Shotts Panto

Shotts Panto

I mentioned this panto briefly before. It's the second charity panto' I've agreed to do this month, but the only one I'll actually be doing.

It's for prisoners and their children at Shotts Prison and I think that it's a great idea. Many of the cast seem to think it's wrong to do such a thing on the behalf of convicted criminals. Of course, none of them have ever been in prison and they have enough faith in the system to believe that everyone in prison deserves to be there. Oh, and apparently the loss of liberty and dignity associated with it isn't enough punishment; we should be taking any kind of relationship with their children away from them, too.

I've had the misfortune to spend some time inside. I know that there are people for whom there is very little sense of punishment associated with it and that in many ways it is not harsh enough. Whatever your opinion of the prison system is and whatever you think of the prisoners, I'm doing this for the children who are deprived of their fathers at what should be family time of year. They're not to blame and shouldn't be made to suffer any more than is unavoidable.

The sound was dreadful, we were rather under-rehearsed and I think we knda lost the audience after the interval. However, we got a lot of really positive feedback and there were a lot of happy-looking kids when we left.

I’m really glad I did this one.