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The Disability And…Podcast gets right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend. The Disability and…Podcast is currently monthly.
Episode 54 Disability And Pantomimes
INTRO
Welcome to the December issue of Disability And Podcast. Bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. This month, Associate Producer Paul Wilshaw chats with writer and actor Chris Hannon about panto.
PANTO VOICE
Oh no he isn’t!
VOICES
Oh yes, he is!
INTRO CONT.
Indeed, he does talk about panto to Chris Hannon. They discuss the representation of disability in pantos and how Chris makes pantos more inclusive.
PAUL WILSHAW
Hello, and welcome to the Disability And Podcast. Today, it is my great honour to have Chris Hannon, who is an actor, a writer, he's been in Coronation Street, Doctors, and a major thing for me is that he's the Dame in Wakefield Theatres and he's been doing that for 13 years now. So, welcome to Disability And Podcast Chris
CHRIS HANNON
Thank you. Paul, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to join you.
PAUL WILSHAW
So, Chris; Pantomime has a long tradition, a real long tradition and not all, unfortunately has been good around representation around disabled characters e.g. Captain Hook, the Seven Dwarves in Snow White, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. So, we really want to talk about those later on, but as an actor, I'll be talking to you about relaxed performances. So, what is it like to perform in a relaxed performance? Because I suspect it's a completely different atmosphere.
CHRIS HANNON
Well, it is, and it isn't. So, the experience as an actor on stage is slightly different because obviously the house lights, the lights in the auditorium, it's not that the audience aren't sitting in pitch black. The house lights are slightly raised, so you can see more of the audience than you normally would be able to. And also, the volume of the sound effects; it's not as loud as it normally would be, because some of those very loud sound moments might sort of be too intimidating to an audience at a relaxed performance. So those elements technically feel different. We also have to tweak a few things at Wakefield, like there's always a bit every year when we have a routine called The 12 Days of Christmas and it end with us getting water pistols out, and soaking the audience. But at a relaxed performance, there's a lot of people who wouldn't like to be sprayed with water. I mean, on a practical level, you've got some people there with very complex physical needs and they might have feeding tubes. So there's a chance that if you spray them with a water pistol, you're going to knock the feeding tube out. And that is obviously something we shouldn't be doing. For that moment, we get one of our Front of House volunteers, the stewards who check your tickets. There's one guy every year who does it called Terry, who's lovely, and he volunteers to come right down to the front of the auditorium by the stage, and we just soak him rather than soaking the audience! And there's three of us, with super soakers so the guys drenched!
PAUL WILSHAW
I love it.
CHRIS HANNON
So, in that way it's different. But I think panto is one of the times when that doesn't feel unusual because panto is the sort of show where you're literally asking the audience to make noise and join in and participate. So it never feels that unusual. There's more noise than you would get because, with a non-relaxed performance, you're giving the audience cues for when to interact. So it's behind you, oh no it isn't, oh yes it is. Whereas, in a relaxed performance, there's noise the whole way through. But it doesn't feel strange. And in pantos, our shows that are advertised as being for everyone, for the whole family, they're from, you know, you can be 6 or 100 years old and it's there's something in it for you. So, of any kind of art form, I think it's most important that panto has relaxed performances. I mean, any production anywhere should be making itself accessible. At the minute, I'm doing a show at Sheffield Crucible, and this week we've got a relaxed performance, a BSL sign performance, a captioned performance and an audio described performance, and they've made every effort to be as accessible as they can, and I think every theatre should be doing that.
PAUL WILSHAW
Yeah, that's an interesting thing of where, I do believe that relaxed performances are so great. However, it seems that the theatres seem to only put on like one relaxed performance. So if you’re disabled, you have to specifically make sure that you're going on that day.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah, true.
