3 Dramaturgy/Education intern Amy Lipman talked with playwright and PLTC company member Kathryn Petersen about her popular holiday pantos. Amy Lipman: When were you introduced to the form of the English panto? Kathryn Petersen: There was a summer festival at People’s Light about 7 or 8 years ago where we did a lot of different short pieces, and there was Gary Smith, an adult student in one of my classes who had written a panto that I thought would be good in the festival. It was a real hit. Abbey (Abigail Adams, Artistic Director) thought that this form might be good for a holiday show. AL: And at that point, you started to write your own? KP: Gary wrote another one for us, Sleeping Beauty. I functioned as a dramaturg in that process. Out of that experience I learned some things about the form, and then I wrote the next. This will be my fifth. AL: The panto form calls for certain characters, and that combined with the adaptation of an existing story makes for quite a few writing requirements. What is it like to express your own creativity within this form?
AL: How do you begin your research? KP: I always research different versions of whatever story I’m working with, and for Snow White, I traveled. I’ve done research in England, Colorado, Idaho and Disney World. I looked into mother-daughter relationships in Hollywood. I read many biographies, learned about the 1930s Hollywood studio system and studio heads, watched a lot of movies, and researched the making of the cartoon Snow White. That’s the fun research in the beginning where you’re scheming and dreaming. AL: It’s a tradition for a panto to refer to timely events, or jokes specific to the area. How do you come up with those? KP: The play is set in the Malvern Theatre in Follywood and this puts our audience at the center of the world, at the heartbeat of the story. I listen during the year to what the notable events are in the area. Then, if I don’t have enough in the script, the cast will find some in rehearsal. AL: What is your favorite thing about the panto?
KP: I think it’s like a big puzzle to be solved, you know? AL: I do! KP: There are the stock characters from the panto, and the bits in the pantos. You always need a messy bit, there’s the candy bit, there’s all the audience interaction, plus the characters and plot of the original. You choose a story that you’re excited to tell, and you have to serve that story, but I get to twist it. I want the audience to be surprised in how the story gets told. AL: How do you begin that storytelling process?
Mark Lazar as Hatta and Marla Burkholder as Ernestina
KP: This year’s idea is the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s. I thought about Hollywood gossip columnists and real life characters like Hedda Hopper. As I’m crafting characters, I do a lot of research, and I begin to create a theatrical frame. I started playing with the Dame having her own radio show like Hopper did. The panto is a direct address to the audience and a live radio broadcast with the host in front of a studio audience is a theatrical frame that allows for that interaction.
KP: The people I work with give me such license to play and to think and to scheme. It’s a kick to have a group of incredibly gifted people in a room laughing at material that you’ve worked on and then embodying it in such a way that you can’t stop laughing. Because I’ve worked with these people over time, now I can say, ‘You, come up with your best idea,’ and in the room the actors are saying my lines but they’re ad-libbing these zingers sometimes, and we’ll find some keepers. I think there’s something about the panto form that gives us permission to just go crazy.
AL: Yes, it seems that the panto tradition here is about, ‘How big and how funny and how much can we do?’ KP: The question is, ‘How much fun can we have?’ And, ‘How much fun can the audience have?’ We make the night a full circle of fun that’s not just for the younger people in the house. No two shows are the same and that’s because of the audience interaction, because of the actors’ spontaneity, and it’s amazing to be a part of launching that. AL: Absolutely. Thank you so much. ★
backstage series • www.PeoplesLight.org • snow white