Keeping young people interested in the theatre is much harder now than it was in days gone by. Young people today have a plethora of entertainment available, when you consider, mobile phones, Netflix, video games, etc. Whereas before, they would have had to go out and find something to entertain themselves. This makes the job of getting them interested and keeping them involved in the theatre all the more challenging.
In order to keep young people interested, some pantomime groups will put on a summer show, usually consisting of a play or a musical. Others will have a youth production, which is generally a modern musical. Whilst some might perform a youth panto as well as their main panto offering, to keep the young people’s interest and also give them a taste of what it’s like to learn a panto script and perform it in front of an audience.
Our own experience with putting on shows for a large pantomime group in Sheffield, showed us how easy it is to lose up and coming young talent due to not giving them anything to do during the summer break. Once our panto run had finished everyone went their separate ways and didn’t meet up again for many months, by which time we had usually lost several of our younger members. Jackie then decided to start up a variety show, which put on several performances during the summer months, and we found that instead of losing our young talent, we actually attracted more young members, plus some older ones, due to holding open auditions.
So if your pantomime group are finding it harder to attract and keep young people interested, especially if you have a large break in between shows, then it might be worth considering what you can do to rectify the situation. Perhaps even using some of the aforementioned ideas.