PAUL WILSHAW
And I think theatres need to do a bit more, in that sense.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah, I suppose having more relaxed performances has a kind of a financial cost implication for the theatre and a lot of it will come down to money and maybe if there were more subsidy for relaxed performances, that risk could be subsidized more. Maybe theatres would be willing to have more of them. I don't know. But I think you're right. I don't consider that before. It's definitely a thing isn’t it.
PAUL WILSHAW
So Arts Council, if you do listen in to Disability And Podcast, get more subsidies for it!
CHRIS HANNON
Thank you!
PAUL WILSHAW
And with panto, it is a really interesting thing of that is the most relaxed that I usually am. It's like relaxed performances, and just performances in general of panto cheer me up so much.
CHRIS HANNON
There were no rules are there as a pantomime?
PAUL WILSHAW
No
CHRIS HANNON
It's not like watching a very serious straight piece of theatre where you just got to be very passive and just watch. You're asked to participate, that's one of the great things about it isn’t it.
PAUL WILSHAW
Exactly, and it is interesting around the thing of relaxed performances, because the whole point is I would love to know who wants to go to an uptight performance! You know! So, yeah, I really think that interesting; if like when we were all saying, oh yeah, oh relaxed, performance, relaxed performance, but why would you want to go to an uptight performance? Why would you want to sit in your chair? Why can't you just literally have that freedom? So, yeah.
You're not only an actor Chris, you're also a writer and you are writing to pantomime for, I've got to get this right, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds.
CHRIS HANNON
Yes.
PAUL WILSHAW
See, I've learned that one!
CHRIS HANNON
Thank you, thank you very much!
PAUL WILSHAW
And this year, you're doing Snow White, and Dame Judi’s first ever pantomime I’ve heard.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah, so obviously in Snow White, you have a magic mirror which the Evil Queen has, and she looks into the mirror and it, you know, it gives her answers to questions. And I wrote it as just, it's a physical prop, and I wanted one of the members of the acting company to record a voiceover. And then the Director called me March and said, “I think we can get Dame Judi Dench to record the voiceover.” And I said he was absolutely certifiably crackers. But she's the lifetime patron of the theatre, and she's done things like a question and answer session there, to raise money for the theatre so, they've got a connection with the and they called and she said, yeah she was very happy. So, she might not be on stage, but you will hear her.
PAUL WILSHAW
You will hear her, which is great. I’m really interested about how can we change negative stereotypes, with new writing. Because there are negative stereotypes. You have got like the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, there’s that whole thing with Disney at the moment, with that character should be cast with dwarfism, but they haven't and all this kind of stuff. So, I'm just really interested about changing negative stereotypes with new writing.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah. Panto is a very old form of theatre and it's your job as the writer to keep trying to push it forward and keep it evolving and keep it changing. So, I've been doing it for 13 years now and the first panto that I did was Sleeping Beauty, and the first stereotype I encountered in that was how female characters are stereotyped. So, the princesses in panto, when I started, they didn't get involved in any of the fun or the fighting or the action. They were really there to look pretty, to sing prettily. And if you're a six-year-old girl sat in the audience, it's not great to be shown that that's all that a female character can be, is just how they look and how they sound when they sing. You want to see that that character can have as much fun as any other character in the show. And in that production of Sleeping Beauty, at the end of Act One, Sleeping Beauty is put to sleep for a hundred years under a curse. And then in that production that I did, she was asleep for the whole of the second half, and it was right at the end of the second half that the Prince woke her up. So, she's the title character. The show is called Sleeping Beauty, and she wasn't in it for half of it. And she was completely passive. So, we're doing Sleeping Beauty at Wakefield this year. And what I've written is that at the end of Act One, Sleeping Beauty, as per the fairy tale, forced to sleep for a hundred years. But then at the beginning of Act Two, you wake her up and then the bad fairy is outraged. So she steals the prince who's woken Beauty with a kiss. She takes him away and she puts him under a love spell, and she makes him fall in love with her. And then it's up to Sleeping Beauty to go and save the prince. So they kind of both save each other. And in the way that the Prince woke Beauty with the kiss, Beauty then breaks the love spell the prince is under by kissing him. So there's a complete equality between those two characters. So I'd say, first and foremost, yeah, kind of gender stereotyping is something that I've encountered and wanted to kind of get rid of