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2006 Performing Mormonism: The Hill Cumorah Pageant as Transformational Theatrical Ritual James A. Bell

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATRE AND DANCE

PERFORMING MORMONISM: THE HILL CUMORAH PAGEANT AS TRANSFORMATIONAL THEATRICAL RITUAL

By

JAMES A. BELL

A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2006 The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of James A. Bell defended on October 17, 2006.

Carrie Sandahl Professor Directing Dissertation

Joseph K. Torgesen Outside Committee Member

Mary Karen Dahl Committee Member

Approved:

C. Cameron Jackson, Director, School of Theatre

Sally E. McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

ii To my wife and family for their support and sacrifice during the long days, months, and years of this project.

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank foremost my wife, Nancy Stephens Bell, who repeatedly assisted with proofreading this material. I also wish to thank Rodger Sorensen for making himself available, answering questions and providing details, and showing confidence in this work. Without his continued assistance, I would not have been able to complete this work. Finally, I wish to acknowledge and express gratitude to my dissertation committee chair, Dr. Carrie Sandahl for encouraging me and for being available and prompt with assistance and suggestions.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... vi Abstract ...... ix

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

SECTION I INTRODUCTION ...... 23

1. THE PILGRIM’S PROCESS ...... 28

2. THE HILL CUMORAH’S PAGEANTS...... 59

3. THE WRITTEN WORD...... 96

SECTION II INTRODUCTION...... 141

4. BEGINNING THE PROCESS: SEPARATION, TRAINING, AND CASTING ...... 147 Casting ...... 157

5. THE LIMINAL SUB-PROCESS: RELIGIOUS TRAINING AND REHEARSAL...... 173 Religious Training ...... 174 Rehearsal ...... 185 Workshop-Rehearsal or Religious Training-Rehearsal Process...... 189

6. COMPLETING THE PROCESS: PERFORMING AND REINCORPORATING THE NEW IDENTITIES ...... 196 Preshow ...... 197 Pageant Performance ...... 213 Post-show and Aftermath...... 225

7. CONCLUSION ...... 234 Beyond the Hill Cumorah Pageant...... 240

APPENDICES ...... 242 A Copyright Permission...... 242 B Human Subjects Research Approval and Sample Forms ...... 249 C Letter Sent To Hill Cumorah Pageant Cast Members in 2000 Who Signed a Contact List ...... 255

REFERENCES ...... 257

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 264

v LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. Int.1: Mormon display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D.C., July 1999 ...... 2

Fig. Int.2: Original Nauvoo Temple Sunstone displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D.C., July 1999 ...... 3

Fig. I.1: Hill Cumorah Pageant stage designed by Eric Fielding for the 1988 renovated production ...... 24

Fig. 1.1: Palmyra area Historic Sites map...... 30

Fig. 1.2: Grandin Printing Shop...... 33

Fig. 1.3: Printing press in Grandin Shop...... 34

Fig. 1.4: Joseph Smith Log Home in 1999 ...... 35

Fig. 1.5: Smith Frame House, Cooper Shop, and Barn all under construction in 2000...... 35

Fig. 1.6: Sign at the entrance to the Sacred Grove...... 37

Fig. 1.7: Pathway through the Sacred Grove ...... 37

Fig. 1.8: The Hill Cumorah Moroni monument overlooking the pageant light towers and at the base of the monument atop the hill ...... 38

Fig. 1.9: The ritual process and the Mormon pilgrimage process...... 46

Fig. 1.10: Summer morning in the Sacred Grove ...... 52

Fig. 1.11: Pilgrim family entering the Sacred Grove past an entrance sign that implies the need for reverence...... 53

Fig. 2.1: View of multileveled Hill Cumorah Pageant stage and seating in the bowl from the top of the Hill Cumorah...... 85

Fig. 2.2: Rusty Terry, the actor who plays the Resurrected Savior, rehearses his entrance in the flight harness...... 93

Fig. 3.1: Book of Mormon historical narrative structure...... 101

vi Fig. 3.2: Book of Mormon thematic narrative structure...... 101

Fig. 3.3: Pageant stories and key elements...... 102

Fig. 3.4: Pageant text narrative structure showing the exposition...... 104

Fig. 3.5: The pageant text narrative structure showing the exposition and inciting incident with the first five key elements...... 109

