This original analysis of contemporary British pantomime addresses the question of how pantomime creates a unique interactive relationship with, and potentially transformative experience for, its audiences.

British pantomime draws audiences into the story, an engagement with the hero, and an empathetic attachment to the success of the quest. Attention is held by the familiarity of the event, and the comedians draw the audience into a relationship of complicity as they unite to create the unique experience of the live interactive performance. At other times the audience is diverted by the artifice of dance, the illusion of transformation and the surreal playfulness of physical and verbal comedy. The trick of pantomime is to maintain an effective balance between the intellectual appreciation of artifice, the chaotic complicity of interactivity, and the emotional engagement of story-telling.

It is rare for a scholarly work to be so handy with the nuts and bolts of performance. Millie Taylor has been the musical director of British professional pantomimes, and there has never been a better guide than this to the true priorities of those who stalwartly produce them.' – Peter Thompson, Editor of Studies in Theatre & Performance.

Author: By Millie Taylor
ISBN 9781841501741
Paperback 230x174mm
Published November 2007