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| Dick Whittington and his Cat by Anthony Spargo, Greenwich Theatre 2024 Winner UKPA Award for Best Script |
GRAND DESIGNS
Anyone who has watched Grand Designs will remember that sense of dread in your stomach when Kevin Macleod inquests the star couple how they could possibly build a three bedroom eco-home in 8 weeks with a budget of eighteen pounds all in club card points. "We're going to do it ourselves," explains the wife. "We're taking a sabbatical from 30 year careers as data analysts, and with the money we made from the sale of our house, we've bought two pairs of wellies and a tent which we're going to live in on-site."
The husband chimes in: "We're only designing and building a house - it's not hard. You learn a lot doing Data Analysis - spreadsheets, cash flow, managing a team. We're bringing all those skills and experience, the only difference is - instead of analysing some data, we're going to be building a house. It's really not that different when you think about it - you're just wearing a hard hat instead of a tie."
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| Grand Designs - an innovative TV show in which pantomime giant Kevin McCloud eats houses he finds architecturally unappealing |
At the end of the programme, Kevin returns to the house. It is twelve years later. The plasterers are nearly done skimming the walls. The three bedrooom eco house, due to some painful economising now has one bedroom which is built out of fossil fuels and pollution. The couple have three separate mortgages with a combined face value 300% of the resale value of the property. Their marriage is over, the wife has moved back in the tent, while she saves up enough money to pay the court costs for divorce.
The writing was on the wall from the start. Crackpots! Thinking that they could design and build a house, without having any of the requisite skills, experience or relevant knowledge. If only they'd stayed in their jobs, they could have paid an Architect to do the designs, and hired a professional site manager to supervise on the build. People with professional training, qualifications, years of practical experience of designing and delivering new-builds, recommendations, reviews, peer-recognition: those are the people you want to build you a home. WHAT ON EARTH MADE A DATA ANALYST THINK THAT THEY'D BUILD A GOOD HOUSE?
DUNNING-KRUGER
The Dunning-Kruger effect has become something of an internet meme of late, and I'm sure you've already heard of it. However, for the sake of the other people who aren't familiar. Here's a brief explanation:
All the way back in 1999, two psychologists (aka Dunning and Kruger) discovered a common cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a field overestimated their ability.
The graph shows above illustrates this effect - with the red section showing the difference between test subject's self-predicted scores and their actual test scores. Notice the big fat juicy end towards the left side of the x-axis. This is the home of those with grand-designs and unfinished homes.
... or to put it in the words of the great philosopher and historically spurious panto dame Bertrand Russel "...in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt"
LESSON LEARNED
You don't need to be building a house to have grand designs. Lots of people have grand designs to do all kinds of things. Some of them want to write panto.
SYMPOSIUM
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| If you would like to be a Judge for this years awards, you better hurry as applications close 11 months ago |
The UKPA is holding their next symposium focusing on the topic of writing. IMO no other topic is more crucial to the continuing success of this art form.
Why?
Because panto writing is crap.
Not all of it, obviously. But as any theatre goer will tell you, you don't need to watch a lot of pantos before you see a crap one.
Admittedly, I am a man with a penchant for hyperbole, so for clarity: when I use the word "crap" in this context, I don't mean mediocre, I mean crap. Tedious. A waste of time and money.
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| Another six panto scripts off to production |
It is a testament to how cherished is the tradition of the Christmas panto that so many crap pantos survive. If you set up a company staging Marlowe with the same eye to quality control, you'd be out on your arse before you could say Iambic Pentameter. (Don't you just hate it when Shakespeare comes along and nicks your conventions!)
How do you know if a panto is crap? Oh, you know.
I mean, it's art, and art is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. But if the dame picks out a boyfriend she never mentions again, you spend act 1 guarding a present for Buttons which is mysteriously cleared away in the interval, the actors are knackered and totally unconnected from the script, if there is a script - and not some vague hodge-podge of ad-libs, punctuated by an occasional urgent plot point - "didn't I tell you, I was adopted and when I was left on the steps of the castle, the king found a magical necklace round my neck. Its magic will guide us home!" - if these kind of things are happening on stage... yeah, it's crap. That's a crap panto.
"Yeah, yeah, that would be particularly crap - but most pantos aren't like that... are they?"
