Prank'd

It is a time-honoured tradition that, on the last night of Panto, pranks are played on the cast. The best pranks usually come from the backstage crew, but cast are allowed to prank each other too. The idea is that the cast and any audience members who have already watched the show on a previous night will realise that there are pranks going on, but anyone seeing the show for the first time won't really be able to tell (unless you hit the holy grail of pranks and get someone to corpse on stage!) Some people actually buy tickets to see the Panto twice just so that they can see both a 'normal' show and the last night, that's how entertaining it is.

Yesterday, the day before closing night, the chorus dressing-rooms were a-buzz with heated discussions regarding possible pranks. I lost count of the number of people who stopped by to lecture remind us that all pranks must be pre-approved by the director and the stage manager, and that the audience has paid good money to watch and therefore we absolutely must not disrupt the show for any reason.

I didn't get to see all the pranks, but I was up close and personal for one of the best ones - the poor principal girl had to read a note out to the entire chorus, and what she found inside was... very graphic... Not only did she corpse, but half the chorus got the giggles too. Heheh.


The backstage crew managed to prank me three times in the same scene. First I have business with a clipboard and pen, then I chuck part of my costume (a lab-coat) backstage and the crew sort out the costumes and hand them back to us a bit later in the scene so we can wear them again onstage.

So, first I went to pick up the clipboard and pen, and found both to be liberally smeared with vaseline. Ick. Then (as expected) the clipboards contained porn. You can basically assume that wherever there is a piece of paper used as a prop in Panto, it will contain porn during the last show. Mine had an extreme close-up of, well, never mind. And finally, when we dashed backstage to put our coats back on, I already suspected that the crew would do something like put things in the pockets, but instead the prank was very simple and very elegant - all the coats were inside-out. Hah.


My hands are well-moisturised due to the fact that, every single time any member of the chorus had to dance with any other member of the chorus, vaseline was involved. I was pranked in the market scene by the guy I have to beat up - he had tried to prank three other people in the cast with vaseline on heavy props that have to be carried throughout the first dance, so backstage pranked him with vaseline on his prop, so then while he and I were struggling in the mêlée just after the dance, he used the opportunity to work copious amounts of vaseline into my hands (at the beginning of a very long scene...)

Vaseline, it's the prank that keeps on pranking.

Two hours later, I got my revenge during a dance half-way through Act II, when I again happen to dance with this same guy - the look on his face as he made his way towards me on the stage showed that he had realised what his fate was about to be. Heheheh. On the other hand (literally) he then worked his well-smeared hand up and down my bare forearm while we were jumping around on stage. Very distracting, trying to sing, dance and act while being felt up.

In the last couples' dance, the girls didn't prepare vaseline for the boys (and they had a quick-change and therefore no time to prepare anything for us) - instead we put on extra lipstick and lots of sticky lip-gloss and agreed on a point in the dance when we would plant a smackeroo on our partner. I didn't manage to carry out this cunning plan though - my partner is about my height but he was still tall enough that he just turned his head away and I couldn't reach his cheek. *sigh*


My favourite prank of all came at the end of Act I. I flew off the stage (literally, I was supposed to be a goose) and was surprised to see a bunch of the backstage crew standing around dressed as brickies. Surely they were planning something. I was half-way through getting dressed for the last scene of the Act when I twigged - during the kiddies' scene (which had just started), the kids help to build a wall made out of polystyrene bricks, but because it takes so long, the actors do most of the building before getting the kids involved. Bricks... brickies...

I grabbed the rest of my costume off its hanger, snatched up my spectacles from the make-up table, and got to the stage just in time to see the crew march out to build the wall, dressed in trousers and white vests, handkerchiefs on heads, cigarettes a-dangling. They brought their own props too - a bucket and trowel, T-square, and even a packed lunch. Took a lunch-break too. It was brilliant.