Totally, pantomime season these days goes from the beginning of December to mid January and they really are all round good fun thats safe for all ages when they're done well. If you ever get chance to go do it!

Unfortunately I can't get an international link but if you Google "bbc world pantomime" you should be able to see a short video on panto being taken to New York in 2018. One of the British actors involved is a friend of my partner's, which is why the BBC has it as a story.

Its always cold and dreary out lol

Mother Marcus is the perfect Dame!

That is a brilliant explanation! Or at least it is for now, but I fear me that soon the comedy variety show with a fractured fairy tale will soon be forgotten. But until then, long live the Elephant story.

@@marieroberts5664 and long live KZfaq clips

That really is a badass line 😂

No - the other side!

Oh no he's not!

We took a bunch of Cubs to panto and they outsang the cast with Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer (reindeer) who had a very shiny nose (like a lightbulb).

Oh yes he is

Oh no, he isn't.

As an American this is the first time I have ever heard the words "panto" and "pantomime" in my entire life

Until 1843 they were mimes, with much of the performances given largely in dance form, mime and visual comedy. The harlequin often played a significant role in this. In the years leading up to 1843 theatres had to have a special patent to use spoken dialogue, and not many theatres had a patent. In 1843 the law changed and we started to see pantomimes with spoken word. And then they tended to all be spoken in rhyme, which you don’t see so much of now.

​@@dagonmoore2117in the US pantomime referred to as an acting method (not to be confused with method acting).

When I lived in the UK, I was also confused, because the word pantomime refers to silent acting in Finnish. Finally, we saw a Panto in Durham Theatre 😊

Pantomime is from the Greek for "I mimic all". It WAS miming until only a few centuries ago when it started to refer in English to what's more an adaptation of commedia dell'arte Essentially the art changed forms but retained the original name

Perhaps, but I believe you will find it's behind you

@@virgilxavier1 Oh no it isn't.

theres australian pantos?!? Please tell me if they’re still a thing- i’d love to see one

Don't feel bad, I'm in the US, and as far as I know, we don't have anything even vaguely similar.

Christmas is panto time here in Dublin. As a kid, I used to love them. They're still going strong and get good audiences.

​@@smol-one It's a very British tradition

​@@skateboardingjesus4006we have a couple of good options down here in Cork too. Love a good panto. 😊

It's the simultaneous self-aggrandisement and self-effacement that is simply the British to a T

@@NonFatMead thank you!

“We are terrible, but at least we admit it” really is the most British thing I’ve ever heard 😂😂

@@OhSkyeLanta yes it really is

“Oh no it isn’t!”

There is a great deal more to the wonderful lore and traditions of pantomime than is shared here. If your interest is piqued I would encourage further exploration. However, watching one on a screen robs the experience of the vital live and participatory elements (for many Brits this is their first live theatre and, boy, what a way to start!) so if you get the chance, don't hesitate to go and see one (as well as the UK, Australia maintains the tradition. It is NOT sophisticated but you'll never have so much fun in a theatre.

In Vancouver there is a large Panto community. There are five or six theatres I can think of off the top of my head that do them, and I'm sure there are more in the Fraser Valley.

I was going to say the same thing! My dad directed the filming of one of his productions for TV sometime back in the 80's or 90's :P

To be fair, the only panto stories I know that have a male protag are Peter Pan and Dick Whittington.

All that flying puts men off.

Weirdly the principal boy in most productions I have seen have been played by men. I have only seen one or two where this role was taken by a woman

Oh no you aren’t…

Oh no you aren't!

@@bob_the_bomb4508 Oh yes they are!

Smae here - he was a true master of the craft!

Oh no it doesn't!

Huge difference in drag and the dame in panto. I go to drag shows and they are NOT suitable for children lol. Pantos are.

