KEEPING UP WITH TECHNOLOGY

Many pantomimes nowadays are advertised as being up-to-date or modern. Which is clearly a good idea. We don't want Widow Twankey or King Rat to be talking as if they were still stuck in the nineteenth century. The problem is keeping up with technology which is practically impossible unless you revise every script every year. I am aware that my oldest scripts from about twenty years ago (some of them still being performed, even so) are not particularly technologically-aware.

Does any pantomime script available today feature AI? Apologies – no, mine don't. TikTok? Sorry – no.

My characters do, however, use facebook (Cinderella – version 2); Google Maps (Dick Whittington, The Ugly Duckling); Tinder (The Princess and the Pea); Amazon (that's in The Princess and the Pea, too); and a mobile phone with Apps (Snow White). WhatsApp is somewhere in there too.

If I decide to write another pantomime (I probably won't, but do make inquiries if there's one you want that's not on the list), I'd better include some of the ones I've missed.

That's all for now. I'm off to check my WhatsApp messages and play Wordle while I listen to Spotify and stream a film or two.