Most of my pantomime titles include the term 'and the' because I think audiences and potential producing companies are either drawn in by the intrigue created by a title like 'Cinderella and the Pantomime Thief'.  I love taking a classic story and adding a new twist or making up a brand new one.  I love writing dialogue for the Dame or the Villain; characters who become larger than the stage they're on, bringing the audience into the story and asking their opinion before going off and doing good or bad deeds - often both.  The first Pantomime I wrote and saw on stage in front of an actual audience was 'Robin hood and his merry persons'; in it, Alan the six-foot Spider tells Maid Marion that he can help her escape the room she's been locked up in by eating through the wall.  I changed the lyrics to the Atomic Kitten song 'Whole again' to 'I can make a hole again'. At the end of the song, the audience clapped. I know, it doesn't sound like much, but hearing the laughter throughout the show and the reaction of the audience at the moment, I went home that night and wrote the first scene of 'Snow White and the curse of the Ice Queen'.  Watching the cast bonding over the 8 weeks of rehearsals, the buzz backstage and in the green room, the lasting friendships made between people from completely different walks of life and ultimately, the power to help a few hundred people a night switch off the stresses of real life and watch a 52 year old bloke in a dress sing 'If you wanna be a scrubber, you gotta have a mop and brush' to the tune of Wannabe by the Spice Girls... well, it's the best job in the world isn't it?

If you think about it, life is like Pantomime. It's why I apply the Panto template to all my stage plays. Take 'Alexander Millar's 'The Working Man'', a stage musical I wrote about the Shipyards in Newcastle in the 1920s.  The owner of the Shipyard is a brash, loud, arrogant Pantomime villain, the hero is an unassuming working class guy who just wants to provide for his family, take them to the local temperance festival and fight for what's right.  The shipyard owner has a sidekick (a common Panto trope), a go-between who doesn't want to annoy the workers or fall out of favour with the boss. The workers lose their beer allowance, they go on strike, they lose their jobs and then they go back to work with no pay. Eventually the villain sees the error of his ways and all is resolved with a sing song.  I think any story with a happy ending could be turned into a Panto, except perhaps Rambo.