and advance. But there's also, there's other kinds of representations. So, I did a version of Robin Hood, last year for Bury St Edmunds, and it was the first time I'd written a gender neutral character into the show. So we had Will Scarlet, and when the Sheriff of Nottingham, who was a real old straight white guy, clearly read the Daily Mail when he encountered her, he said, “Young lady”, she said, “I'm not young lady.” He said, “What? You’re not a man” and she went “Well, I'm not a man either. I'm just Will.” And he was, as a character, he was confounded by that. But it's good to present that to an audience. I'd like to in the future, maybe next year, do a panto where you have a same sex love story. So, you know, two male characters or two female characters, because that's the way the world is. And you see it on Strictly Come Dancing, it's great. All those different kinds of permutations of couple. That show reflects to an audience what the world is actually like. And I think panto as an art form that is there predominantly for children, you’ve got a duty to show them this is what the world is like. Let's see all the variety that's there.
PAUL WILSHAW
No, certainly. It goes on to my next question actually about that. Is it time that old fashioned pantomime characters are gotten rid of, and new pantomimes created, or is it okay to just bring new ideas to old stories?
CHRIS HANNON
So, could I ask what you mean by old fashioned characters?
PAUL WILSHAW
What I mean by that is that there's stereotypical characters, that are like, Captain Hook’s the bad guy. But in all honesty, I feel that Peter Pan’s also a bad guy. So,, is it time that, like Captain Hook gets a bit more praise actually? And stuff like that.
CHRIS HANNON
It's a really good question. And my approach to that is kind of at the heart of how I try and write the panto. So, they're very old stories and they're full of stock characters. You'll always have a Dame, you'll always have a comic who's the Dame’s sidekick, you'll always have a baddie, you'll always have a principal boy and a principal girl. A prince and a princess. Your job as the writer, is to take those characters and take those stories and reinvent them and make them relevant to the world that we live in now and find parallels and resonances that chime with the world that we live in. When you're approaching any sort of panto, I think an audience has certain expectations. So, for Dick Whittington, they will expect Dick to go to London. They'll expect to see rats. If it's Jack and the Beanstalk, they'll expect a beanstalk and they’ll expect a giant. And as the writer, it's your job to satisfy those expectations but also to give the audience something they're not expecting and to reinvent it. For example, you mentioned Snow White. I had a conversation very early on with the Director, and he said that he didn't want to have dwarves in the production, because the dwarf characters in Snow White are there to be laughed at for the way that they are different. Difference isn’t there to be laughed at, difference is there to be celebrated. So we felt the easiest thing was to have Snow White meet a bunch of people to meet a different bunch of people.So, it's it doesn't say on the poster just as Snow White, but really it should be called Snow White and the seven Scouts, because she meets a Scout troop in the forest who are like the dwarfs in the Disney film, They're hardworking, dependable, trustworthy, they're loyal. We wanted a parallel. People that had all of those qualities. And we thought that a scout troop might kind of work in that way. And yeah, you've got to do it with every single story. You've got to find what’s this been, what makes it relevant, Jack and the Beanstalk that we did at Wakefield about four years ago. The theatre in Wakefield had just been made a theatre of sanctuary. So, they're a place that's particularly welcoming to refugees and asylum seekers, and I wanted to explore that a little bit in the story. So, in that Jack and the Beanstalk, everybody was afraid of the Giant, because they'd been told it was this huge, cruel, monstrous bully who lived on the cloud, and if they didn't keep paying money, he'd come down and destroy and they just heard “fee fi fo fum.” But when Jack actually goes to the cloud, he finds that the Giant is actually being kept prisoner by the baddie and he's not shouting “fee fi fo fum”, he's actually shouting, “I need someone.” He was someone who wanted a friend, and the baddie had kind of made everyone think he was, he was a monster because he was different to them. And like I say, with the dwarves in Snow White, you should never laugh at difference. And sometimes people are scared of difference. So I had the giant come down the beanstalk, meet the villagers, and he wanted to have sanctuary, and that was how I tied it into the theatre, being a theatre of sanctuary. And he was then given asylum in, you know, in Wakefield. I called it Quakefield, because his voice, the Giant's voice was so loud it caused earthquakes. So it's always that. It's always an audience comes to see Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington, they've got an expectation. They want to see that story. But your job is to put a twist on it, make it different, make it relevant to now, and that's how I try and push the stories forward every year and change them.
