Category: Theater

At the close of any year, it’s natural to reflect on those artists who made their final exits. The sense of loss we can‘t help feeling is suffused with gratitude for all they left behind. Their memories are indeed a blessing, as the Jewish phrase of mourning has it, because their work lives on to nourish our souls.

When a theater actor or director dies, however, it is as if a color has been removed from the palette of theatrical possibilities.

The ephemeral nature of the stage is part of its power. Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” compares actors to “spirits” who melt into “thin air” once the revels are ended. Puck in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” likens performers to “shadows” who rise up as audiences succumb to the collective dream of theater.

A playwright, lyricist or composer leaves behind something indelible. All year we’ve been basking in the brilliance of Stephen Sondheim, who by the magic of revivals seems more alive two years after his death than when he was still with us. I was grieved by the passing of the brilliant Sheldon Harnick, who wrote the lyrics for “Fiddler on the Roof” and “She Loves Me,” but I can console myself by listening to the original cast albums of these shows and marvel once again at Harnick’s gift for achieving profundity through lyrical simplicity.

But how can I share what it was like to experience Michael Gambon unleashed in Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker” at the Comedy Theatre in London’s West End or Frances Sternhagen grounding the absurd in level-headedness in Edward Albee’s “Seascape” at Broadway’s Booth Theatre other than recalling these outings from several decades ago? No video recording could ever capture the effect these performers had on an audience when they made one of their authoritative entrances.

An older generation will remember Gambon, who died in September at 82, for his role on the British television series “The Singing Detective,” while younger fans will know him as Professor Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” franchise. “Sex and the City” devotees will instantly recognize Sternhagen, who died in November at 93, as Bunny MacDougal, Charlotte York’s haughtily disapproving first mother-in-law. But to truly know these actors, one must be familiar with their theatrical roots.

Glenda Jackson attends the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2019 Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Camp: Notes on Fashion” exhibition.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

Glenda Jackson, with whom I had a few tumultuous run-ins, was a ferocious stage performer, whose last role on Broadway, fittingly, was King Lear. I wrote an appreciation of her theatrical talent when she died in June at 87. As a two-time Oscar winner (“Women in Love,” “A Touch of Class”), she has a legacy on film that is equally considerable. But Jackson in the theater was the unadulterated Jackson. The stage is where she grew into herself, under the guidance of visionary directors like Peter Brook, and it is where she challenged herself, when not in political office, by scaling the work of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Lorca and Albee.

Barry Humphries, with whom I spent a lovely afternoon chatting beside a Beverly Hills hotel pool about his alter ego Dame Edna, was a quick-witted sensation as a TV talk show host. But to appreciate the scintillating wit and improvisational raillery of the Australian hausfrau with the wisteria wig and cat’s-eye glasses, it was necessary to be within striking distance of one of Dame Edna’s gladioli, which she would fire into the audience with the same missile-like precision of one of her devastatingly funny barbs.

Australian actor Barry Humphries, dressed as Dame Edna Everage, in Sydney, Australia, in 2012.

(Rob Griffith / Associated Press)

Humphries, who died in April at 89, had something Gambon had in spades — intelligent bravura. The Irish-born Gambon, who talked his way into an acting career before he had any real training, had a barnstormer’s flamboyance and a pool shark’s delicate touch. A verbal sharpshooter, he was made for the poetic jigsaws of Pinter and Beckett, two playwrights to whom he maintained a lasting loyalty.

Caryl Churchill’s experimentalism in “A Number” didn’t throw Gambon. He could play a suave capitalist (in David Hare’s “Skylight”) or an Italian American longshoreman (in Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge”) with equal alacrity. Given the gargantuan role of Falstaff in Nicholas Hytner’s production of both parts of “Henry IV” at the National Theatre, he feasted on the wit while finding room for piercing melancholy. But it was the role of Davies, the old tramp who gets embroiled in a classic Pinteresque territorial struggle after one of two brothers invites him to spend the night, that showcased Gambon’s virtuoso command.

