Word: pageants
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...such tasks as herding cows, carving wooden figurines and drinking beer. Every tenth year, however, Oberammergau is transfigured into the site of the world-renowned Passion Play put on by a cast and crew of 1,400 villagers. So it has been ever since the 17th century, when the pageant was started after an epidemic of bubonic plague. During the last run in 1970, the 93 performances of the daylong Roman Catholic folk drama drew 530,000 visitors and blessed the village with a net profit of $7.8 million...
...only trouble with this happy tradition is that the pageant is tainted with antiSemitism. The florid script that has been in use since 1860 reflects the peasant theater of that time, when plots were full of blood and thunder, and villains were wildly villainous. Thus it not only blames the Jews for Jesus' death but turns them into a snarling mob. Even after World War II, the church approved the continuation of the pageants, but since the Second Vatican Council's condemnation of antiSemitism, the caricatures at Oberammergau have become something of an official embarrassment...
...Festival coincides with the Silver Jubilee of England's Queen Elizabeth II, and Stratford, Ont., is proudly aware of it. The trumpets that herald curtain time at the Festival Theater sound a fanfare of brassy assurance, and the plays follow each other across the stage like a regal pageant. Canada built and has sustained a distinctive national theater, and that is fit cause for pride. Herewith, a sample of this summer's offerings...
Have you ever had a yen for the courtly traditions of elegance in love, etiquette and music? If so the Collegium Iosquinium may have just the thing to soothe your pageant-starved soul. Directed by Harvard lecturer Arthur Loeb, the group will present songs and dances from the Burgundian and French courts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the suitably formal surroundings of the Fogg Art Museum's courtyard. The performance is one of a series of Sunday Afternoon Concerts sponsored by the museum and is free and open to the public...
...essence, Kirchner has produced music for a pageant - the pageantry in this case being the external processions of Henderson's mind. Sensing this, Director Tom O'Horgan (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar) has rolled out the ribbons and ordered up some eye-catching costumes from Designer Randy Barcelo. The first entrance of the natives has a typically splendiferous O'Horgan touch. The sun rises to reveal Princess Mtalba sitting high atop a pyramidlike structure. Then the queen is discovered in a formal pose just below her. Then the entire population of the village emerges from under the queen...