Pantomime Days!

Yes, Pantomime days - crazy, exhilarating, exhausting, sometimes incomprehensible, and always motivating!

Pantomime days, and not just any Pantomime, either, but Glastonbury Pantomime!

Ok, let's start at the beginning, but not the beginning of Pantomimes, because that would be insanely long to write, and not even at the beginning of Glastonbury Pantomime, because that would also take way too long to write, as it was established in 1986! No, let's start at my beginning, instead, as that's the one subject I have complete jurisdiction over, and whatever my experience has been can be judged as exactly that - my experience.

Well, to begin with, I'm sure  you can clearly see that, yep it's been that long since Glastonbury has been running the traditional Pantomime, but even though I've been living in Britain for over 6 years now, I had never actually seen a Pantomime at all! Don't get me wrong, I had not been avoiding them, it's just that none had really come my way at a convenient time, so the first time I saw one on the telly was an Alice in Wonderland Panto made for CBeebies, which my husband Stephen showed me during rehearsals for the Scottish Play in 2017, while we were also preparing to appear in Maxine Ridout-Prime's "Let there be Light: the Bible in a Flash". I would be playing Jenny Sis, a children's TV presenter for Creation Time, and would sing all about God the Builder and how he created the world, so Stephen though I would get inspiration from the Alice in Wonderland Panto.

I played Jenny Sis literally two days after playing Lady M and one of the witches, by the way, in case anyone is wondering about my range! I literally went from "Out, damn spot!" to "Creation Time!!" in two days flat and without missing a beat!

Well, who would have imagined that two weeks later I'd be cast as Prince Charming in Shadow of the Tor Ltd's Panto! That's right, first time acting in a Pantomime and I was Principal Boy. I'm sure proud of that, and my experience was truly blessed. Everyone in the cast and crew was extremely talented and for the most part utterly professional - and even the individuals who had not done anything theatrical in their life before shone in their performances. "Rapunzel and the Dissolution", it was called, written and directed by Francis Oliver, and I was in my element both with his writing and my character in it! It was also the first time I performed for several nights in a row - The Scottish Play had been on for two nighs, and so was Don Juan Tenorio many years ago, and I had already experienced touring back in Mexico, with what the Mexican version of a Pantomime is, I guess, a Pastorela in which I portrayed 4 of the Seven Deadly Sins, yet this was the first time I was in on it for a long stretch of performances in a row... And I loved it! It proved that it was definitely what I wanted to do with the rest of my life!

Shadow of the Tor was backed by The Glastonbury Town Players, the community-based organisation which held the Pantomime for many decades, and some of their still active members even shared the stage with us. It was a beautiful merger, and the Town Players are also backing Shadow this year. Knowing that groups can contribute to the perpetuity of traditions by helping the newcomers carry on the past endeavours is a truly magnificent experience, and may it continue to flow gracefully and naturally.

So, what about this year's Panto, I hear you ask? Well, we're still in the middle of performance week, and so far it's been a blast? A highly challenging blast, but a blast nonetheless! Let me explain very quickly: half our cast and crew got horribly ill, including myself, both before and after opening night, but it's a real testament to how tight this group is that we all helped as best we could with the show. Written by Francis Oliver and Sophia Wood, and directed by Sophia Wood and Rhiannon Locke, "Hansel and Gretel" has already had many people around town talking about how good it is and who their favourite characters are, and there are still three performances to go!

Going back to what community means to me, the Panto is a perfect example of that, as the show itself benefits the Assembly Rooms greatly, a venue which is a huge asset in this town and everyone I know deeply loves, and a great deal of the profits go to Children's World, the same charity organisation which I modelled to raise funds for during the body painting event in January. The rest of the profits get put into the fund for next year's Panto and so this town keeps  this wonderful tradition running every year. If that's not uplifting and motivating, I don't know what is...

As what we do as His & Hers Theatre Company ties in very well with my community mindset, I will mention that Stephen and I toured our own one act Panto called Alice in a Winter Wonderland around Somerset care homes during December. To whomever turns their nose down at Pantomime for being a "lower form of entretaiment", I will say that they're seriously underestimating the healing properties of Panto! The laughter, the fantasy, the sillyness, can all have amazing effects on audience and cast and crew alike, and Panto scripts and productions are a lot more complicated than some people give them credit for.

As a final note, today is St Valentine's Day, and even though it was not a hugely important day for me before (it was actually quite depressing), it is now a hugely important day for us, as it marks the anniversary of when we finally were able to fly home together after the seppartion we had to endure because of Home Office "policies". What best way than to celebrate it on stage!

I go off now to get myself prepared to be the Cat once again tonight, and enjoy myself in this community for this community!

See you next time!

Sandra Cole ~ Actress, Model, Writer, Esoteric Practitioner

Downtrodden but Uplifted!