Fig. 3.6: Lamanite Warriors ...... 110

Fig. 3.7: Abinadi burns to death...... 112

Fig. 3.8: Volcano set piece for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, 2000...... 114

Fig. 3.9: Descending Savior...... 115

Fig. 3.10: A Nephite approaches the resurrected Savior, played by Rusty Terry 117

Fig. 3.11: The pageant text narrative structure through Story 9 showing the inclusion of the key elements...... 120

Fig. 3.12: Cumorah ritual narrative...... 126

Fig. 3.13: Missionary narrative...... 128

Fig. 3.14: Combined missionary and primary pageant narratives...... 128

Fig. 3.15: Missionary methodology...... 129

Fig. 3.16: Various pageant narratives with pageant stories in place...... 131

Fig. 3.17: Narratives overlap...... 132

Fig. 3.18: Resulting pageant narrative...... 133

Fig. II.1: Ritual process...... 144

Fig. II.2: Schechner’s performance sequence and my pageant performance process...... 145

Fig. 4.1: Casting as a separation process...... 159

Fig. 4.2: 2006 Hill Cumorah Pageant Cast Application Form...... 162

Fig. 4.3: 2007 National Outdoor Drama Combined Auditions application 1...... 163

vii

Fig. 4.4: 2007 National Outdoor Drama Combined Auditions application 2...... 164

Fig. 4.5: Pageant performance role casting process...... 169

Fig. 4.6: Pageant setting apart ritual...... 171

Fig. 5.1: Missionary service ritual process...... 178

Fig. 5.2: Director rehearses with cast...... 186

Fig. 5.3: Cast member rehearses a scene, while another group rehearses with a different director in the background...... 188

Fig. 5.4: Schechner’s seven part performance sequence with workshop-rehearsal sub-process...... 191

Fig. 5.5: Pageant performance process with religious training-rehearsal sub-process...... 193

Fig. 6.1: A Welcomer dressed in pageant costume interacts with arriving audience members during the preshow...... 199

Fig. 6.2: Missionary passage ritual and pageant performance process with sub-processes...... 201

Fig. 6.3: Pageant cast member as a Welcomer speaks with an audience member...... 202

Fig. 6.4: Processional on stage...... 208

Fig. 6.5: Rusty Terry rehearses for the Savior’s descent...... 222

viii ABSTRACT

The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a large-scale Mormon cultural performance that has the power both to identify the primary Church doctrines and to transform those who witness and participate in its performance. The pageant performance uses traditional Western theatrical performance elements as a medium to recreate ritually the Church’s founding narratives; the performance thus combines theatre’s power to transform temporarily the spectators and performers with ritual’s power to transform permanently all participants’ cultural and personal identity. The pageant also uses the cultural designation of “missionary” to intertwine Church missionary practices and purposes to further define the culture and to use the pageant performance to proselytize for the Church. In this dissertation, I analyze how these different processes and purposes combine to create a performance that is one part theatre, one part ritual, and one part missionary proselytizing, and wholly not exactly any of its parts. By combining these purposes and processes, the pageant creates an amalgamation that possesses qualities from each but by combining them ultimately creates a performance medium and experience that is different and unique. My analysis considers multiple aspects of the pageant performance. One key aspect common to theatre, ritual, and missionary work is transformation. Rituals generally are defined as efficacious, which means that rituals can create lasting transformations for participants in the ritual and for those who observe a community ritual performance. Theatre is illusionary and imitates life. Theatre may profoundly affect spectators, but as far as the performers who play different characters, the performers resume their pre-performance identities following the performance. Thus, actor transformations in theatre are primarily temporary. Missionary proselytizing work involves trying to convert or transform non-members into members. Proselytizing practices certainly can include performance, can include missionaries performing texts in order to present ideas they wish investigators to accept, and missionaries performing behavior they wish investigators to believe or even learn and adopt. My work examines and demonstrates how the pageant performance transforms both the spectators and the participants through complex, multipurpose processes.

ix INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 1999, my wife and I loaded our two daughters (ages 5 and almost 3) into a rented minivan and headed out on a family vacation/pilgrimage to view sites sacred to our religious culture as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also called 1

