Like all amateur dramatic companies across the UK, lockdown in 2020/21 was tough. No weekly rehearsals, no shows, and no pantomime to kick off the festive season.
Panto and Christmas are a huge deal for everyone at LMT, so it was important to us that we didn’t let the COVID-19 pandemic stop us from engaging with our members and audiences. We wanted to come together as a community to produce something meaningful and entertaining.
So, with all that in mind we embarked on a plan to do things a little differently… and digitally! We wanted to use our Facebook page to share festive content for our audience that was created by our company members. Our plan was to:
- to have shareable video content each day in the run of what would have been our “panto week”
- have a video performance from our wider membership to wish our audiences a Merry Christmas
Our digital panto week
We decided to create short fun videos featuring characters from our 2019 panto, Jack and the Beanstalk. The theme running through each video was that due to the pandemic our characters were stuck in “pantoland” and couldn’t get to the Dobbie Hall in Larbert to be in Aladdin in 2020.
A script was written for each character to perform, along with the traditional shout outs to local groups that normally come to the panto. It was important these videos were produced to a professional standard, so we engaged the services of M&M Sound and Lighting who we normally hire for our annual shows. Like so many in the creative industries they too had felt the effect of the lockdown, so we knew that in getting them to help us, we were in turn, helping them. They set up a COVID safe space in their warehouse, which could be fully ventilated, and individuals were all able to come at staggered times and socially distance. They used a video wall and the same artwork that we had as backdrops in Jack and the Beanstalk. Each character was filmed separately but M&M were able to virtually bring some of them together and added in special effects.
So, in what would have been our panto week from 23-28 November 2020, we released a video each day on our Facebook page. Alongside the videos we ran a JustGiving page link in each of the videos, encouraging people to donate to our chosen Charity – Parkinson’s UK, which raised £660 for a very worthy cause!
The engagement with our audience was beyond our expectations. In total our set of videos had over 18k views! Feedback from our audiences was wonderful and made us feel so emotional that we could still connect with them virtually. Comments included:
“After a horrible year, as I’m sure many have had, my 14-year-old daughter looked ready to cry she was so happy seeing this!”
“You are brilliant. I’m sorry that I’m not seeing you live but you’ve really cheered me up.”
Our Makaton Merry Christmas video
At the end of our panto it has become a tradition for the cast to sing and sign the song Santa Claus is Coming to Town, so we decided to do a video version of this using a pre-recorded version of the song. Previously we’ve signed in BSL but to make it more inclusive we decided to sign in Makaton. We are very fortunate to have a Makaton teacher as a company member, so they produced step-by-step videos and materials for company members to rehearse at home.
Our members found this an enjoyable challenge, and they were able to have Zoom rehearsals so that everyone could support each other to get the words and actions exactly right.
Each person filmed themselves individually and M&M then edited it together. We released it in the week leading up to Christmas, as a Merry Christmas message from our company. Doing this video was particularly meaningful to us, as each year we put on a performance of our pantomime just for young people with additional support needs and their families. At our performances it’s a joy to see many of them join in signing along with us for Santa Claus is Coming to Town, so this video was inspired by the young people.
Feedback from the public was extremely positive with the video receiving thousands of views and being shared by many people. Company members also loved being able to perform together even if it was in this new virtual world!
