Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never seen a pantomime, 

I know it means to be big and expressive, I know they’re a British thing with traditions and tropes. 

We’re not doing all that. Or, if we are, it’s completely by accident. We’ve made our own thing and called it a pantomime. 

I also know it’ll be Christmas soon. 

I don’t really like the silly season, it can be stressful and drag into the new year. I often find myself reflecting on the past twelve months and being a bit overwhelmed by the next, feeling a little stuck… and then somehow it’s March. 

So we thought we’d plop a bit of joy in this strange time as something to distract us. To revitalise, rejuvenate and exhilarate us and quite frankly just have a good laugh.

This tradition has brought us so much happiness. We have been extremely lucky to share it with our incredibly talented and hilarious friends, who have our gratitude, respect and adoration for their beautiful work on these projects. We have also been blessed and humbled by our generous, whole-hearted audiences. 

This is art for art’s sake. It is important. 

The pantomime has become a safe island where we can stow our ‘ridiculous’ or ‘impossible’ ideas and at the end of the year we let them run wild. We try things out, we stretch, warp and ruin theatre, we play with morals and stick out our tongues and nod along to the obvious while our bums hang out. 

I’ll leave you with a few tropes and traditions that have emerged from our three years of our pantomimes…

*there will be a puppet (it’s usually very sick), *there will be a bit of rhyming, *there will be a lot of hats, *there will be a lot of running, *there will be a lot of yelling, *beer will be drunk, *there will be a song or two, *our bums will hang out. 

Thank you so much for joining us tonight, we hope you enjoy How The King Learned To Live Forever.

Hang around after for a beer. It is silly season after all.

• Cooper Donald McDonald, Pummel Squad.