Hmm.
If you think that, perhaps you need to see some more pantos.
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| A book made for kids not for playwrights |
Still, you don't have to have total disdain for you fee-paying audience to stage crap. You could cobble together old crap from a joke book. Corny, unrelated, unfunny jokes would work best. One liners, shoehorned into the scene. Who cares that Widow Twankey's a laundress in China, give her some jokes about Tory politicians, followed up by some football puns, and a derogatory statement about being the biggest scrubber in Peking - preferably underlined with a thrust of the pelvis, to let grandma know you're really talking about sex.
Better yet, why don't you write the dame six awkwardly risqué stand-up spots, overrun and then rush through all the plot between scene changes. Or, if you're feeling very ambitious, just forget there's a plot all together and arrive on stage for no reason and sing the twelve days of Christmas followed by if I weren't in pantomime and the ghost gag. The audience loved it last year - why bother changing it now?!
In fact (and this is a real professional crap-panto writing tip) save yourself oodles of time by naming the characters Prince, Dame and Comic in the script. That way, you don't even have to bother changing them for next Christmas - you can just cut and paste!
Some people go to a crap panto, but think it's a good panto because it has lots of flashing lights and big costumes. Do not be fooled - if the plot is threadbare, the jokes are antique, and absent of any dramatic tension in the script, the actors look bored to be there - you are watching a crap panto. If the costumes are nice and it has lots of special effects, it's a crap panto with a big budget. Honestly, we love costumes, and set and special effects - too much if you ask our accountants - but if you're relying on things and not on the actors, your values are all up the spout. Rolling something or other in glitter, suddenly springs to mind.
It's easy to identify what makes a panto crap. The 64 million lira question is why are they being made?
The 64 million lira answer is... well, it's complicated.
In my opinion, most people making crap pantos do so for 1 of 2 popular reasons.
1. They don't give a pair of twit-twoos
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| A panto producer near you |
The curse of panto is its popularity. Panto audiences are often prepared to sweep their standards under the carpet to preserve the magic of Christmas ("Grandma's spent a fortune on these tickets!" "Have another drink, you'll get into it!"). For some reason pantomimes get a free pass. You can bet your bottom dollar if they spent £100 on a family ticket to see Michael McIntire and didn't understand what was happening, they'd be straight onto yelp, slagging him off to high heaven.
Some proportion of punters are happy to see any panto, as long as it's panto. They mightn't have seen a good one before, so they haven't a yardstick to measure it by. "OK, the panto is crap, but panto is crap... it's tradition." I have lost count of the number of people who've told me they don't like pantomime, then be be surprised that they really liked ours. No shish kebab, Sherlock! You have a Netflix subscription and a 60" telly. Your primary entertainment consumption consists of character-led dramatic narrative. That's what a play is. Well, what it should be. Of course you like it! Only it's better than Netflix because there's a bar and confectionery counter.
The flip-side of panto's enduring popularity is of course that it attracts the commercially minded. If you like actors and poncing about, panto production is calling to you. As long as you don't care too much about artistry, you can throw-up a show in a week and a bit - hire some performers, preferably someone who has their own costumes, who isn't a member of equity and is willing to stay late so kids can take photos beside them for £10 a pop, and doesn't have an agent to ask for commission.
Not only do such people exist, they gum up the industry. Some of them even have good production values - nice costumes, great marketing assets - the lot. If all you saw was their sizzle reels, you'd think they were up at the top. Typically, this is what tenders are marked on. People not trained in the arts sit in front of a pile of PDF, weed out the jokers and then pick the cheapest from those that look good.
In case you are reading this, and have never submitted a pantomime tender, I shall explain. Public bodies with buildings with pantos put out great piles of documentation, declaring their pantomime contract is open. They usually do this around November, because they don't think about panto till then, and all the producers are busy, so fewer submissions means less bids to read. You submit somewhere between 3 and 10 documents, the longest of which may run into 20-30 pages of text. Often the tender is issued with a preposterously proximal deadline: Bids must be received by Sunday at 8 in the morning, late submissions will not be accepted! Then, once you've stayed up after rehearsals all week, typing up endless questions about your companies anti-Slavery policy and the like, they feel no shame in extending the judging period (could be by months) because they're much too busy to judge tenders now. The answers are marked by folks from the council, using opaque and ill-defined criteria such as "meets the requirements well" or "exceeded my expectations". They tot up you score, and then multiply it by how cheap you say you can make it, and how big a bung you'll pass up to the council. That's how you ensure you get top kwality panto - by picking the cheap one!
