Investigation Research

In British Pantomime how might the actors playing the roles of Hansel and Gretel in the traditional tale, create the unique actor audience relationship that this theatrical genre relies on?

What’s the relationship between actors and audience?
In every theatrical performance the manner in which each individual actor treats the audience establishes, sustains or varies a particular kind of actor-audience relationship between them.
In some plays all of the actors may adopt the same attitude towards the audience (for example, the entire cast of a production of a Chekhovian drama will usually ignore the audience until the curtain call); in other plays the performers create a range of different relationships towards the audience (for example, most Shakespearean dramas have certain characters who frequently adopt a downstage ‘platea’ playing position that is in direct contact with the audience, while other characters behave as if unaware of the audience’s presence).

Audience is an essential part of the theatrical event. With the actor it comprises one of the two indispensable elements of theatre. There seems to be no dispute over this fact. Yet the audience is the most elusive element of the theatre to deal with, source material is scarce and complex; it does not submit to simple analysis or definition. Primary sources tend to mention curiosities connected with the extravagant behavior of spectators, or to ignore the audience altogether.

But in Hansel and Gretel, I know Jonathan Aitken and Sheldon Rosen, Ryerson professors, have developed a unique twist on live performance. Incorporating interaction between live actors and animated typographic actors, their play Hansel and Gretel explores multiple modes of communication: between actors and audience, actors and actors, actors and animated text and animated text and audiences. It