Playwright Alan Ayckbourn, who directed Gambon in his Olivier Award-winning performance in “A View From the Bridge,” accurately eulogized his acting as a form of “spontaneous combustion.” For a performer who was so comfortably Falstaffian, Gambon was remarkably supple in his emotional range, moving from tyrannical to tender with breathtaking ease.

The last time I saw Gambon onstage was in “All That Fall,” a Beckett radio play produced off-Broadway in 2013 after its heralded London run. Irreplaceable Eileen Atkins was his co-star, and together they translated this audio drama to the stage in all its merry gallows humor. A recognizable screen star, Gambon went out not with a Broadway bang but with a sly Beckettian titter, committed as always to the work rather than his celebrity.

Sternhagen had her own dalliances with Pinter, having performed in two notable short plays in 1964, “The Room” and “A Slight Ache.” Her sturdy presence ballasted unconventional work and gave substance to the eccentric roles she was drawn to, though like Gambon she could adapt to any theatrical circumstances. Her two Tony Awards for featured actor were for plays as different as Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor” and Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s “The Heiress,” adapted from Henry James’ novel “Washington Square.”

Andre Braugher at CBS Radford Studios in 2018.

(Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)

This was not a talent to be pigeonholed, though what made Sternhagen stand out was the spine she gave to even her most vulnerable characters. Whatever craziness might be engulfing her, whether assailed by death in Terrence McNally’s “A Perfect Ganesh” (opposite Zoe Caldwell) or encountering talking sea creatures in Albee’s “Seascape,” she preserved her dignity. Sternhagen, an actor of exquisite balance, is who you wanted beside you riding out a Darwinian storm.

The professional longevity that Gambon, Sternhagen, Jackson and Humphries enjoyed made it possible for generations to appreciate their distinctive brilliance. That privilege was denied two notable Black actors, Lance Reddick, a classmate of mine from the Yale School of Drama, and Andre Braugher, who set the New York theatrical world on fire when he starred in “Henry V” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in 1996. These men died this year at 60 and 61, respectively. But their screen work will fortunately always be with us.

Although his name and face may not be widely known in America, director Michael Blakemore, who died in December at 95, deserves to be commemorated as much as any theater artist who left us this year. His impeccable productions were one of the reliable pleasures of contemporary theatergoing in Britain and the U.S. for decades.

I’ll never forget the summer evening in 2000 when I saw his Tony-winning revival of “Kiss Me, Kate,” starring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie, because I danced all the way home after parting from the NYU students who accompanied me on this class trip — teacher and pupils similarly levitating out of the theater. That year, Blakemore had pulled off a rare coup, earning two Tony Awards for directing, one for “Kiss Me, Kate,” and the other for “Copenhagen.”

Theater director Michael Blakemore.

(Robbie Jack / Corbis / Getty Images)

The Australian-born director, who was himself an accomplished writer, had a gift for directing brainy dramas by Michael Frayn (“Democracy,” “Copenhagen”), cutting a clear theatrical path through dense historical argument. He entered the top tier of international directors in 1967 with his production of “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg,” a personal drama from playwright Peter Nichols about the parents of a severely disabled child, which blends topsy-turvy farce and tragedy to startling effect.

Tragedy and comedy were compatible in Blakemore’s productions, as they were merely different routes to the same destination: truth.

His light touch had a way of taking hold, not simply evaporating, as anyone who saw his revival of “Blithe Spirit” with Angela Lansbury that came to the Ahmanson Theatre in 2014 can attest. The dry comic genius that years later would make Maggie Smith internationally celebrated in “Downton Abbey” was baked to perfection in Blakemore’s production of Peter Shaffer’s “Lettice and Lovage,” which traveled to Broadway from London in 1990.

Lance Reddick in 2014.

(Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP)

Theater, even in an age of digital recordings, lives on in memory. The written word preserves what is otherwise fleeting. Blakemore’s killer memoir “Stage Blood” resurrects the early days of the National Theatre under the aegis of Laurence Olivier. But it was in his novel “Next Season,” which I’m always foisting on theater friends, that Blakemore managed to capture the evanescent world of the stage in all its heartbreak and glory.

If the theater, like life, is a dissolving dream, as Shakespeare proposed, these great artists who left us in 2023 helped make the “insubstantial pageant” unforgettably real.

Happy non-denominational holiday of your choice and welcome to your biweekly guide to international theater, Jaques, where we like to celebrate by donning an outrageous outfit and throwing sweets into the audience. This edition of the newsletter is free for all readers. In the spirit of the season, the SPOTLIGHT STORY investigates the mysteries of panto, the rowdy seasonal shows that are familiar to Brits—and vital to the U.K. theater industry—but an enigma to almost everyone else. Among the things I learned: Contrary to popular belief, panto doesn’t only exist in the U.K.; it’s low-key everywhere if you know where to look. I’ll tell you all about it right after we take a look around the world.

• Baz Bamigboye reports that Stranger Things: The First Shadow is planning a Broadway bow and, in a less predictable development, could be the first part of a potential stage trilogy based on the hit Netflix series. The First Shadow opened Dec. 14 to mostly strong local reviews, particularly for the staging if not always for the script. In pairing a prestige director (in this case Stephen Daldry) with a mass-appeal, cross-platform IP, the production follows a similar playbook to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which shares a producer in Sonia Friedman and currently has an international footprint that encompasses the West End, Broadway, Hamburg, Tokyo and a North American tour.

• The New York Times has a mixed review of Our Life in Art, the new Richard Nelson play about Stanislavski’s theater troupe, originally intended for a premiere in Russia before that nation’s invasion of the Ukraine rerouted the show to Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil in Paris. Critic Laura Cappelle writes that although “the complex historical context to Our Life in Art is rarely addressed head-on,” the play “really shines when Nelson plays up the contrast between the artists’ lives and the ideological pressure they were under in the Soviet Union.”

• The global expansion of Michael Jackson bio MJ continues apace, as the show’s producers announced a 2025 bow in Sydney. Michael Cassel Group mounts a Broadway replica that launches in February of that year.

• The Korea Times has the details on La Rose de Versailles, a new Korean-language musical based on the influential Japanese manga from the 1970s about Marie Antoinette and her royal guard’s commander, born female but raised as a man to succeed her father in the military. The manga has already spawned a popular Japanese adaptation by Takarazuka Revue; this new Korean version, written and directed by Wang Yong-bum and composed by Brandon Lee, debuts in July.

• Toronto didn’t get a panto this year, but it did get Chris Mrs., a new Canadian musical drawing on the tropes of Hallmark holiday movies. Its creators hope the show might become an annual thing, and critic Karen Fricker, writing in the Toronto Star, seems to think it just might. She calls the musical “a big-hearted, frequently daft and eventually quite entertaining world premiere.”

Imagine I’m standing onstage in a traditional holiday pantomime and I say to you, “There’s no panto in America.”

You, the audience, would be expected to respond, “Oh yes, there is!” And then I would say, “Oh no, there isn’t!” and then you would call back, “Oh yes, there is!” and then I would say, “ . . . Wait, you’re right. There totally is panto in America.”

In the U.K., pantomime is, to put it mildly, a big deal. These boisterous, comic holiday shows are a storied national tradition stretching back hundreds of years—and they remain a vital component of the country’s theater ecosystem even today. Panto shows are the United Kingdom’s version of A Christmas Carol: annual, surefire, all-ages offerings whose reliably outsize sales help sustain theaters around the country. There’s a panto on the West End every year. Ian McKellen has starred in them. Yet somehow, in the U.S. and around the world, panto is largely unknown.

But not entirely unknown. When I set out to write this story, one of the mysteries I expected to address was: Why doesn’t panto travel? To my surprise, it does. There are pockets of panto in the U.S. and around the world, hiding in plain sight. What the form hasn’t done, on these American shores, is risen to prominence. Yet.

