Madre Goose has ‘punk songs, psychedelic backgrounds and embraces inclusivity’
“Kids love a mosh pit! They love a headbang,” says Tali Clarke, the writer and director of a queer punk pantomime, Madre Goose, which is streamed this month.
Madre Goose tells the story of an LGBTQ+ community of activists rallying against gentrification and materialism. All the wacky costumes, silly characters and daft jokes are as you’d expect from panto, but it has punk songs, psychedelic green-screen backgrounds and embraces inclusivity.
“The problem with a lot of pantos, when you start to look, is they’re often quite racist, they stick to traditions that are completely outdated,” Clarke tells me. “They can be quite homophobic and transphobic and they have really binary roles. Often the lead boy is played by a woman but all the narratives are the same when it comes to man, woman, beauty … A lot of individuals feel quite alienated by that, and families feel