PAUL WILSHAW
That's brilliant. Disabled representation on stage is still low. As a writer and an actor, how do you think this could be improved?
CHRIS HANNON
In panto particularly, or in kind of theatre in general?
PAUL WILSHAW
In panto first, then let's go theatre in general.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah. There are obviously companies who are, their central aim is either having casts who are exclusively disabled or integrating disabled performers into shows with non-disabled performers. So, I'm thinking we're here today at Mind the Gap, where you have a permanent disabled ensemble of performers, but then you've got companies like Ramps to the Moon.
PAUL WILSAHW
Yep, Ramps to the Moon
CHRIS HANNON
That sort of theatres, where they have an integrated cast. And then you've got theatres like Leeds Playhouse, where they've started doing a lot of shows with BSL signing integrated into the performances and also at Doncaster, their panto is BSL integrated. They have a character who is a BSL signing character. That level of integration as an example, there's an extra and I mentioned earlier funding, there's an extra financial implication. It takes longer to rehearse, it takes longer to prepare, there's more access needs that you have to meet. And so, I think, I wonder if mainly it does come down to money and why some theatres are reluctant to do more integrated performances is there might be an extra cost involved. And I think again, it comes down to if there were a greater level of subsidy available to theatres to help them meet the extra costs of integrated productions, they might be more willing to take that risk. And if it serves an incentive, you do it more. So I do wonder if it comes down to a bit more money.
PAUL WILSHAW
Yeah, it's kind of sad that, like usual it all comes down to money.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah. And willingness. Yeah.
PAUL WILSHAW
And a willingness to change because the whole point is I think, what theatres don't realize, if you have more disabled people on your stages, more people actually will turn up and it makes it more of the inverted commas “norm.” I think a lot of the time it's that fear that you're not going to get an audience in because it's not been done before. It's not been done before because no-one’s taken that chance. And if you take a chance, then Strictly Come Dancing, prime example they had Rosie, who is a deaf actress, and it became the norm. And they done this beautiful moment. I went to see the Doncaster show last year, and that's another prime example of the main character who is deaf. There is a child in the audience, and I saw this and it was beautiful. Just was like, “That's me on stage.” It's that thing of, if you’re helping children see themselves on stage, it's going to stop this negative stereotyping that keeps happening. Theatre’s a beautiful opportunity to help this, but, because of funding, and because the negative narrative still goes out about disability, theatres and casting directors, and it does feel this, are scared. There are some beautiful companies and theatres. Leeds Playhouse, Doncaster, like you said, Sheffield is another prime example of doing great work. The Egg Theatre in Bath, I really want to praise them because one of our actors are in their show down there this year. So, there are a lot of companies that are doing it, but it needs to become more of the norm, and actually, we need to have more directors and producers and writers that are disabled as well, because if that happens, then we can actually say, well yeah, we're going to cast that, because that's their norm as well.