Mormon or LDS Church).TP PT We visited historic sites in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, and New York where there are locations of great Mormon historical and spiritual significance. These historic sites are where key events in the formation of the Church transpired or where other significant events occurred prior to the exodus to Utah. We traveled to these sites to get in touch with our heritage, our cultural roots. We wanted to experience Mormon culture in a unique and significant way. We had been preparing for the trip with our girls for about two months, taking time to review, as much as possible, events in Church history that made each of our destinations significant. We wanted to provide enough background history and Mormon context to enable our daughters to appreciate these places. We also wanted to use this trip as a means of shaping a Mormon identity, giving them a better sense and appreciation of who they are as Mormons by understanding the historical and spiritual narratives that identify us. In our discussions, as with any discourse on history, we selected facts and details that we considered relevant, looking to sources that present such information according to the perspectives of the Church. Thus, we presented a subjective history to our daughters, our own narrative of Mormon history, consisting of details and theology we wanted them to know in a manner that reduced the history to a level we felt they could understand. At the various sites, the Church maintains monuments, exhibits, displays, restored buildings, and visitors’ centers. The Church shows films based on Mormon history at the visitors’ centers as a way to teach and display Church doctrines and history. Additionally, the Church produces theatrical productions at Palmyra, New York, and Nauvoo, Illinois. Nauvoo has three different productions, including a new, large-scale pageant that replaced a previous pageant about the settlement of Nauvoo. The theatrical production at Palmyra is also a large-scale

1 2

pageant called the Hill Cumorah Pageant.TP PT The pageant has been performed in July since 1937 and attracts more than one hundred thousand viewers each summer. We also visited some American historical sites in Washington DC and Charleston, South Carolina. These sites provided a contrast in purpose and method from the religious sites we had seen. At the Smithsonian American History Museum, we viewed an exhibit about Mormons. The exhibit prominently includes one of only two remaining Sunstones, large decorative stones featuring an anthropomorphic sun, which were part of the original LDS temple in Nauvoo (see fig. Int.2). The other Sunstone we had seen displayed in Nauvoo, which in a way linked the two exhibits. In contrast to what we had seen and heard over the space of a week and a half, the display in the Smithsonian seemed sparse. The Smithsonian display tried to summarize the events and sites we had just seen and more (the display included the establishment of Salt Lake City, which we did not include in our trip) into a relatively small display and narrative. The exhibit represented a secular perspective of events displayed in the context of major American events of the nineteenth century. The Smithsonian included the Mormon development and exodus into a larger narrative of American development and expansion (see fig. Int.1).

Fig. Int. 2. Mormon display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 3

Washington D.C., July 1999. Personal photograph by author.TP PT

2

Fig. Int.1. Original Nauvoo Temple Sunstone displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D.C., July 1999.

What primarily differed between the Mormon history and the American history sites was not the method of display but the intent. Mormon doctrines, practices, and cultural identity derive from specific versions and interpretations of historical events. Mormon history says Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees and became a prophet through whom Christ reestablished his Church. American history explains that Joseph Smith founded the church, claiming to be a prophet who had heavenly visions. Joseph Smith is often listed alongside other American religious leaders. But Mormons believe the Mormon accounts, and the commonality of such beliefs unifies the culture. These narratives form the basis from which other doctrines and practices have arisen. Exhibiting and performing Mormon culture at the various historic sites proclaims the Mormon versions and helps unify and identify the culture. All who staff the Mormon sites are also missionaries trained to teach the Mormon doctrines and use the historical displays for proselytizing purposes. Thus the various displays and various

3 presentations and performances not only present and define Mormon culture but also invite others to join with the culture by accepting the narratives displayed and presented. Before traveling to Washington D.C., we visited our last group of Mormon sites in the Palmyra area. We had planned our trip so that we would be in Palmyra to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which plays for two weeks every July. I had never seen the Hill Cumorah Pageant, but I knew about it. I wanted to see it with my family as part of the historic sites in Palmyra. The pageant was the main event of our trip. The Church stages the pageant outdoors on the site where Joseph Smith received the metal plates that became the Book of Mormon. The production features an all-amateur cast of over six hundred performers and includes dazzling visual effects, vibrant costumes, an enormous stage, and first-rate lighting and sound quality. The pageant brings to life prominent stories in the Book of Mormon. My family and I are very familiar with the stories performed in the pageant. In their Sunday school classes, my children have heard the stories and even sung songs about these Book of Mormon heroes. But seeing the stories performed live was much more vivid than just reading, discussing, and singing about them. My own study and understanding of these stories has changed, forever shaped and redefined by this theatrical experience. My own identity as part of the Mormon community has also been changed by the pageant performance and by my other experiences on our pilgrimage to the historic sites. I felt a new, tangible connection to the events, to the history, and to the culture.

