King's Theatre Pantomime King's Theatre Pantomime The pantomime at the King's has been running annually since 1971. Before that a few pantomimes were staged from 1964/65 after Glasgow Corporation bought the theatre from Howard & Wyndham Ltd. Pantomime in Scotland has always been popular, particularly in Glasgow, and there has been a long tradition developed from the 1860s. From the 1970s pantomime productions for the King's were funded jointly by the City Councils of Glasgow and Edinburgh and staged in both cities. Stanley Baxter one of Britain's top pantomime dames performed at the King's in the 1980s in Cinderella, written and directed by
Pantomime which grew in pomp and spectacle from the 15th to the 17th centuries. The development of English pantomime was also strongly influenced by the continental "commedia dell'arte", a form of popular theatre that arose in Italy in the Early Modern Period. This was a "comedy of professional artists" travelling from province to province in Italy and then France, who improvised and told comic stories that held lessons for the crowd, changing the main character depending on where they were performing. Each "scenario" used some of the same stock characters. These included the "innamorati" (young lovers); the "vecchi" (old men) such