By Rosanne Travers and Kelly-Maree Michael of DUST Theatre Collective
DUST Theatre Collective is back with a brand-new pantomime to ignite your wanderlust!
Around the World in 72 Days was born from an initiative by Kelly-Maree Michael, Let’s make a Panto! a pilot program run for the first time in 2025 under the DUST banner.
The program helps young and emerging artists to develop their theatre-making skills and create an original pantomime, which will be performed this December.
Over the past few months, five incredible young people (and one not-so-young person) have been learning the ropes of writing for pantomime – character building, story structure, panto traditions – and letting their creativity flow.
Around the World in 72 Days is a fresh retelling of an old story, with one participant saying, “I really wanted to write, but was incredibly nervous to get started. Learning story structure, and being reminded of panto’s history, really gave me the foundation I needed, and the collaborative environment that Kelly fostered helped us all come together with ideas, jokes, and overarching themes, that made it almost too easy (it wasn’t easy, but the stress was less). I’ve really enjoyed this program.”
The pantomime is built around the bones of Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel, Around the World in 80 Days, but we instead follow Nellie Bly (an actual real-life person!) and her long-suffering valet, Passepartout (what’s his name again?), who set out to prove the Royal Geographic Society wrong. Contrary to, ahem, the Society’s ‘scientific’ opinion, the Earth is not flat, women can be scientists, the world is a wide and wonderful place, and it will only take them 72 days to navigate it!
The show features awe-inspiring locations and zany characters, such as Jules Verne himself, popping in for some authorial interjection, unreliable narration and shameless sappy romance, and a secondary villain inspired by a certain orange-skinned despot who likes to fire people.
It’s set to be a mile-a-minute romp around the globe and DUST is now looking for eager and emerging theatre people for set and costume design, stage crew, and lighting and sound design. Message us at dusttheatreco@gmail.com
We will hold auditions in early October! Follow DUST’s Facebook and Instagram or email us for more information.
