, adjusting it to our culture and aesthetic, bringing it to our time and place. We don’t want to get all solemn, but these stories live in the hearts of us all, and beneath the fun and foolery they touch us in fundamental ways. We want to place these deep stories on out stage without losing the madcap, All Fools’ Day impulse that invented the panto back then and keeps it alive today. …
For more info on Pantos visit www.its-behind-you.com.
