Directing Your First Pantomime

Directing your first pantomime begins the moment you say yes. Maybe someone asked you directly, maybe there was a silence in the room at the wrong moment, or maybe you genuinely volunteered and are still working out why. However it happened, there's a lot to get on with.

Pantomime is one of the most forgiving theatrical forms for a first-time director. The audience arrives wanting to enjoy themselves, the structure is well established, and the conventions do a great deal of the work for you once you understand them. What matters most is making clear decisions early and building a company that trusts you. Everything else follows from that.

Start with the Script

The script is the most important decision you'll make, and one of the few you need to make before anything else. Your cast size, staging requirements, rehearsal load, and budget all follow from it. Trying to solve those problems before you've chosen a panto script is working in the wrong order.

When you're evaluating scripts, read the whole thing rather than skimming the synopsis. You're looking for whether the comedy works on the page, whether the structure is manageable for the cast size you have, and whether there are technical demands you can't meet. A script calling for complex flying effects or a large Ensemble of specialists isn't the right starting point.

Title recognition is worth thinking about too. Well-known traditional titles like Cinderella, Aladdin, and Jack and the Beanstalk sell tickets more easily, because audiences know what they're coming to see. More unusual titles, among them Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears, put more weight on your publicity. That's a trade worth making deliberately rather than by accident, and it's a real consideration when you're selling to a community audience.

Whatever you choose, read it in full before you commit. We offer a free Perusal Script for every title, and reading before licensing is normal practice, so ask for one wherever you end up licensing from. Don't choose a script on a synopsis alone.

Understand the Form Before You Direct It

Pantomime has conventions that don't exist in straight drama, and if you don't understand them you'll either ignore them by accident or try to eliminate them on purpose. Neither works well.

The audience is a participant rather than an observer. They shout back, warn the hero, boo the villain, and join in with the songs. A director who treats that as a problem to be managed will produce a pantomime that feels oddly flat. Build the audience relationship into your blocking and your rehearsal process from the start, and let characters speak directly out front.

The Dame is usually played by a man in outrageous costume, and the Principal Boy is traditionally played by a woman, though this varies between productions. Both are part of the form your cast and your audience will be expecting.

Slapstick, running gags, and comic business need rehearsing with as much rigour as any dramatic scene. Timing is the difference between a joke that works and one that dies, and timing doesn't happen by itself. Put comedy scenes in the rehearsal schedule rather than assuming they'll sort themselves out in the run.

Casting

Cast from what you have, not from what you wish you had. That matters most in a first production, where you may not know your company well yet.

Match your strongest performers to the roles with the most stage time. The Dame, the Principal Boy or Girl, and the villain carry the show. An actor with strong comic instincts and physical confidence is the obvious Dame. Someone with a good voice and natural presence will serve the Principal roles well.

Don't undercast the villain. Pantomime villains need to commit fully and enjoy being booed, and a performance that holds back drains the energy from every scene it's in.

For Ensemble and supporting roles, prioritise reliability and enthusiasm over raw talent. Consistent, cheerful Ensemble members are worth more than talented performers who miss rehearsals.

Planning Your Rehearsals

Eight to twelve weeks of weekly rehearsals is a reasonable minimum for an amateur production, and more is better. Start with a read-through where the whole company hears the script together, then block in sections rather than running scenes end to end. Once scenes are blocked, move to run-throughs as quickly as you can, because a full run often reveals timing and energy problems that individual scenes hide.

Schedule technical and dress rehearsals as late as is practical, but make sure you have at least two before opening night. Technical rehearsals always take longer than expected, so build that time in deliberately.

Music rehearsals need to happen separately if you have a musical director. Don't run songs and blocking at the same time until the cast knows both.

One note on scripts in hand: the longer your cast holds scripts, the longer it takes them to reach full performance energy. Set a lines-learnt deadline early and hold to it.

Pacing and Energy

Pantomime moves quickly, or it should. Long pauses, slow transitions, and scenes that overrun their welcome all erode the energy the form depends on. In the later stages of rehearsal your job is partly to cut time: to tighten transitions, to push the pace in comedy scenes, and to find where the show is losing momentum.

Watch your running time. A pantomime running much beyond two hours plus an interval is working against itself. If you're running long, the answer is almost always to lift the pace rather than to cut scenes.

The Script Is Your Blueprint, Not Your Ceiling

A good script gives you a workable structure and characters who have been thought through. What it can't give you is the specific energy of your company, the running gags that come out of your rehearsal room, and the local references that get the loudest laughs on opening night. Those are yours to add.

Work with the script rather than around it, particularly in a first production. Once you know the form well you'll have a clearer sense of where local adaptation adds something.

The Part That Happens Outside the Rehearsal Room

Agree early who is responsible for publicity, and if the answer turns out to be you, plan it the way you plan rehearsals. Three things are worth knowing before you start.

The poster has to be written before the show exists. Artwork deadlines fall well ahead of opening, which means describing a production nobody has seen yet, including you. That's easier than it sounds, because what sells a pantomime is the story rather than your staging of it. There's ready-made marketing copy for every title in our catalogue, written for audiences rather than for directors, which you can paste straight into a poster, a programme, or a Facebook page and adjust to suit your production.

Photographs need to be taken deliberately, not remembered afterwards. A press release goes a great deal further with a decent photograph attached, and rehearsal shots are the only ones you'll have before opening. Put a photo call in the rehearsal schedule in the same way you'd schedule a technical rehearsal.

The announcement goes out before casting is finished. Title, dates, and venue are enough to open bookings, and all three are settled before auditions. Waiting for a final cast list costs weeks of selling time and buys nothing.

The rest of it, mailing lists, local press, social media, and word of mouth, is covered in our guide to marketing your pantomime.

What to Do Next

If you're still deciding, our full catalogue of pantomime scripts covers the major titles across a range of cast sizes, all written for amateur and community theatre groups with the practical realities of a volunteer company in mind.

Request a free Perusal Script for any title that interests you, read it properly, then decide. There's no pressure and no obligation. The right script for your group is the one that suits your cast, your audience, and your production capacity, and the only way to know that is to read it.

If you've already got your script and your Performance Licence, the next job is selling tickets. There's marketing copy ready to use for every title, and our guide to marketing your pantomime covers the rest.

Not sure where to start? Our home page has the key information and plenty of links, or see our FAQs.