@@somniumisdreaming What a weird opinion... Drag Acts do not HAVE to be unsuitable for children, and many of them, in fact, are very family-friendly with no references to anything sexual or whatever. However, if the only drag acts you go to are made for the mature audience, I could see how you would come to the incorrect conclusion that all drag acts are unsuitable for kids. But that's more of a "you" problem. In the same way that, while x-rated movies aren't suitable for children. It doesn't make ALL movies unsuitable for children. But if the only films you've ever exposed yourself to (oo-er!) are pornos... Do you see the problem? I will admit, however, that I'm using hyperbole in calling a panto a drag act, although they do share extremely similar characteristics and always feature at least a male and often a female in drag.

​​@somniumisdreaming "drag acts aren't suitable for children except for the ones that are" Genius revelation well done

@@GeeBarone ok they both have cross dressing, we've had that for hundreds of yrs. All drag acts are fabulous and we all love each other.

It's the ones that are sexual are the ones that are obviously not for kids

If you watched her videos from last year, she explains it pretty well.

Yrep. The leading hero/man is a girl, who gets the girl, and the Dame often gets her guy too

But it's non-sexual in a panto and many other shows (like Monty Python, the Two Ronnie's, and Benny Hill, as examples).

@@Arkelk2010 have you ever even been to a panto? It's full of innuendo, perhaps it went over your head. Drag queens reading children's books to children is not sexual.

@@Arkelk2010 The banter in pantos is full of double entendres, especially between the Dame and the villain

Republicans wanted a Bogeyman after segregation, gay and now abortion. Republicans don't give a damn. They just want something to scare their moronic bases. Don't for a second think that Republicans care about female safety. They always attack the SA victims, sl** shaming them. Heck Gym Jordan and Matt Graetz is still in the office. They want to bring back traditional gender roles. They attack any women who don't conform to it Calling them trans. They are still "convinced" Former first party, Michelle Obama is a man.

Pykrete is very strong for the materials. It's less crazy' compared to Messi other things military did during that time.

I mean... The Mosquito was one of the most successful fighter bombers of the 2nd wold war, and that was built almost entirely out of plywood and balsa. Never underestimate the terrifying majesty of a bunch of Britons in a shed with limited resources. 🤣

@@peterclarke7240 To quote New Zealand's first Nobel laureate: we didn't have any money, so we had to think

@@stephenlitten1789 Spot on. Necessity is the mother of invention, and scarcity is the mother of innovation. Basically, don't put someone's back up against a wall if you don't want them to headbutt you and knee you in the knackers.🤣

About a year’s unpaid work. Sure.

Yes! I saw Lulu as Peter Pan in the 80s.

Young " male " lead played by woman...yes all this is panto.

In Peter Pan especially, the title character is often played by a woman. Sadly Snow White in panto is also often some of the only work that short actors can get, Warwick Davis being the notable exception.

But also with musical theatre, pop culture references, sometimes innuendo for the grown-ups depending on the theatre along with kid-friendly jokes, and certain audience participation in-jokes that every panto uses, such as the protagonist looking the other way when the baddie comes in, the audience shout "he's behind you" and they switch sides so the goodie thinks the audience are lying, or a call and response of "oh no it isn't"/"oh yes it is".

Principal Boy, yes! You saved me the trouble. I saw a pantomime last week for the 1st time in decades. Aladin was played by a man. I assumed it was the company working with the cast they had. In this cross dressing, gender bending era it seems contrary that this part of the tradition is passing

​@@jonthomas9708I was gonna say! It's also a long term problem that the drag king has been gradually pushed away from performance space as it has become fashionable to be afraid of and erase transmasculinity in a big way.

@@PlurCo Thanks for the info. I'm not abreast of the tides in woke politics, even the long term ones. Who's afraid of transmasculinity? Women joining the glorious patriarchy? I would say certainly not the people outside the woke fraction

@@jonthomas9708 it is indeed them. Often people who don't want to seem too 'part of the woke faction ' as you say. They find trans masculine people and butches and drag kings embarrassing.

@@jonthomas9708 I don't think Aladdin flies does he?

