Panto

Last year had a few highlights that stood out from others, and without a doubt, one of these was the taking part in the Imperial Islam Awareness Week 'panto' (as well as a later charity week one). The hilarity experienced during early morning and late night rehearsals was almost unbearable to my abdominal muscles, and the outcome of the end product couldn't have gone better.

I had the pleasure of being part of their IAW panto again this year; again organised, written and directed by Omar Hafeez Bore (the legend), could we pull it off again this year? This was due to be the last performance that he would be organising (which I sincerely hope won't be the case), and we all wanted it to be spectacular. I was promised my big acting break (as opposed to the other two where I was more of an 'action' actor), and I had the fortune of not having any exams in the run-up to the panto performance, and so I was able to give up a few mornings and evenings to rehearse.

I and a couple of others are considered to be panto 'veterans', there from the beginning, so it was funny watching all the new people try to get the hang of our lecture theatre 'takeover', which has been the common feature in all of our performances; counting up in sequence, with each person having their own number. The story then usually progresses into something Islam related, and for the latest one, it would be a sequel to Slumdog Millionaire, with 'Jamal' trying to win a million pounds for charity. The TV crew are really a bunch of people who want to make the questions more Islam orientated, and I'm the policeman who puts an end to that, drawing gasps from the audience when I destroyed the 'supercomputer'. This was set to be the most immersive panto yet, with loads of videos shot for Jamal's flashbacks that he uses to answer his questions. Never did I imagine I'd be in a supermarket at one o'clock in the morning and witness a scene where three guys would be fighting over a last carton of soya milk.

Unfortunately, when it did come to the night, technical problems overshadowed the preparations, and instead of some last-minute rehearsing, people were frantically trying to convert the videos we shot so that they could be viewed on the lecture theatre computer. Some of the videos didn't convert in time, but the main ones did, and the story wasn't really affected, but some awesome ones had to be left out.

As with every panto, preparations were very much down to the wire; last minute tweaks with the powerpoint presentation (in which the main gimmicks of our performance are embedded) and ironing out details that we hadn't thought of before. And once we finally got going, it all went extremely smoothly alhamdulillah! The second half of the panto wasn't rehearsed at all, with just the format of the millionaire questions to go by, and any difficulty switching on a video or powerpoint mistake was cleverly filled in by some on-the-spot jokes. After my bit was done and I was watching the rest of the panto, I sat tearing up bits of paper to use as confetti when the million pounds was won, and I thought it provided quite a glamourous climax to our performance. Everyone loved it, and I will savour these moments for a long time to come. But I think the best part of any panto I've been in is the rehearsals, where comedic genius flows free and where unintentional gaffes are written into script.

I feel kind of empty immediately after such exciting events in my life, but that feeling has been short-lived this time, as my to-do list gets longer and longer; you can tell by the two weeks it's taken me to finish off this post!