The National Database of Panto Performance has been launched by the founder of Panto Day, which celebrates its third birthday on 7 December 2013, BTG panto editor Simon Sladen.
Two years in the making, the web site aims to list every professional pantomime staged in the UK each year. It provides information about each production including cast, crew and creatives plus production companies and images to provide a rich source of information for panto fans, academics, the industry and the media.
The database currently lists 1,134 people involved in 257 professional pantomimes from 148 production companies that will be performed between 16 November 2013 and 2 March 2014. The first panto to open in the current season was Oldham Coliseum's Jack and the Beanstalk, and the last to close will be the Rainbow Valley Productions Welsh tour of Aladdin.
The database reveals that the most popular title this season is Jack and the Beanstalk with 39 productions, followed closely by Cinderella with 38 and Aladdin with 30. Fourth and fifth most popular for 2013 are Snow White (24) and Sleeping Beauty (22), with Dick Whittington (18), Peter Pan (15), Beauty and the Beast (13), Robin Hood / and the Babes in the Wood (8) and The Wizard of Oz (3) completing the season's top ten.
The database's sister site, Celebrate Panto, will add some new articles to its panto advice page in time for this year's Panto Day on 7 December:
- Choreographing a Pantomime by Nicola Miles, choreographer of Jack and the Beanstalk at the Roses Theatre, Tewksbury
- Designing a Pantomime by Cleo Pettitt, designer of Robin Hood at the Watford Palace Theatre and Puss in Boots at the Greenwich Theatre
- Designing costumes and playing Ugly Sister by Ian Smith and Michael J Batchelor, Ugly Sisters in Cinderella at the Hawth Theatre, Crawley
- Playing Principal Boy and Fairy by Rebecca Little, who plays Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk at the Nottingham Playhouse.
Sladen said on the web site's launch, "It is with great pleasure that we launch the National Database of Pantomime Performance today.
"I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved with the project over the past two years and helped it become a reality, from theatre press officers, to production companies and pantomime practitioners, not forgetting the Society for Theatre Research and database designer David Chadderton.
"The database has been a huge industry-wide project and I look forward to seeing it grow as more and more data is added each day. We're pretty confident we have almost all of the UK's professional pantomimes listed, but I look forward to finding out which ones we've missed and hope those theatres and companies will get in touch to let us know."