CHRIS HANNON
So I think you're exactly right about it being the creative team, being disabled themselves, and then and then it feeds through. Sheffield Crucible, Leeds Playhouse, they are fantastic at access and representation. They’re also, as opposed to slightly smaller theatres, I wonder if it just comes down to a bit of money sometimes, they're better funded and with, like you said, if only theatres would take more of a chance. I do wonder if in some people's minds that chance equates to a risk as well, and sort of, coming out of austerity, and then coming out of Covid, the audiences not going back, I think theatres are so afraid to take a risk. But you're right that that that risk has to be taken. Otherwise, things won't change.
PAUL WILSHAW
Exactly. What is your favourite pantomime character of all time? And it can't be the Dame! That's the one, all I’ve got is it can't be the Dame characters.
CHRIS HANNON
I was thinking about this. I think that the first panto that I ever wrote was Jack and the Beanstalk, and I think because of that reason, he's got quite a special place in my heart. And I think the story of Jack, in Jack and the Beanstalk, kind of, it really sums up the story that's at the heart of all Pantos, which is about a hero's journey. It's about someone going from zero to hero. Because Jack's a child and him and his mum are kind of, they're struggling for money and no one thinks that Jack's worth all that much as a person, and he has to set out and prove that he can, you know, win the day. And he's literally got to climb a beanstalk and face a giant. So when you put an actor against a huge, giant puppet, you've got panto summed up there, you know, standing up to the big guy. And I think kids really enjoy that. And so I think, the summing up the essence of a kid seeing themselves represented on stage is someone who can be a hero. Jack and the Beanstalk really encapsulates that. And having said that, I wonder if there's a version of Jack and the Beanstalk where Jack is disabled and where people don't expect that he can climb a beanstalk and take on a giant and it's all about completely confounding that expectation.
PAUL WILSHAW
That would be great. I mean, my one has to be, either Cinderella or Dick Whittington. I was in panto down in Dorset and that's why I love panto so much.
CHRIS HANNON
So which, do you mean those stories or characters?
PAUL WILSHAW
So no, I was the ensemble cast for both of those shows, in Cinderella we actually had a white horse, when Cinderella goes off the ball. So we actually had a horse on stage.
CHRIS HANNON
An actual real horse?
PAUL WILSHAW
An actual real horse we had.
CHRIS HANNON
Now tell me, did the horse have a poo onstage?
PAUL WILSHAW
No, but it was always outside. It was the most funniest thing ever. And we were only allowed, they had the horse cart in, and we had to get him in, right at the beginning, at the end of the first half, like get him in, and then get out. It was the most, and I was always behind the horse. So, we always had that fear. If this horse does one…
CHRIS HANNON
You’re in the danger zone…
PAUL WILSHAW
We’re in the danger zone. So that's why I love panto. I really want to go back into panto. Yeah. Next question. If you were creating a brand new pantomime character, please can you describe them to us.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah, I, yes interesting on this. So like I said earlier, panto is full of kind of stock characters and you're always going to get whichever panto, you're always going to get the same old characters. But over the last couple of years, I put a kind, a new sort of character into a couple of them, and it's the person who pretends to be a hero but isn't really. And it came out of, again, like I said earlier, thinking about how can you, how can you make panto reflect the world we're living in. And I thought coming out of Brexit, when you had all these Tory MP’s who were saying to working class people, Brexit will make your life better, and arguably it's really not, and they were posing as the hero of the working people, and it turned out that a lot of them were feathering their own nests. I came up with this idea of the character who pretends to be a hero but isn't, so the version of Robin Hood that I wrote for Bury St Edmunds last Christmas, you meet at the top of the show, Robin Hood, and he comes out and he looks like Robin Hood. He's got the green tights, pointy feathered hat, and he sings, ‘Let Me Entertain You’, Robbie Williams. And he's got adoring fans and he slap his thigh and he's a bit cheesy, but then as the show goes on, you find out that really he's working with the Sheriff of Nottingham. And the Sheriff’s putting up money and taxing everyone a ridiculous amount. But he's had this idea that if he invents or pays an actor to pose as a hero who says, “Don't worry, bear with me, I'm going to get your money back”, there will never be a rebellion. So he's using this fake hero to keep people in place. And it worked really well, you know, because the audience were quite shocked when they found out that Robin Hood isn't really the hero, he was, you know, in cahoots, yeah, and then ended up being the Dame son who was this young boy worked in a bakery who kind of unmasked Robin Hood, and then he got to go on the journey like Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk. He got to then, he went from zero to hero, and he took down this fake Robin Hood. And it was nice. It felt really different and quite fresh. And so, yeah, I suppose that's my contribution to the world of panto.