In this edition’s SPOTLIGHT STORY, I highlight:

• the bustling state of the industry in the U.K., including insights from the head of the country’s biggest, busiest panto producer

• the long, storied history of pantomime—and all the ways its traditions are bumping up against modern-day mores

• a primer on panto and its Rocky Horror-like audience participation

• a look at the people bringing panto Stateside, from two prominent veterans of New York’s burlesque scene to the L.A.-based family behind American Idol

Curtain up on this vibrant performance tradition. If you see a ghost sneaking up on me, be sure to shout “It’s behind you!”

“I always thought pantomime would be the backstop, the thing I would have if everything else went wrong,” the West End producer Michael Harrison tells me. “But then it became a part of life.”

He’s not kidding. When I speak to him, he’s just stepped out of a rehearsal for one of the (checks notes) 24 pantomimes he’s producing this year.

As an independent producer, Harrison has a hand in shows including Jamie Lloyd’s buzzy revival of Sunset Boulevard and the upcoming London return of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rollerskating train musical Starlight Express. But he’ll tell you that his “day job” is chief executive of Crossroads Pantomimes, where, alongside chairman David Ian, he oversees the U.K.’s biggest panto pipeline, feeding holiday shows to a network of theaters across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

He’s taken a quick break from rehearsals for the crown jewel of this year’s Crossroads slate: a panto retelling of Peter Pan, playing a five-week run at the London Palladium on the West End. Jennifer Saunders, one half of the well-known comedy duo French and Saunders and the creator-star of Absolutely Fabulous, headlines as Captain Hook. The production budget is a lavish £4 million. In addition to producing, Harrison also directs.

“I’m not a director; I’m a producer,” he admits with a laugh. “But in panto, it’s a very, very fine line.”

That doesn’t sound like any other show on the West End—and it’s not the only unique element that characterizes the widely varied, hugely popular and wildly unruly form of pantomime. A traditional entertainment at least as old as Shakespeare, panto occupies a place in British culture unlike any other.

“Pantomime is like Brussels sprouts,” says Simon Sladen, the senior curator of modern contemporary theater and performance at the Victoria & Albert
Museum and probably the foremost expert on contemporary panto. “You might not like it, but if you don’t have it as part of your Christmas meal, is it really Christmas?”

For many Brits, panto is their first experience in the theater. For some, it’s their only experience. It’s woven into the fabric of the holidays, and love it or hate it, you’re probably going. In fact, you’ve probably bought enough tickets to bring multiple generations of your family.

Powered by those multi-ticket buys, pantos are so reliably profitable that they’ve become an annual driver of revenue helping theaters survive across the U.K.

“After our government subsidy, the pantomime is our second largest financial contributor each year,” says Adam Penford, the artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse in the East Midlands of England. “It absolutely helps subsidize other projects throughout the year.”

“At some venues a panto can bring in 50%-60% of their annual income over that four-week holiday period,” Sladen adds.

Broadly speaking, there are two different models for producing panto. On the commercial side, companies like Crossroads or Evolution Productions develop shows for distribution across a network of presenting organizations around the country, and each new title becomes part of a stable of offerings that roll out into affiliated theaters in subsequent holiday seasons. Crossroads, for instance, can expect the hefty price tag for its new Peter Pan to fuel years of productions around the nation.

On the other end of the spectrum are the producing theaters (often subsidized) that craft a new show every year, embracing their own local traditions. That’s the case, for instance, for Nottingham Playhouse’s panto, which Penford is both writing and directing this year. One actor is marking his 25th year in the cast.

Whatever the production model, panto is back. After the lull of COVID, producers and theaters across the board are now seeing significant year-over-year increases in panto ticket sales, some by as much as 17%.

All this, and most Americans don’t even know what it is.

No two are alike, but we can make some generalizations.

