Puss in Boots

presented by
The Pantolites
at
Theatre Project
45 West Preston Street, Baltimore
December 27, 2007 through January 6, 2008.

What is a Pantomime?

Pantomime, or “Panto” as it is called in Britain, is a traditional family entertainment, put on around Christmas time by at least one theatre in any city you care to name. Based on one of about two dozen fairy-tale plots (Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Sinbad, Aladdin, etc.), they always contain similar ingredients, some of which include:

a Good Fairy (appearing in a pink spot from stage right, and generally speaking in verse);
an Evil Demon (in a greenish spot stage left, invariably greeted by audience boos and hisses);
a Principal Boy (despite the name, played by an actress with a short doublet and long legs);
a Princess (every little girl’s dream role-model);
a Comic (generally played as a rather simple character, much put-upon, but with a kind heart);
a Skin Part (played by one or two actors in animal costume), and most important of all…
the Pantomime Dame (always played by a man, the leading actor in the cast; Sir Ian McKellen even did a Dame two years ago at the Old Vic; we are coming as close as we can by featuring the Artistic Director of the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, James Kinstle).

There is nothing camp about the cross-dressing — these are family shows — although the humor may be sprinkled with some pretty corny double-entendres which pass right by the children but amuse their grandparents. There is usually some slapstick, and a lot of stock vaudeville routines that have proved their staying power over time. Many pantos also include some dancers, who may be children — in this case, students from the Peabody Preparatory.

Pantos always have live music, though they are not Broadway musicals. Most of the performers get to sing a song (sometimes with audience participation), and the romantic leads get a short duet or two. There is typically melodramatic musical underscoring for the action, and varied dance numbers. While some modern pantos go for a contemporary rock sound, that is really going against the traditions of the form; our production has specially-composed music by Mark Hanson Williams in a deliberately nostalgic but generally upbeat style.

Audience participation is essential. the first rule of panto is to get the audience involved, so that they can cheer for the good guys, hiss the Villain, and warn the characters when they are in danger. Panto scripts always find ways to work in scenes such as an argument in which the audience takes sides with shouts of “Oh yes, he is!” and “Oh no, he isn't!”, or where an evil figure creeps up on deliberately-unsuspecting characters, while the audience yells “He's behind you!”

Traditional large-scale productions may look lavish, with frequent set and costume changes, but the best pantos are deliberately old-tech, with painted wings and drops and little that would not have been available to the Victorian theatre. It is the child's delight in simple make-believe that panto aims to engage. In the intimate space at Theatre Project, where the actors can virtually touch the audience and the simple but very colorful set by Kali Ciesemier will be as fresh as a story-book, we believe we can honor the essential spirit of the form by engaging the child’s imagination in all of us.

Those interested in learning more can check the excellent article on Wikipedia. As this points out, pantomime is virtually unknown in the US, but its traces can be seen everywhere from early movie comedy (eg. Laurel and Hardy) to Monty Python. It is not only for expatriates and Anglophiles, but will delight families looking for a non-sectarian holiday show that is both rather familiar and very different. Once started, pantomime in Baltimore could well become an annual tradition.

See some traditional posters

Characters and Cast

PROVERBIA, Good Fairy and narrator	Jennifer Blades
PETER, a miller's son	Catrin Rowenna Davies
WIDOW WEPTALOT, Peter's mother	James Kinstle
PUSS-NO-BOOTS, their cat	Grace Chang
SCRATCHENBITEM, their landlord, an evil magician	J Austin Bitner
KING PERCIVAL OF PANTABARBARA	Harry B. Turner
PRINCESS PIMPERNEL, his daughter	Shaina Virginia Vatz
PIPPO, court factotum	Adam Caughey
PUSS-IN-BOOTS, the cat transformed to the title role	Jason Buckwalter
MICE, BIRDS, INSECTS, &c.	Christine Blackshaw Hannah Coates Anna Gailloud Shreya Rangarajan Helen Zhao

The Story of Puss in Boots

Peter, our hero, is a strong handsome lad, but a dreamer. With his nose in adventure stories, he is not much use in helping his mother, poor Widow Weptalot, and the two of them can barely scrape out a meager existence, living in a dilapidated farmhouse with their faithful cat, Puss. To make things worse, they are being terrorized by their evil landlord, Scratchenbitem, who threatens to throw them out to starve if they do not pay the rent they owe. Indeed things get so bad that they fear they can no longer keep Puss, who is so kind-hearted that he can’t even catch mice to feed himself.

Actually, things are just as bad over at King Percival’s royal palace. It appears that Scratchenbitem is terrorizing the whole country, and nobody can get in or out. All the servants have quit, except the devoted Pippo, who does all the chores around the palace and tries to console the King’s daughter, Princess Pimpernel, who is getting very bored. But when Pippo tells her that one day a handsome prince is bound to come for her, she says she is tired of pompous courtiers and stuck-up nobles; all she wants is “Just an ordinary boy.”

