SHOT TO THE ART
This year’s Ross Petty pantomime is taking aim at dwindling arts education in schools
Robin Hood is the expert marksman who steals from the rich and gives to the poor — that’s how the traditional folk tale goes, at least. But anyone who knows the holiday pantomime style expects whatever fairy tale forms its basis to be turned upside down.
So, in 2019, instead of wealth redistribution, what will Robin Hood purloin from the one per cent and dole out to the masses?
“That was the biggest question I was asking myself,” says Matt Murray, writer of the 24th annual Ross Petty panto “Lil’ Red Robin Hood,” which begins performances in the historic Winter Garden Theatre on Friday.
“What is currency today? What is the thing that people in power want to take from people who are not necessarily as powerful in order to suppress them?” Murray asks. “It was knowledge and education, being a freethinking being. And truth.”
When Murray, Petty and director Tracey Flye were conceiving their adaptation of “Robin Hood,” the term “fake news” was already virtually canonized as a defining phrase of the latter half of the 2010s. Election interference and the proliferation of misinformation on social media were pressing concerns.
Last year’s panto, “The Wizard of Oz,” revolved around climate change, and the “debate” spurred by corporations with ulterior motives was top of mind. So Murray wrote a version of “Robin Hood” in which the bow-and-arrow-armed rebel fights injustice by spreading knowledge instead of coins.
“The whole story is centred around a textbook. I thought about what the world would be like without books, and access to knowledge and free thinkers of the past,” he said.
The show’s main plot sends a high-schooler named Lil’ Red (played by Robert Markus of “Dear Evan Hansen”) into a parallel world where the wicked Sheriff of Naughtyham (Sara-Jeanne Hosie) has confiscated all of the books in Sherway Gardens Forest. Lil’ Red must help Robin Hood (Lawrence Libor) and Maid Marion (AJ Bridel) restore intellectual balance to their students.
The writing was already underway when Doug Ford’s Conservative provincial government announced cuts to Ontario’s education system, putting thousands of teaching positions at risk and increasing class sizes while claiming to “modernize” classrooms with online courses. As schools across the province reeled, the artists behind “Lil’ Red Robin Hood” became concerned for the future of arts education and the young people about to see their show.
“Obviously, being a theatre artist, I am especially biased about the value of the live arts, theatre in particular,” Flye says. “So I feel that any opportunity that is available for youth to experience, be educated by and develop an appreciation for that art form is extremely valuable.”
So this year’s panto is taking a more active approach to demonstrating the art that goes into productions like this.
“Maid Marion is the one shining hope for the children of Naughtyham, she is the one that gathers them together under the cover of darkness so she can teach them songs. That’s one way we incorporate culture and learning into the show,” producer Petty says.
“Another thing we’re very cognizant of is making sure that the children who come to see the show not only concentrate on the actors that are onstage but the live band as well. We decided to put the orchestra in the top boxes on stage right. So the audience who is used to hearing the live band from the pit, now they are going to see these performers face on. And our Robin Hood, Lawrence Libor, will play the guitar as he sings,” Petty continues.
Flye, for one, has “been saddened tremendously by the movement away from live music by producers of musicals in the recent past. Part of the magic of going to see a musical is being able to lean over the pit and see exactly what instruments are making the sound the audience is hearing.
“I hope that by being able to see the musicians and watch them work and create live, it might pique the interest of more than one audience member, young or old.”
But even if productions like “Lil’ Red” make more of an effort to show off their creative processes, it won’t make up for the loss of skills when schools can’t deliver effective arts programs themselves, says Annie Kidder, executive director of People for Education.
“It doesn’t just enrich students’ capacity for creativity, but also for social development, their capacity to collaborate, to persist, to practise, but even more importantly to understand themselves, to express themselves, to imagine, to answer complex problems, to be able to empathize with other people, and understand their own culture and other cultures,” she says.
“There are huge competencies gained through the arts that are important to all learning and to your whole life. But we have a tendency to think of them as a kind of frill or something that can be eliminated when you have a lot of competing priorities.”
The fewer arts programs available to young students, the less likely they are to opt for them in high school, Kidder adds. And the fewer students enrolled in arts programs in high school, the less likely those programs are to run the following year, further decreasing students’ exposure.
So what can a holiday show like “Lil’ Red” do in the face of such daunting political issues?
Murray says the panto, which has a 10-month development period instead of the multi-year process of traditional musicals, has the advantage of being timely. Murray is in the rehearsal hall every day updating scripts in tune with our news feeds.
“It is a living, breathing thing. We have such a great opportunity to be so topical and so timely,” he says.
There is also a great responsibility, he says, to present pieces that children can relate to “and that will hopefully make them feel confident. I think if we’re going to move forward in the world of children’s theatre, they’re really craving substance. We’re past the days where the female protagonist’s goal is to fall in love. That’s not reality anymore.”
The pantos tend to deliver serious topics slathered in slapstick and humour: “The great equalizer” Murray says. Petty agrees. “We don’t beat anybody over the head, but we put it forward for them to interpret it as they will. I hear all the time that families are talking about it on the subway or car ride home; that means we’ve done our job well.”
Carly Maga is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @RadioMaga
PETTY from E1