A panto, short for pantomime, is an all-ages comedy-musical-variety show, usually (but not always) performed around the Christmas holidays. Humor is broad for the kids, bawdy for the adults. Their fantastical, fairy-tale storylines are typically drawn from a well of about half a dozen usual suspects, most globally familiar (Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk), one decidedly not (Dick Whittington). The most popular option is always Cinderella.

Whether you get much of a story will depend on the individual panto. Some productions pride themselves on sticking to their tale; others erect a vague scaffolding of a plot to unite what is essentially a revue of comedy, magic, and song-and-dance acts. Pop music is performed with parody lyrics. A collaboratively-devised script is tailored each year to the local community, to current events, and to the specific talents of the cast.

Sometimes there’s original music, too, but even so: “I hesitate to describe any pantomime as original,” Harrison explains (lovingly!). “Begged, borrow and stolen, that’s how I describe it. Everybody contributes.”

At least one thing is true of every panto everywhere: You, the audience, will be requested and required to participate in ways that for Brits are second nature, but for everyone else are entirely baffling.

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• “OH YES IT IS!” “OH NO IT ISN’T!”
  At some point during a pantomime, a character will make a simple statement that the audience will loudly contradict. Variations include oh yes it is/oh no it isn’t, oh yes we do/oh no we don’t, did did did/didn’t didn’t didn’t, etc.

• “IT’S BEHIND YOU!”
  Did someone or something (traditionally a ghost or a skeleton) just appear behind someone onstage? Warn them by shouting, “It’s/he’s/she’s/they’re behind you!” Hide-and-seek physical comedy will ensue.

• BOO, HISS
  Every time the Villain appears onstage, and every time they do something particularly dastardly, boo and hiss. Repeat. (Related: cheering for the hero.)

• MEN PLAYING WOMEN, AND OTHER GENDERS BENT
  There’s always a man in a frock, usually playing the role categorized as the Dame. It’s part of a long history of gender-swapping that used to see the role of the Principal Boy played by a woman—and it’s a tradition that endures even as it’s begun to butt up against a broader cultural understanding of gender and fluidity. (More on that later.)

• CELEBRITY(?) CASTING
  Pantos love celebrity casting—and a very broad definition of the word celebrity. Some, like McKellen, are legit global stars; some are lower-wattage familiar faces from, say, reality TV; some names are even more locally specific. It all adds up to a list of panto alums that’s delightfully unhinged: David Hasselhoff, Joan Collins, Pamela Anderson, Mickey Rooney…

• TRANSFORMATION
  Most every panto builds to a staging coup that spotlights a major moment of magical transformation. Think Jack’s beanstalk growing to the clouds, or Cinderella’s rags transforming to a gown.

• THE THRILL OF THE CHASE
  At some point during the proceedings, expect an antic chase scene, probably through the audience.

• ENTRANCES AND EXITS
  Every panto director knows: The Good Fairy enters from stage right. The Villain comes on from stage left.

• DRAMATIS PERSONAE
  By now you’ll have picked up on the fact that panto is a form populated by stock characters. They’ll shift depending on the story and on the talent involved in that year’s show, but the most common categories include: Principal Boy, a hero traditionally played by a woman (though much less often these days); Principal Girl, the love interest; the Dame, a comic character played by a man and slotted into an appropriate role in the story (like one of the stepsisters in Cinderella); the Comic, usually the Dame’s sidekick; the magical Good Fairy; the Villain (also known as the Baddie); and the Broker’s Men, a pair of villainous henchmen.

To a panto neophyte, that’s a chaotically bonkers list of norms. To figure out where it all came from, I turned to a couple of scholars of the form: Sladen, whose website is a wealth of information on pantomime, and Millie Taylor, currently a professor at University of Winchester and the author of the book British Pantomime Performance. Here’s how far back it all goes.

Medieval Times: The staging tradition of the good guy on the right/bad guy on the left stretches back to medieval mystery plays, where you can also find some of the earliest occurrences of the Dame character.