But things are about to get better. Earlier in the play, Peter met an old woman in the countryside, and gave her all his food. Little did he know she was really a Good Fairy, who comes to the rescue in the nick of time and turns Puss into a tall and elegant but highly independent creature with big boots and a magic hat that gives him the power of speech. Puss sets off to the palace, catching some animals on the way as pets for the King and the Princess. He tells them that these are gifts from his wealthy master, the Marquis of Calabras. This is all a lie, of course, but he needs to impress the King somehow. He finds out that the King and Princess mean to go down to the river the next afternoon, and makes his plans.

Puss hurries home and persuades Peter to bathe in the river just when the royal party is expected. Then he calls out to the King that his master is drowning; Pippo rescues him, and the Princess falls instantly in love with this handsome, bedraggled, and wonderfully ordinary boy. Puss, however, has stolen Peter’s rags, so that the King has to lend him some robes from the palace, and so never sees the so-called “Marquis” in any but the finest clothes.

All seems to be going well. Puss’s plans are working out; the King is pleased to have such a fine suitor for his daughter; and Widow Weptalot is delighted with her change of fortunes, making a grand entrance straight from the beauty salon. But the Princess is not sure she likes Peter as much in his rich clothes as when he first came out of the river, and Peter feels guilty that all this good fortune is founded on deception. He tries to tell the Princess the truth, but before he can do so, Scratchenbitem, who has turned himself into a cat to seduce Puss, steals his hat (thus reversing all the magic) and takes the King, Peter, and the Princess into his power. Widow Weptalot is set to washing dishes.

The second act is about how the various people cope with these misfortunes. Pippo somehow remains always cheerful, and gets the audience to sing along with him. Widow Weptalot sets to work in the kitchen, with chaotic and very messy results. Peter comforts the Princess when she is frightened by spiders in the dungeon. Puss is visited by the mice he had spared earlier, who gnaw through his ropes to set him free, and the young people also. In a final confrontation with Scratchenbitem, Peter shows his true bravery. When he finally confesses to Pimpernel that he is not a nobleman but an ordinary boy, she is delighted, and the King is so grateful that he makes him a Marquis on the spot. The pantomime ends with the wedding celebration, at which Widow Weptalot appears in an even more splendid gown and hairdo, clearly setting her sights on getting the King for herself.

About the Company

The Pantolites was founded with the express purpose of bringing pantomime to Baltimore in an intimate environment that emphasizes the rapport between actors and audience rather than the elaborate setting. Although not directly sponsored by any of them, it is a collaboration between several Baltimore institutions: the Peabody Institute, the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. The range of involvement is further indicated by the membership of our advisory board:

Carol A. Bartlett, Artistic Director of Peabody Dance; choreographer (see below).
Roger Brunyate, Artistic Director of the Peabody Opera Theatre; writer and producer (see below).
Catrin Rowenna Davies, frequent performer with the schools’ outreach program of the Baltimore Opera; associate producer and “principal boy” (see below).
Anne Cantler Fulwiler, Producing Director of Theatre Project.
Anne Garside, Director of Communications at the Maryland Historical Society.
James Kinstle, Artistic Director of the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival; “pantomime dame” (see below).
Jeffrey Sharkey, Director of the Peabody Institute.
Whitney Sherman, Chair of Illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art and current President of the Illustration Conference.

The people whom you will see onstage in Puss in Boots or who are working to create the production include the following; placing the cursor on the [photo] panel will pop up the artist’s photo:

Carol Bartlett (Choreographer, dancers’ costumes). Carol has been Artistic Director of Peabody Dance for the past nineteen years. British by birth, she studied and taught in England, Germany, and Switzerland, before moving to California, where she headed the dance department at USC’s Community School of Performing Arts, was artist-in-residence at the California State Universities in Fresno and Long Beach, and founded her own company, Perpetuum Mobile. [photo]
J Austin Bitner (Scratchenbitem). J Austin, a graduate of Peabody, is an operatic tenor with a particular love for the grotesque and bizarre. He has performed leading roles with the Baltimore Opera, the Washington Summer Opera, and the Young Victorian Theatre. This will be his third production at Theatre Project. [photo].
Jennifer Blades (Proverbia). Jennifer has been active in the Baltimore scene for over a decade as a classical singer, performer in opera and cabaret, and as a director. She currently teaches acting at the Peabody Conservatory, where she has directed schools’ outreach productions for the past ten years. [photo].
Mary Bova (Actors’ costumes). Mary received her BA in Theater Education from UMBC. She has performed with the Vagabonds, Spotlighters, Cockpit in Court, and Fells Point Corner theaters and was last seen as Tracy Lord in Paragon’s production of The Philadelphia Story. Locally, Mary has costumed such productions as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Guys & Dolls, Levy’s Ghost, Passion, Parade, Blithe Spirit, Greater Tuna, and Woman in Black, which was also her “spirited” directoral debut.
Roger Brunyate (Writer, Director). Roger developed his love for pantomime as a child in Britain, but went into more serious pursuits as an art historian and later as an opera director. He came to Peabody in 1980, where he heads the Peabody Opera Department; he has also held similar posts at the Curtis Institute, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and the Wolf Trap Opera. Baltimore audiences have also seen Roger’s way with British humo[u]r in almost a decade of Gilbert and Sullivan productions for the Young Victorian Theatre. [photo]
Jason Buckwalter (Puss-in-Boots). Jason is a fourth-year graduate voice student at the Peabody Conservatory. He previously appeared at Theatre Project as Benedick and Hamlet in Singing Shakespeare in 2005, and will appear in the leading comic role of Papageno in The Magic Flute at Peabody in March, 2008. [photo]
Adam Caughey (Pippo). Adam is a second-year graduate voice student at the Peabody Conservatory. Appearing in every major production since he arrived, most recently as Quint in The Turn of the Screw, he has quickly made a name for himself as a character actor and leading tenor. [photo]
Grace Chang (Puss-no-Boots and Miss Slinkypurr). Grace is an eighth grader in the Ingenuity Project, a program for academically gifted students in the Baltimore city public schools. She studies dance at the Peabody Preparatory, where she is enrolled in the Pre-Professional Dance program. She was recently featured in a profile of gifted and talented children on the local television station WBAL. [photo]
Kali Ciesemier (Set Designer). Kali, who hails from Chicago, is a senior in the Illustration Department at the Maryland College of art. Her set designs for this production may be viewed here. Adept at many styles, the range of her work can be seen from her website, www.ciesemier.com.
Jeanne diBattista Croke (Make-up Designer). Jeanne has designed wigs and make-up for the Peabody Opera Theatre, the University of Maryland, the Washington Summer Opera, and other companies for well over a decade. Being used to the extravagances of opera, the occasional over-the-top aspects of pantomime are all in the day’s work for her.
Catrin Rowenna Davies (Peter). Catrin is a Welsh-American actress and singer who has absorbed the pantomime tradition during several sojourns in Britain. A graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and of Peabody, she is a regular performer with the Young Victorian Theatre and the schools’ outreach program of the Baltimore Opera Company. [photo]
James Kinstle (Widow Weptalot). James has been Artistic Director of the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival since 2000. A graduate of Towson University, Jimi is well known to Baltimore audiences as an actor, director, and educator. In addition to performing the Pantomime Dame role of Widow Weptalot, he will be serving as an improvisation consultant and acting coach to the children in the production. [photo]
Harry B. Turner (King Percival). Harry (who also teaches at Villa Julie College) has had a long career on Baltimore stages and in summer stock, including many seasons with the Young Victorian Theatre, Theatre Hopkins, Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre, the Vagabond Players, and others. [photo]
Shaina Virginia Vatz (Princess Pimpernel). Shaina, a native Baltimorean and cat lover extraordinaire, is making her Theatre Project debut. She has sung and covered principal roles with many companies including the Annapolis Chorale and Chamber Orchestra, the Victorian Lyric Opera Company, Long Leaf Opera, and the Bethesda Summer Music Festival. In January she will be directed by her very own Puss Principal Boy in Jake Heggie’s opera At the Statue of Venus as part of Harford Community College’s annual “Winter Doldrums” concert. [photo]
Mark Hanson Williams (Composer). Mark holds a masters degree in composition from Indiana University, where he is currently a doctoral candidate studying primarily with Don Freund. He plays for Peabody Dance, and Lyra Music (New York) publishes his book of piano music for dance classes. He won the 1999 Fontainebleau (France) composition prize, and his music has also been performed on concerts in New York, Amsterdam, Halifax, Vancouver, Edmonton, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Bloomington. In 2004, on one of several recent concerts at Baltimore’s An Die Musik featuring his music, Peabody singers Leah Inger and Peter Murphy performed his The First and Last Amendments. Mark also collects toy pianos and will be using some in this production.

The People who Made it Possible

The intimate environment of Theatre Project is ideal for that close rapport between stage and audience that is the heart of pantomime. But a small theatre also means that we cannot meet costs entirely from the sale of tickets. So the original 2007 mounting of this production would not have been possible without the generous support of three foundations who believed in the project and helped us realize it:

The William G. Baker Fund (major donor)
The Jim and Anne Cantler Memorial Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation
The Caplan Family Funds

Our grateful thanks are due to all these donors for their gracious support.

→ Dates, times, and tickets.