Word: pageant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...curtain call, when the full cast of 49 actors crowds the stage, a stunning sight in these budget-conscious days of single-set, four- or five-character dramas. The other, even more startling, is the very fact that anyone would choose to bring this sprawling, earnest pageant back to Broadway. Rather than current theater, it resembles Oberammergau's passion plays or those outdoor historical extravaganzas in the U.S. heartland that put a wig and costume on practically everyone in town...
...heroics by which the new and perilously weak Jewish state managed to defend itself. But the writer, now 78, chooses to deal with Israel's wars, and the confounding historical intricacies that shaped them, on a level that allows only slightly more subtlety than a grade- school Thanksgiving pageant...
...didn't win this year's pageant, don't worry. You might snag that diamond tiara next year. There hasn't been a better pageant since Bert Parks shuffled of to that great runway...
...pageant of American history has always looked rather different to the descendants of slaves than it does to descendants of slave owners. Not surprisingly, it also appears less than festive to the descendants of conquered natives, exploited migrant workers or Chinese railroad coolies. To them the vital history lesson is not the myth embodied in the Statue of Liberty but the reality of immigration laws that sharply restricted the chances of Hispanic and Asians. They value less the dazzling engineering feat of the transcontinental railroad than the abuse of laborers. They see the culture that shaped America...
CARTAGENA: This year's Miss Colombia pageant set tongues wagging over statistics other than the usual vital ones. The ruckus began with whispers that a contestant, Catherine Sanchez Hernandez, was secretly married and therefore ineligible. The current Miss Amazon issued a denial -- "I would never falsify my marital status because after all I am studying law" -- but resigned after the priest who performed her wedding ceremony appeared with certificate in hand. She was not studying law; she wasn't even from the Amazon region. In fact, only nine of the 25 contestants were born in the departments they represented...