23:00, Wed 4th – Sat 7th December 2002 at ADC Theatre
Michaelmas Week 8

Every year Jack kills the Giant, Aladdin rubs the ring, Cinderella marries the Prince. For centuries nobody has dared to question these established routines...until now. For the first time ever, you have the chance to watch completely different stories unfold. Following the success of their fully improvised show No Second Thoughts, The Uncertainty Division ventures one step further - into the world of pantomime, where anything could happen...

With Impromime, we started with the premise of a traditional English pantomime - heroes and villains, songs and slapstick, and so forth - and then let our normal improvisation process take over. Despite such a rich set of conventions and stereotypes, we rapidly discovered in rehearsal that the constraints imposed still allow for a huge amount of flexibility, and by the time we got to the performances we had already had pantomimes in modern-day England, deep underground in the Rat Kingdom, and in outer space.

In front of an audience, we had a vampire dentist, a hero with hairy toes, Margaret Thatcher cutting down the forests and introducing conscription, and a machine that turned orphans into gold. And positively no pirates.