1602: The earliest known performance of a commedia dell’arte troupe for Queen Elizabeth. Commedia, the Italian performance style that tells familiar stories with stock characters, comedy, dance, music and acrobatics, is among panto’s most obvious antecedants.

1717: Dance master John Weaver uses the term “pantomime” (after the classical Greek and Roman tradition of “pantomimus”) to describe his movement-based retellings of myths.

1717-1760: Director-actor-manager John Rich adds a comedy component, appending Harlequin clown sequences (called “the Harlequinade”) that bring slapstick, chase scenes and transformations into the mix.

1837: Lucy Eliza Vestris, widely credited as popularizing the female Principal Boy, plays Ralph in Puss in Boots at the Olympic Theatre in London.

1883: Augustus Harris, considered the father of modern pantomime, nixes the Harlequinade and pinpoints spectacle and celebrity as the keys to success. Producing lavish extravanganzas with casts of more than 500 at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, he’s among the first to employ stars hailing from the vaudeville-like music hall tradition.

Midcentury Modern Years: Starting from around the 1950s, pantomime’s popularity declines in London, though it remains a staple throughout the regions.

2000s: Competition heats up the world of panto production, as newer companies Evolution and Imagine Theatre become active alongside longtime leader Crossroads (formerly Qdos).

2016: Panto returns to the West End when Crossroads starts producing an annual panto at the London Palladium. Inaugural show Cinderella was the first panto to play the Palladium in more than 30 years.

2018: Panto wins an Olivier Award when Dick Whittington takes the prize for best entertainment and family show.

These days, panto looks less like commedia and more like music hall. (In my conversations, more than one person cited the Carry On movies as a reference point.) It continues to evolve to this day—often in response to changing social, political and artistic attitudes. “Right now panto is confronting challenging issues of representation as a form inherited from the Victorian era, which is a period embedded with colonialism and patriarchy and homophobia and all of that,” Sladen says.

That explains why there’s been something of a pause on productions of the classic panto tale Aladdin, as theatermakers figure how to reconfigure it with a contemporary sensitivity to the politics of representation.

Meanwhile, Principal Girls are no longer damsels in distress; in keeping with modern notions of equality, they’ve got just as much kick-ass agency as Principal Boys. At the same time, the actress-as-Principal Boy has all but died out: Sladen says cross-gender casting in that role happens in only about 6% of pantos these days.

Queer narratives have also grown more common. In one recent commercial panto, beanstalk-climbing Jack came out as gay to his mother. In this year’s Peter Pan at the Palladium, Rob Madge plays Tinkerbell with a mustache.

At the same time, the convention of cross-dressing for comedy, as exemplified by the Dame, is coming into question, if slowly. The phenomenon of men wearing dresses for laughs is seemingly less loaded in the U.K. than in the U.S., where many critics call it retrograde in the face of expanding ideas of gender identity. On the other side of the pond, “people are starting to ask questions about it,” notes Nottingham’s Penford. “That will only increase.”

Meanwhile, international communities in the U.K. and around the world are helping to broaden the pool of stories told by panto: Taylor points to panto productions of Anansi spider narratives hailing from the Caribbean. “It’s continuing a British tradition, but in a post-colonial era it’s speaking to local communities in local languages,” she says.

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Here’s the part where I thought I was going to tell you that panto doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, and then try to explain why. Boy, was I wrong: Panto’s reach is global (particularly in the former colonies, for obvious reasons), extending to Singapore, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Sydney and beyond.

Even here in the U.S., panto is less unknown than I thought. Heck, there’s one happening right now in my own Brooklyn neighborhood.

That was pointed out to me by Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser, the duo behind New York’s Panto Project. Both prominent names in the downtown performing-arts scene, they launched the Panto Project in 2017 when they were asked to create a holiday show by the leadership of the Abrons Arts Center, the Lower East Side institution with which they’ve long been affiliated.

