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 This is an accessible and valuable text that encourages readers to review their assumptions about pantomime and reconsider its importance as a popular theatre form. 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.
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Millie Taylor, professor of musical theatre at the University of Winchester, worked as a musical director before becoming an academic. Publications include Theatre Music and Sound at the RSC: Macbeth to Matilda (Palgrave 2018), Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment (Ashgate Press 2012/Routledge 2016) and Studying Musical Theatre (Palgrave 2014).
Contact: University of Winchester, Hampshire, SO22 4NR, UK.