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Pantomime (informally, panto), not to be confused with mime, refers to a theatrical genre, traditionally found in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Ireland, which is usually performed around the Christmas and New Year holiday season.

Contents 1 History 2 Pantomime traditions and conventions 2.1 Guest celebrity in pantomime 3 Pantomime around the World 3.1 Pantomime in Australia 3.2 Pantomime in Canada 3.3 Pantomime in the United States 4 Pantomime in the United Kingdom 5 External links

The style and content of modern pantomime has very clear and strong links with the Commedia dell'arte, a form of popular theatre that arose in Italy in the early middle ages, and which reached England by the 16th century. A "comedy of professional artists" travelling from province to province in Italy and then France, they improvised and told stories which told lessons to the crowd and changed the main character depending on where they were performing. The great clown Grimaldi transformed the format. Each story had the same fixed characters: the lovers, father, servants (one being crafty and the other stupid), etc. These roles/characters can be found in today's pantomimes.

The gender role reversal resembles the old festival of Twelfth Night, a combination of Epiphany and midwinter feast, when it was customary for the natural order of things to be reversed. This tradition can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals such as Samhain and Saturnalia.

In Restoration England, a pantomime was considered a low form of opera, rather like the Commedia dell'arte but without Harlequin (rather like the French Vaudeville). In 1717, actor and manager John Rich introduced Harlequin to the British stage under the name of "Lun" (for "lunatic") and began performing wildly popular pantomimes. These pantomimes gradually became more topical and comic, often involving as many special theatrical effects as possible. Colley Cibber and his colleagues competed with Rich and produced their own pantomimes, and pantomime was a substantial (if decried) subgenre in Augustan drama. This form had virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

Until the 20th century, British pantomimes were often concluded with a harlequinade, a free standing entertainment of slapstick.

Traditionally performed at Christmas, with family audiences consisting mainly of children and parents, British pantomime is now a popular form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, in-jokes, audience participation and mild sexual innuendo. Plots are often loosely based on traditional children's stories, the most popular titles being:

• Aladdin (sometimes combined with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and/or other Arabian Nights tales)
• Babes in the Wood (often combined with Robin Hood)
• Beauty and the Beast
• Cinderella, the most popular of all pantomimes and first shown in 1870 in Covent Garden, London
• Dick Whittington, first staged as a pantomime in 1814, based on a 17th century play.
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Jack and the Beanstalk
• Mother Goose
• Peter Pan
• Puss in Boots
• Sleeping Beauty
• Snow White
• Wizard of Oz, The

The form has a number of conventions, some of which have changed or weakened a little over the years, and by no means all of which are obligatory.

• The leading male juvenile character (the "principal boy") - traditionally played by a young woman.
• An older woman (the pantomime dame - often the hero's mother) is usually played by a man in drag.
• Risqué double entendre, often wringing innuendo out of perfectly innocent phrases. This is, in theory, over the heads of the children in the audience.
• Audience participation, including calls of "look behind you!" (or "he's behind you!"), and "Oh, yes it is!" or "Oh, no it isn't!" The audience is always encouraged to "Boo" the villain, and "Awwwww" the poor victims, such as the rejected dame, who usually fancies the prince.
• A song combining a well-known tune with re-written lyrics. The audience is encouraged to sing the song; often one half of the audience is challenged to sing "their" chorus louder than the other half.
• The pantomime horse or cow, played by two actors in a single costume, one as the head and front legs, the other as the body and back legs.
• The good fairy always enters from the right side of the stage and the evil villain enters from the left. In Commedia Dell 'Arte the right side of the stage symbolized Heaven and the left side symbolized Hell.
• The members of the cast throw out sweets to the children in the audience.
• Sometimes the story villain will squirt members of the audience with water guns or pretend to throw a bucket of "water" at the audience that is actually full of streamers
• A slapstick comedy routine may be performed, often a decorating or baking scene, with humour based around throwing messy substances.

Another contemporary pantomime tradition is the celebrity guest star, a practice that dates back to the late 19th century, when Augustus Harris, proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, hired well-known variety artists for his pantomimes.

Until the decline of the British music hall tradition by the late 1950s, many popular artists played in pantomimes across the country. Many modern pantomimes use popular artists to promote the pantomime, and the play is often adapted to allow the star to showcase their well-known act, even when such a spot has little relation to the plot, for example, Rolf Harris might perform Jake the Peg in a pantomime about Aladdin.

Nowadays, a pantomime occasionally pulls off a coup by engaging a guest star with an unquestionable thespian reputation, as was the case with the Christmas 2004 production of Aladdin that featured Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twankey, which he reprised in the 2005 production at the Old Vic theatre in London.

As well as being an actor in the Shakespearean tradition, McKellen had become hugely famous with children as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Magneto in X-Men. "At least we can tell our grandchildren that we saw McKellen's Twankey and it was huge," said Michael Billington, theatre critic of The Guardian, December 20, 2004, entering into the pantomime spirit of double entendre. In recent times, the in pantomimes have featured soap stars, comedians or former sportsmen rather as celebrity attractions, supplemented by jobbing actors and pantomime specialists.

York's Theatre Royal pantomine features no guest celebrities, but a regular cast headed by Berwick Kaler, who has played the dame there for 27 years.

Christopher Biggins has been a pantomime dame for 38 years running until 2007 when his attendance on I'm A Celebrity! Get Me Out of Here! made it impossible for him to do a panto that year.

Pantomimes in Australia at Christmas have also always been very popular, and professional productions often feature celebrities. During the 1950s, a Christmas Cinderella pantomime in Sydney featured Danny Kaye as Buttons. There are also radio pantomimes at Christmas which are featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (September 2007)

Pantomime, as described in this article is seldom performed in the United States of America. As a consequence, the word "pantomime" is more commonly understood to refer to the art of mime, as was practised by Marcel Marceau or Mummenschanz and is often assumed to be a solo performance seen as often on street corners as on stage. However, certain shows that came from the pantomime traditions, especially Peter Pan, are performed quite often and there are a few American theatre companies who produce traditional British-style pantomime as well as American adaptations of the form.

The Pantomime first arrived in England as entr'actes between opera pieces, eventually evolving into separate shows. The Lincoln's Inn Field Theatre and the Drury Lane Theatre were the first to stage pantomimes, creating high competition between them to create the more elaborate show. As manager of Drury Lane in the 1870s, Augustus Harris is now considered the father of modern pantomime.

Many cities and provincial theatres now have an annual pantomime.

Pantomime is very popular with Amateur Dramatics societies throughout the UK, and the Pantomime season (roughly speaking, December to February) will see pantomime productions in many village halls and similar venues across the country.

• MusicalTalk Podcast discussing British pantomime; its origins and traditions.