Abrons is the artistic wing of the community-oriented Henry Street Settlement, which encompasses a women’s shelter, a job placement center, after-school services and more. A Brit with a family history in panto, Fraser thought the form might fit right in at Abrons, given the overall campus’ focus on kids, family and community.

The writer-performer took pains to localize and Americanize the show—the first outing, Jack and the Beanstalk in 2017, renamed Jack’s colossal nemesis Giant Rump in a jab at the then-president—while Muz, long a leading figure in the city’s burlesque scene, called on her nightlife cohort to participate.

“There’s really not that much difference between performing in a bar for a bunch of drunk adults and performing a panto for a bunch of kids,” she says. “It’s the same kind of humor. Melodrama rules. You have to be clear, you have to do one thing at a time, and you have to do it fast.”

Interrupted by COVID, the Panto Project has created three original productions and performed them across five non-consecutive years. This year’s show, Sleeping Beauty, is the final one to be supported by a three-year grant from Henry Street Settlement. (The Settlement put in $100,000 per year; for the 2023 outing Muz and Fraser’s company ONEOFUS raised an additional $70,000.)

Panto has proponents on the other side of the country, too. Lythgoe Family Productions, the company run by Kris and Becky Lythgoe, has been producing pantos around the U.S. since 2010.

Kris, whose father Nigel Lythgoe was a key producer of the American Idol franchise, is another Brit who grew up on panto and wanted something similar he could bring his own family to. Becky, an American, recognized panto as a gateway theater experience for kids.

“How do you get kids interested in theater? You do it with modern music from Dua Lipa to Elton John, with the stories they know and love and by making modern references,” she says.

The family’s connections in the music industry help them secure permissions to parody those pop tunes, and also faciliate landing stars who have included Ariana Grande and Neil Patrick Harris. Production budgets have ranged from $400,000 to $1.5 million. Before the pandemic hit, Lythgoe Family Productions were doing six pantos around the U.S., with each show tailored by Kris to the local community.

Among the hurdles facing panto’s expansion in the U.S., Kris cites an unwillingness on the part of theaters to take a chance on changing up their lineup. Americans’ general lack of familiarity with the form—and its mass-appeal components—also proves a challenge.

The Lythgoes have produced a panto at the Laguna Playhouse for eight years. David Ellenstein, now in his second year as artistic director there, recalls being struck by panto’s potential as a tool for audience development. “I was out there on opening night, watching kids buzzing, and I thought, ‘We’re saving theater here,’” he says.

Over in New York, the future of the Panto Project is up in the air for now, pending funding. “It’s an audience that’s building, and certainly there’s now a community expectation,” Fraser says.

“In every aspect there’s this snowball effect,” Muz adds. “Every step of the way you can see how this program can blossom into a national phenomenon of pantos.”

As the play lay dormant, Mnouchkine, who had seen Nelson’s work in New York, approached him about creating something for Théâtre du Soleil. He told her that he happened to have a show about an acting company, and sent it to her. She read “Our Life in Art” overnight and decided to mount it, with him directing, as he often does with productions of his plays in the United States.

Mnouchkine translated the text quickly, she said, “while he was already rehearsing” with her actors, over a luxuriously long 10 weeks last spring. “I had to go quite fast, but I needed to have this very high-standard, delicate easiness, which seems easy to say but is not easy. And I wanted to have the same rhythm as Richard.”

The translation was not without its complications. Nelson doesn’t speak French, and not everyone in the Théâtre du Soleil company speaks English. A translator was an essential intermediary. He would tell the actors what was happening in a scene, and if they responded, “That’s not quite what’s here in the text,” they would together work toward a more accurate turn of phrase. They talked through complicated idioms, untranslated figures of speech and, most difficult, the difference between pronouns, a nonissue in English: When should characters who are close but still colleagues address each another as the informal “tu” or the formal “vous”?