Unfortunately, kwality and parsimony make unhappy bedfellows at the best of times. You may have read exposes in the rag shaming unethical panto producers for gruelling work schedules, unpaid attendances, skimping on pensions, holiday pay, and - forget about equity minumum pay - some producers were not paying statutory minimum wage! Bad news for actors, great news tendering budgets - it's easy to undercut all those mugs paying union rates, or making from scratch, and paying the PRS like a fool (I'm not going to name them and shame them, They know who they are!)
If you don't care too much about craft or artistry, or fair pay or other people, you can make out like a bandit in panto.
FOR THE RECORD: the industry also has many hard working people producing, who do care about their shows and their audiences. It is possibly to build up a company, establish a good reputation, and be successful. It isn't too hard to distinguish the Aces from the Jokers. But really: there are jokers out there.
2. They think that it's good!
When you consider Dunning-Kruger's conclusion: that people with no expertise in a field systematically overestimate their ability - it's isn't that big a surprise. The skills that you need to excel in a field, are by definition the same skills you need to make well-informed judgements about your own relative standing within the field. Quad erat demonstrandum.
TO BE CLEAR: I am talking about professional pantomime. Amateur companies write and produce wonderful, very successful pantomimes up and down the country - binding communities, passing down skills and inspiring young people into life-long love of the arts. If you're writing panto for amateur companies - good luck and god-speed.
If you had to guess, what proportion of pantomime scripts do you think have been written by playwrights?
I reckon 5%... (NB that's a real finger in the wind anyone's-guess sort of reckon. I have literally no data.)
Any other genre of theatre, it must be nearly 100%, Look at the programmes of big producing houses, look at the people who's new scripts they're staging. They're plays made by playwrights.
Not so in panto. Next time you go to the local panto, pick up a programme and flick through (I love flicking through programmes!). Who wrote the script? Some popular choices include:
The Producer?
I mean... srsly?! Mate, take a chill pill. Haven't you got enough to do? OK, it's your show, you do you. But c'mon - just on the face of it: Playwright/Producer - sounds a little bit like "write the theme tune/sing the theme tune"
The CEO of the venue?
The CEO!!! you mean the person that used to be finance director? What a natural career progression: Bean-counter turns into comedy writer - it's a tale as old as time.
The Dame?
Of these three, this is the one that makes most sense. We all know of people who manage to do it. I mean - funny people are funny - and at least if you've done it for years, you'll have a good feeling for what's going to work. But, consider the logic the other way round: is the person who writes the play likely to be the best choice for dame? Hmm. I know plenty of wonderful writers who are hilarious on the page, but wilt even having a one-on-one confab let alone entertaining a crowd. If we aren't using writer's for writing, we may, at the very least, be accused of squandering talent.
In a world that calls for gay roles for gay actors, neurodiverse roles for neurodiverse actors, I make a new and immediate demand: PLAY WRITING JOBS FOR WRITERS
FB-BLOOMING-FORUMS
In a world of proliferating panto pages celebrating dames, dame costumes, past and productions, most of my readers may be unaware of the proliferation of another type of panto page on Facebook. The panto writers page.
THE IDEA: people with all different levels of experience can meet, discuss ideas and share best practice. Marks for idea: 10/10
IN PRACTICE: mostly populated by people with limited expertise seeking to one-up-eachother, all also trying to hock untested scripts using websites full of puffery and questionable claims. 2/10
Things I have read panto writers pages:
"It takes me about 8 hours over two evenings to write a whole script."
"I write 20 pantos a year."
"There is barely any plot in <name any panto here>"
"Just leave a gap for the songs so the director can choose them himself."
"I aim to have at least one joke on every page of script."
COME ON! 8 hours?! You can't even write a good scene plan in 8 hours... and 20 scripts a year??? Really?! Do you know how many scripts Tony and Oliver award winning playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, has written in his whole career? 91. Sir Alan is 86 years old and widely considered to be one of the prolific playwrights in the English language - and his average output per year is not even one and a half.