PAUL WILSHAW
Cool. What's your next panto that you're going to be working on?
CHRIS HANNON
So there are two. So there's, like you said, there’s Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds where I've written Snow White, I mean we've got Dame Judi Dench. It's frustrating because I, because of working in Wakefield, I don't get to go to rehearsals in Bury St Edmunds because they overlap. So I don't get to go to the read through on day one, I don't get to go to the dress rehearsals or the opening night. I have to wait until we’ve finished in Wakefield and they run for a week longer. So I then, in January, get to go down and it's fantastic to see, but you know, by that point they've done 2500 performances or whatever, so they're exhausted and obviously I'd like to see it right at the beginning when it was still shiny and new and fresh, but they're still fantastic. So I'll get to go down to Bury St Edmunds and see Snow White, and then in Wakefield it's Sleeping Beauty, and we start rehearsals for that in three weeks and then it's 12 shows a week for six weeks.
PAUL WILSHAW
Yep, because your start date, I'm going to try and remember, I think was the 24th of November I think.
CHRIS HANNON
Isn’t it bad that I don't know this. I’ve come onto your Podcast, and I haven't got the information to be able to plug the panto. It's something like that Paul, yes, yeah.
PAUL WILSHAW
Yeah. Please look on Wakefield's website, which I haven't got, but we will put onto our clip at the bottom to say what their website is. So, and what other work are you working on at the moment? So you've got these two, but is there any plans for 2024.
CHRIS HANNON
Well you never stop working on panto, so I'm already starting work on next year's pantos. So, at Bury St Edmunds, it's going to be Aladdin. And in terms of representation, that's a really interesting one, because you've got Aladdin, it's ridiculous. Aladdin is a story comes from the Arabian Nights. Yeah. So you know those names, Aladdin, Abbanazah, there Persian, Iranian names. But for some reason, at some point in the late 19th century they decided to start setting Aladdin in China, and that stuck. And you've had, even until like last year, you’ve had companies of completely white Caucasian actors pretending to be Chinese characters and putting slightly inappropriate makeup on their eyes to make them look more oriental and having quite offensive racial names. So that's, you can't quite rightly, the way that Aladdin is done has got to be changed wholesale. So, and we've been having quite a lot of discussions in our early planning meetings of Bury St Edmunds recently. So, the version that I'm working on now, for next year will be set in Arabia, where the story comes from and it will use colourblind casting, but we are aiming to do a huge amount of casting from the global majority.
PAUL WILSHAW
That's brilliant.
CHRIS HANNON
Yeah, that's obviously very important. So yeah, so I'm literally I'm starting work on that now. And then in terms of acting at the minute, I'm going to show the Sheffield Crucible, The Hypochondriac, which is on for another week. So it's been great. I'm very busy, which is, you know, as an actor and writer, as a freelancer, it's always great to be busy, touch wood, hope it continues.
PAUL WILSHAW
Yeah, definitely. And thank you so much for doing this podcast. You're actually performing tonight. So this goes out in December, so it'll be two months away from that, but have a great show. Thank you. And so listeners, thank you very much for listening to the podcast. I hope you're all well and healthy and enjoy Christmas and we will see you in 2024.
OUTRO
Thank you for listening. We do hope you've enjoyed this episode of Disability And. The Disability And Podcast is taking a break for January, so we'll be back in February. Until then, Disability Arts Online and Mind the Gap wish you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year.