Happy, happy news! A couple of weeks ago we had the launch for The Downtrodden, a modern adaptation of Les Miserables, which focuses on the group of student insurrectionists by turning them into student activists at Bath University. The sheer amount of excitement over the launch of the pilot from fans all over the world, and the further support we have received since then speaks volumes both of the quality of the production and of the need for speaking up regarding so many subjects in today's world. It also says a lot about how relevant Victor Hugo's take on the June Revelion in Paris still is! This is something that Dorian Ravenscroft, the creator, co-writer and director of the web series, really wanted to showcase from its conception.

Now, as a member of the cast as well as an active member of Shadow of the Tor Ltd, the multimedia production company behind The Downtrodden, it would completely unfair and biased of me to review the series, but I can certainly write about my experience and let you watch it yourself to compare and contrast!

To begin with, Shadow of the Tor is a fairly new production company in Glastonbury, born out of the collaboration between Francis Oliver and Brad Crowley during the very first Samhain Wild Hunt organised by Glastonbury Dragons CIC, and fueled by a great number of talented individuals who came together to create and bring to life all kind of stories. Two years down the line, Dorian and his husband Alex brought The Downtrodden to the table, based on a story that has meant literally the world to them, and alongside their friend George Cook, Dorian wrote the pilot. Now, their story is one that only they can decide whether to tell or not, and how publicly if so, but the one thing I can say is that they found each other across the ocean after a lifetime of being misunderstood and boxed into identities neither of them wished for, which in turn led them to become equal rights activists and to join groups that would allow them the healthiest outlet for all their creative ideas.

As their story resembles mine and my husband's so incredibly much, both Stephen and I became close friends with the Ravenscrofts, and as Shadow of the Tor grew side by side with Stephen's and my own company, His & Hers Theatre Company, in a constant friendly environment of collaboration, my joy at being cast as Feuilly in Dorian's version of Les Mis has been one of the greatest honours of my life! Having shared the stage before with him and Alex for A Midsummer Night's Dream, where Dorian played Demetrius and Alex played Bottom (to my Titania), I already knew they were extremely talented and that playing their dream characters in The Downtrodden would be of the highest quality - as Enjolras and Grantaire respectively - but even I was blown away by their portrayals!

Other members of the cast include award-winning actress Lydia Stobie-Owen playing Cosette, and Ethan Hall playing Marius - who actually played Hermia and Lysander in our Dream! Rhiannon Locke plays Eponine; Joey Watson and Jaydon Marsden as Courfeyrac and Combeferre respectively make up the Triumvirate alongside Dorian; Xandy Waddington plays Bossuet and has also been the brilliant mind behind the music; Cléophée Young plays Musichetta; Kaiden Valmont plays Jehan Prouvaire; Paige Kelland was chosen to give life to Joly just as I was to Feuilly, as it makes perfect sense for most of the young revolutionaries to have been male back then, given that it was a student movement, but needless to say it makes more sense now for more women to be in such groups today; Jon Coyne, another Shadow of the Tor director, plays Montparnasse, and Brad himself plays Bahorel. Nick Hutton and Lysah Hughesman make cameos as Jean Valjean and Fantine, and there will be someone coming in as Javert, too, as well as a possible Gavroche (watch this space!).

It is, joyfully, quite an impressive cast! And all the crew is fantastic as well, most of whom we'll be collaborating with constantly! People with plenty of experience as well as newcomers, all from different nationalities, as well as diverse races, sexual orientations and gender identities. Shadow of the Tor Ltd prides itself for its ethos of inclusivity and equality, and The Downtrodden truly showcases that. I'm proud and deeply honoured to have been chosen for my part in this, as Dorian and George have touched on all the current subjects that are so important to me at a personal level, and being chosen to play Feuilly in particular, the "self-taught worker" as various descriptions define him, makes me feel like I have achieved a professional goal in itself!

I have such admiration and respect for this incredible group of people - some of whom Stephen and I are currently working with in the Panto, as Rhiannon is co-directing alongside Sophia Wood and Jon and Lysah are sharing the stage with us, and some of whom we'll be working with soon again, as Dorian, Alex, Lydia, Ethan and Nick will be reprising their roles for A Midsummer Night's Dream during Glastonbury Fringe in May! I can only say that everyone in this group deserves to shine and that I can't wait to see what the future holds for Shadow.

And in case there was ever a question about this, His & Hers Theatre Company will always share Shadow of the Tor's values of inclusivity and equality, and most of all, I will always proudly say that collaboration and lifting up those that truly deserve to shine is what I want my life to be about.
So then, watch, enjoy, and share away!

Love, peace and solidarity,
Sandra Cole ~ Actress, Model, Writer, Esoteric Practitioner.

*All pictures and gifs were taken from Instagram and Tumblr's The Downtrodden profiles and affiliated accounts. The first picture is from Dorian's birthday, hence the knife in his hand and the slice of cake in mine. That, or we are definitely planning a rebellion, I'll leave that to you to decide.

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