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| Knight of the Round Table and FB comment section fiend, Sir Alan Ayckbourn |
What's something funny that Abanazer could say when he arrives in Egypt?
What's a good song for the end of Act 1?
Does anyone know a good comedy sketch from the 80s about fruit?
How can anyone answer these questions helpfully without even a smidgen of context. What Abanazer should say, what song should be used, what comedy routine should be (plagiarised?) borrowed, is ENTIRELY DEPENDENT on the characters, narrative arcs and super objectives you are exploring.
If you would be happy with an answer that doesn't require knowing these basic facts, if the characters, plot or narrative themes of your play are irrelevant to the questions you're asking, that is a clue that your writing is irrelevant.
STOP. Have a think. Go back and have another go.
I've quickly learned not to participate.
In response to the question:
"I'm writing my first panto, what should I do"
A COMMENT WITH 80 LIKES: remember to put in a ghost gag, 12 days of Christmas, If I weren't in pantomime. And make sure the fairy speaks in rhyme.
MY COMMENT WITH 0 LIKES: read Backwards and Forwards about how to structure a plot.
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| Me making off with all my unlikes before anyone else can have any! |
In response to the question "how much they should charge for a panto commission," I posted a link to the Writer's Guild (the union for playwrights) who negotiate on behalf of their members, and publish the rates online. I encouraged the OP to sign up for membership - there are some excellent perks, and the subs are quite reasonable. It was some solid, practical advice, meant to help someone new to the industry.
I was lampooned!
Commenters came from the woodwork to express utter disbelief and disdain at the revelation that writers had their own union! A secret union at that... (it must have been secret - after all they'd certainly never heard of it), Why on earth should anyone want to be a member of a union anyway? After all, they were all writers (actual day jobs notwithstanding) and they weren't members. Why would anyone negotiate rates? That's not how writing works. "Just charge what you think you can get away with. Besides the rates on the WGGB site are ludicrously high. Who would pay thousands of pounds to write a panto script that anyone can knock out over a few evenings with a bottle of wine?"
Ugh! Save me.
Other than scorn, the other favourite ingredient of panto writer's forums is adverts.
Interminable adverts!
Seemingly endless Samuel-and-French-eque one-stop panto repositories all claiming to be industry leading, each advertising their award winning scripts for (self-described) competitive prices... although, price lists vary so little between them, one might think they'd cribbed off each other.
If you're looking for a panto script, particularly if you're an amateur company, here are six warning signs to look out for when visiting one of these websites:
Six things you might find on a panto script website that should set off alarm bells:
They claim to be award winning, but don't name the award
They claim to be a professional X, but don't say where they trained
They claim to have X years experience, but don't name which theatres they've worked with
Scripts are marked with five stars, but don't name the publication that awarded them
Reviews are in quotes "wonderful," "jaw-dropping," "hilarious," but not attributed to anybody
They have multiple scripts that have not been performed
REMEMBER - Anyone can buy a domain name and set up a website.
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| Me this week! |
WRITING IS HARD...
23/06/25
Dear Diary,
This week has been a tale of triumph and disaster.
I finally put out a nose-to-tail draught of Hansel and Gretel that I was happy with.
You find as a writer, sometimes you seem to be touched by God, you see it all clearly and the words just to seamlessly flow from your pen (or into your keyboard). This wasn't one of those times. There were lots of competing ideas, lots of friction - somehow things just didn't quite fit. It can make you feel a bit down-at-heel. Luckily this wasn't my first panto rodeo, so with a lot of thinking, discarded scenes, character rewrites, I managed to work it all out.
We had our first read through (in house) and the feedback was tepid. Yes, there was laughter, but overall everyone felt that the theming had pushed the whole narrative too far towards domesticity at the expense of magic and wonder. Then came the riffing. Back-and-forth, one idea sparking another - "couldn't it..." "how about..." - until I didn't have notes for a redraft but for a total rewrite.
UGH! What a blow! Even worse - I agreed with the rest of the room. This new direction would be much better. "It will mean a complete rewrite - it's going to be SO MUCH WORK"
"Not a complete rewrite. The dame speech is perfect," everyone agreed. So at least, I suppose there is that!