It helps that, after more rehearsals this fall, Nelson had 14 weeks with the actors, and spent that time living in the company’s home, La Cartoucherie, in the bucolic Bois de Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris, seeing them behave as a true company. “There are no stage managers, there are no real designers,” he said. “The actors do everything: They clean toilets, they move furniture around. This is their home, and they own this.”

JENIN, WEST BANK: On Wednesday, Dec. 13, the Freedom Theatre announced the arrest of multiple of its members. Artistic director Ahmed Tobasi, producer and general manager Mustafa Sheta, and Jamal Abu Joas, who recently graduated from the Freedom Theatre Performing Arts School, were all detained by Israeli security forces.

The Freedom Theatre wrote on its social media that Tobasi was arrested outside his home in the Jenin refugee camp, where the theatre operates, and that Sheta was also arrested at his home. A statement from the theatre’s staff says that Abu Joas was also arrested at his home. The theatre’s statement says that Tobasi, Sheta, and Abu Joas were all arrested by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Multiple Israeli security forces operate in the West Bank, including border police. While it is likely that the IDF made the arrests, this has not been confirmed by an independent media source as of this writing.

According to the Freedom Theatre, Tobasi and his brother, Mohammed, were arrested during an IDF operation in Jenin the morning of Dec. 13. The theatre’s statement says that Tobasi went outside his home in response to noise and was then assaulted by an IDF officer; IDF officers then reportedly entered Tobasi’s home, destroyed a variety of electronic items, and retrieved Mohammed Tobasi before handcuffing both brothers. They soon released Mohammed Tobasi.

The Freedom Theatre posted video footage of Tobasi’s home after the operation, taken by Tobasi’s family. Ahmed Tobasi was released on Dec. 14, as confirmed by the theatre.

“They treated us like animals,” Tobasi said upon his release. “They are trying to hurt us in any way they can, but it’s important we stay strong.”

Sheta was also arrested the morning of Dec. 13 and remains in detention. According to Sheta’s family, IDF special forces members blindfolded Sheta before his arrest.

“My children spent their night crying,” Rasha Sheta, Mustafa Sheta’s wife, told the Freedom Theatre. “We felt so scared without him being around with us. We don’t know why he was arrested.”

The theatre also states that Abu Joas was arrested by army forces at his home on Dec. 13, and that officers confiscated Abu Joas’s phone and camera and assaulted him. He remains in detention.

In January, Freedom Theatre general assembly member Yahya Zubeidi was arrested at or near a checkpoint between Jericho and Jenin due to “suspicion of involvement in terrorist activity,” according to the IDF. The Freedom Theatre also confirmed Zubeidi’s arrest on their social media at the time; there has been no news of his release since. Zubeidi is the brother of the Freedom Theatre co-founder Zakaria Zubeidi, who was previously a member of the Jenin branch of an armed militant group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Zakaria participated in a high-profile amnesty deal with Israel in 2007 and began collaborating with artist Juliano Mer Khamis at the Freedom Theatre.

In 2011, Mer Khamis was assassinated and the Israeli government rescinded Zakaria Zubeidi’s pardon. He was detained in 2019 and escaped from prison in 2021, but was captured and remains in Israeli military detention.

In their statement, the Freedom Theatre adds that in the last few weeks, three members of their company have been killed: Yamen Jarar, a 16-year-old Freedom Theatre participant, by drone fire on Nov. 3, according to Defense for Children International; theatre member Jehad Naghniyeh Torokman, 25, by an Israeli military officer, also on Nov. 3, according to PEN America and Palestinian television channel Fajer TV; and Mohammed Matahen, an usher and front-of-house staffer, killed on Nov. 9, according to the Freedom Theatre.

The current war between Israel and Hamas, which governs the Palestinian territory of Gaza, has exacerbated tensions in the West Bank and resulted in an increase of army-led arrests and civilian unrest and violence. Haaretz has estimated that Israeli security forces killed more than 200 Palestinians in the West Bank between Oct. 7 and Nov. 28.

Multiple organizations based in the U.S. and around the world are organizing for Sheta’s release. This is a developing story.

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