Behind You! Sixty Seconds of Panto-Style Invention

Pantomime is the UK's most reliable annual reminder that stories are supposed to be fun. The plot is often nonsense, the jokes are often terrible, and the audience is encouraged to shout back. That is not a bug. It is a creative training programme. With the 2026 panto season warming up, here are three sixty-second prompts that borrow panto's best tricks and hand them back to anyone who wants a quick imaginative lift.

Why panto is a sixty-second creative gym

Panto runs on stock characters: the dame, the principal boy, the villain, the fairy, the comic sidekick. It also runs on call-and-response. 'Oh no it isn't.' 'Oh yes it is.' 'Behind you.' The audience knows the rules, so the performers can play. That is exactly what a one-minute prompt needs: a familiar frame, a fast invitation, no fear of getting it wrong.

You do not have to be a writer. You do not have to be a performer. You just have to accept the premise for sixty seconds. Panto has been doing that for generations, and it is still packing village halls and big theatres. There is something to learn from a form that never pretends to be subtle.

Prompt one: invent a new dame

Set a timer for sixty seconds. Imagine a dame who has never appeared in a panto before. Give her a name, an outrageous outfit and one line of entrance dialogue. The name should sound like a job title and a dessert had a disagreement. The outfit should involve at least one thing that would be a health-and-safety problem in real life. The entrance line should be delivered as if the audience has been waiting all evening just for her.

Now add a secret. The dame is not just comic relief. She knows something the hero does not. Maybe she runs the local chip shop and has seen the villain buying suspicious amounts of vinegar. Maybe she was the fairy's landlady in the 1980s. Maybe she is the only person in the kingdom who can read the small print on the royal contract.

In sixty seconds, you have a character with a costume, a voice and a hidden agenda. That is a panto engine.

Prompt two: move a fairy tale to a retail park

Cinderella goes to the retail park. Aladdin works in the food court. Sleeping Beauty is stuck in the car park because the ticket machine is broken. Take any fairy tale and relocate it to a very British retail park: the giant DIY store, the discount shoe shop, the coffee place with the sticky tables, the cinema with the faint smell of popcorn.

Give yourself one minute to describe the opening scene. What is the modern equivalent of the ball? Who is the wicked stepmother now? What does the glass slipper look like when it is a lost trainer from the sale rail? Do not try to fix the whole story. Just find the first funny or strange detail and follow it.

The retail park is a gift for panto-style invention because it is already a bit theatrical. Fluorescent lights, trolleys, special offers, a car park that feels like a maze. Drop a fairy tale into it and the collision does the work.

Prompt three: write a boo-hiss line for the bus

Panto villains get the best lines because they are allowed to be gloriously obvious. Your task is to write one boo-hiss line for a local bus route. Not a whole scene. One line. The kind of thing a villain in a sparkly cape might say while standing at the front of the number 42.

The line should be petty, local and deeply unreasonable. 'I have cancelled the 8.15 and I shall not be saying why.' 'I have moved the bus stop three metres to the left and told nobody.' 'I have replaced the timetable with a menu for a restaurant that closed in 2019.'

Now give the audience their reply. In panto, the audience is part of the joke. Practise saying your line and then shouting back the response. If you are on a bus, maybe keep it internal. If you are in a classroom, let the room answer. If you are bored on a commute, write both parts in your notes app and enjoy the fact that you have just made a tiny piece of theatre.

The 'Oh yes you can' challenge

Here is the one-minute challenge for writers, teachers and bored commuters. Pick one of the three prompts above. Set a timer for sixty seconds. Do not research. Do not edit. Do not worry about whether it makes sense. Write or say the first version that arrives. When the timer goes, stop and say, in your best panto voice: 'Oh yes you can.'

Then do it once more tomorrow. Panto works because it repeats the same joyful nonsense until everyone joins in. Your imagination works the same way. Give it a silly costume, a stock character and a audience of one, and it will show up. Behind you? No — right there, in the next minute.