Why were you torturing yourself? Iirc Most movie releasing in Germany has a German dub

@@MoeruAcckkountu Oh. 1. Its no torture to watch in original language, it enhances the experience and lets me get more of the jokes for example. It also improves my hearing comprehension, which is helping when i have to talk to English speaking people in real life. 2. Yes, Germany has a big dubbing culture and for French or Italian movies for example i am certainly dependent on them and thankful for the existence. But the way most German voice actors are dubbing the English movies is not my cup of tea, it often feels weird to me, so if i can avoid it i do. 3. So some people would say the torture might be having to listen to the dub ;)

Same energy - very camp, very tongue-in-cheek, lots of 'flipping the script' (men played by women, women by men). For the live performances of RH, it's like that, but more - the audience are encouraged to interact and break the 4th wallin panto, it'sa collaborative experience. Also, in most pantos I've been to, it's traditional to throw Wagon Wheels (round chocolate 'candy bars') into the audience for the kids.

Did you know that it's based on Norse mythology?

No? Thats really cool!

"Oh No You're Not!" 👍😄

Deffo come along! It's the true (pre-Victorian, chaotic, drunken) spirit of Christmas! 😊

Peter Pan is a bit different, in that it's a Proper Authored Play where the 1904 script is still in use, even if people do ad lib a bit. Most pantos are updated every year.

@@1981Marcus you say that, and of course the basic story is the same (well, mostly, a few years ago I went to one that was a sequel "the further adventures of Peter Pan: the return of Captain Hook" with well, yeah, Hook returning from the dead to seek his revenge and Wendy's modern-day great-granddaughter going to Neverland to help when Peter and Tink come for Wendy and discover that well, aging - though Wendy was supposed to still be alive, just very old. And this was a proper professional one produced by one of the big companies that does loads every year) but I have been to many, many pantos (a hundred or more, at least) done by various companies/theatres and amateur groups, in my life so far, including the consequent proportion of versions of Peter Pan, and they definitely haven't all used the same script verbatim (especially since some of them simply dispense with Tiger Lily etc), and I think it would in fact be fairly difficult to do that, or even just to use significant chunks of J.M. Barrie's original text, because of the difficulty of seamlessly inserting the songs and the other stock panto bits into that. Obviously there are iconic lines that you get across all of them, like "second star to the right and straight on til morning" but given the supporting characters can vary from production to production and there are usually people credited as writers in the programmes, they're definitely not all just using J.M. Barrie's text for the play Peter Pan, especially given it differs from the later book Peter and Wendy at points, and I get the impression they're often adapting the book, or a simplified version of its story, and not necessarily the play.

More like a third!

YES! Bring panto to the US! 😊

And entirely likely a quadruped animal such as a horse or cow played by 2 people in a costume

Actually no, he was just the largest. There are a lot of Regional Theatres that do them as well.

Pantomime is one of the genres that involved as reaction to licensing laws which allowed only two legitimate theaters in London with proper spoken plays. Not having words or including music gets around these restrictions. So in the 18th century a number of types of performances evolved to skirt licensing.

Imagine Shakespearean plays but instead of a drunken adult audience an audience of wide eyed imaginative children. 😆

i had my American friend over and we went to places in the north that are less well visited by American tourists, it depends on what you're interested in but perhaps look into places like Manchester, York, Whitby, or the Lake District. the Manchester People's History Museum is a must if you like this channel. Blackpool always has illuminations on around Christmas time. honestly though, my friend's favourite British things ended up being Greggs and Wetherspoons.

Book you tickets well in advance - pantomimes typically sell out every performance, and if you can see one in a Frank Matcham style theatre in a medium sized provincial town, all the better!

@3katfox The Great Escape on the telly. One channel usually shows it.

If you are in London, take the #139 bus from London Waterloo to Oxford Street by way of Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, and Oxford Circus. Take in all the Christmas lights from the upper level, where it's warm and dry. If you want to alight at Trafalgar Square and listen to carols, do so and reboard the bus. Or go ice skating at any of a dozen venues.

@ImperialistRunningDo Oh my gosh that sounds magical! Thank you for the advice!

Nope. Completely different things.