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People’s Light Theatre Hires Security Firm After Threats to Its Holiday Panto Featuring a Drag Performer

''Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Panto,'' at People's Light in Malvern features Grace Ellis Solomon as Alice and Eric Jaffe as Alice's cat Dinah and the Cheshire Cat.
Emma Lee
/
WHYY
''Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Panto,'' at People's Light in Malvern features Grace Ellis Solomon as Alice and Eric Jaffe as Alice's cat Dinah and the Cheshire Cat.

People’s Light theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania, has been devising holiday plays called pantos every year for two decades - a zany musical genre usually geared toward children.

This year they took a critical look at how they create pantos, and made changes to make it more LGBTQ inclusive. But WHYY’s Peter Crimmins reports a backlash and violent comments online have prompted the theater to hire a private security firm.

Read the full story here.

(Original air-date: 12/26/22)

WHYY’s arts and culture reporter Peter Crimmins first became interested in radio in the fourth grade, when he smuggled a contraband crystal-diode radio into the Boy Scout summer camp. Subsequent radio projects were more successful.