Oh how I wish I were blessed with the skills to knock 20 of these out a year!
Adding this rewrite to my mountain of work, here is my current
TO DO LIST:
1. Rewrite Hansel and Gretel
2. Redraft commission 1 for Bolton Octagon main space
3. Complete first draft of commission 2 for Bolton Octagon
4. Write my blog
5. Write two chapters of my PhD
6. Collate and give in 10,000 of new writing for the Fambles anthology
7. Finish writing up X for my union... (X to be a topic of a future blog, I imagine)
8. Finalise a plan for the first edition of "Writing Better Panto" ahead of a meeting with the publisher next month
9. Run two limited companies
10. Walk my dog
11. Find the cover for the back of the TV remote
Honestly, it all feels a bit much for a land dwelling mammal. Oh, how I wish I had the arms of an octopus instead of just the aroma!
Ideally of course I'd get all this done before I hear back from ACE on 14th July, because then I'll be able to get on with the top secret writing that's been percolating somewhere in the back of my mind.
... BEING A WRITER IS EVEN HARDER
Things were much easier when I was a boarding school master. Yes, it was busy (I spent three years at a school that reported to parents every three weeks!) - but there is less of a requirement for constant creativity in teaching. Essentially as long as you were very creative for the 3 years immediately following your PGCE, the rest is repeat ad infinitum... until Gove, or maybe some git at the exam board has an idea for improvement.
Ah yes, I remember my teacher training. One year PGCE, one year NQT, 2 x annual inset days, 1 x afternoon a week CPD, once a term lesson inspections, and dreaded annual review. In private schools, there's often budget for skillset expansion - I managed to wangle myself 5 days off school to attend a clowning course with Mick Barfarther, during which I learned I'm not naturally funny and shouldn't become a clown.
Training for playwrights is seldom as structured. Nor a continuous, ever-present reality tied to your work.
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| Being a writer is a process not a talent |
My first real training was at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square. I had just won the PMA writer's award at the NSDF, which came with a bursary and a place on the young person's writers scheme. So, I moved to London for 6 months and spent my days reading and writing under the supervision of writing-mogul Simon Stephens. From here I ended up getting ad-hoc work writing, dramaturging and directing around London, settling into more regular writer-y work at the Old Red Lion in Islington. Opportunities for extra training were ad-hoc, and sometimes even funded! I remember having lots of fun with a then-young but still-uber-talented Mike Longhurst on a director/writer relationship workshop at the Young Vic. (I wonder if he's reading my blog?!)
For my next bit of actual formal play writing training I had to wait another 10 years, when following my fleeting decade-long masquerade as a teacher, I went back to RADA and did the MA in Text and Performance (the course aimed at training next Literary Directors), majoring in writing and dramaturgy. Boy did I learn a lot. Moving to Manchester hooked me into a whole new network of theatres, and shout out to The Lowry and The Royal Exchange who not only offered me work, but continued to send me on courses to hone up and broaden my skillset. I'm also incredibly grateful for the support and critique of my wonderful writer's group Fambles with whom I meet monthly to share and review new writing.
As popular as they might be, ideas such as 'writing a panto is something I just have a knack for' or 'a skill that I honed during GCSE' imply the corollary that professional training is valueless, professional institutions are time-wasting charlatans, that continued professional development is nought but a waste of time. One might find such accusations insulting, if they weren't so... what's the word... dunning-krugery?
Being a good writer is never something you're born with, it's something that happens through years of training and practice, peer review, reflective and reflexive self-critique, and of course, very hard work.
Good plays require good writers to write them. Pantomime is no exception.
WHAT CAN BE DONE BETTER?
NPOs need to invest in their pantomimes by hiring professional writers, rather than trying to cut-costs and maximise surplus in order underwrite other the less popular parts of their programme.
If people want to write panto, we need to provide better training. Training must be accessible, structured, affordable and appropriate to the requirements of the learners.
Start a conversation about how to promote good writing, and protect less-experienced companies from licensing poor scripts from poor writers with well presented web presence. Perhaps we could set up a central standards and awarding body to which interested writers could apply for a rating (like B&B rosettes).
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