Description of Project

As a theatre scholar and dramaturg, I am interested in how theatre operates, under what conditions it emerges in a culture, and how the power structures, belief systems, and cultural values affect theatre and are affected by theatre. As a type of cultural performance, the nature of theatre reflects the nature of the culture. I am also interested in the limits and overlaps between theatre and other performance arts. As a practicing Mormon, I have seen various Mormon theatre productions over the years from small community short productions called road shows, to various secular and religious musicals, to large-scale pageants. None overly impressed me as great theatre; many lacked on their production values and on the talent of the performers. Additionally, many were overly saccharine in content, lacking serious conflict. And yet, I always enjoyed the various performances because there was always a community spirit and excitement

4 at each performance. Looking past the aesthetic quality or lack of aesthetic quality, these performances celebrated Mormon culture and sometimes even the immediate Mormon community. As such, I found it easier to look past poor or wanting aesthetics than I would at other productions in which I was less personally invested. What I valued was the reflexive nature of the productions as a type of cultural performance. For my dissertation, I chose to more thoroughly examine a particular Mormon cultural performance, the Hill Cumorah Pageant. John J. MacAloon calls cultural performance an “occasion in which as a culture or society we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in others” (1). The Hill Cumorah Pageant is such a cultural performance. The pageant performs the Church’s most primary narratives, histories upon which 4 the principal and defining Church doctrines are based.TP PT Additionally, the pageant stage lies on a sacred site where a part of one of the primary narratives occurred. I wanted to research the Hill Cumorah Pageant to examine how the pageant functions as a theatrical and a ritual performance. Richard Schechner in the opening of his work Between Theater and Anthropology asks a question that also inspired my investigation: “What about large-scale performative events that cannot really be easily classified as belonging to either ritual or theater or politics?” (4). The Hill Cumorah Pageant with its cast of over six hundred and its outdoor audience of as many as 10,000 qualifies as far as the large-scale, and the production does not fit neatly into a theatre or ritual category. Unlike some of the performance forms Schechner examines in his works, the Hill Cumorah Pageant overtly uses traditional Western theatre techniques to create a production intended to push beyond traditional theatre and into ritual. The Hill Cumorah Pageant presents an interesting case study to examine theatre and ritual processes. The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a large-scale Mormon cultural performance that has the power both to identify the primary Church doctrines and to transform those who witness and participate in its performance. The pageant performance uses traditional Western theatrical performance elements as a medium to recreate ritually the Church’s founding narratives; the performance thus combines theatre’s power to transform temporarily the spectators and performers with ritual’s power to transform permanently all participants’ cultural and personal identity. The pageant also uses the cultural designation of “missionary” to intertwine Church missionary practices and purposes to further define the culture and to use the pageant

5 performance to proselytize for the Church. In this dissertation, I will analyze how these different processes and purposes combine to create a performance that is one part theatre, one part ritual, and one part missionary proselytizing, and wholly not exactly any of its parts. By combining these purposes and processes, the pageant creates an amalgamation that possesses qualities from each but by combining them ultimately creates a performance medium and experience that is different and unique. My analysis considers multiple aspects of the pageant performance. One key aspect common to theatre, ritual, and missionary work is transformation. Rituals generally are defined as efficacious, which means that rituals can create lasting transformations for participants in the ritual and for those who observe a community ritual performance. Theatre is illusionary and imitates life. Theatre may profoundly affect spectators, but as far as the performers who play different characters, the performers resume their pre-performance identities following the performance. Thus, actor transformations in theatre are temporary. Missionary proselytizing work involves trying to convert or transform non-members into members. Proselytizing practices certainly can include performance, can include missionaries performing texts in order to present ideas they wish investigators to accept and missionaries performing behavior they wish investigators to believe or even learn and adopt. My work examines and demonstrates how the pageant performance transforms both the spectators and the participants through complex, multipurpose processes.

Theoretical Approach

My theoretical approach combines performance studies, dramaturgy, anthropology, and my own Mormon religious experience. From performance studies, I consider the nature of performance and identity. Performance studies from theatrical traditions have pushed past the limits of theatre to consider how performance and identity interrelate. Identities are not simply some static quality of self but instead combinations of performed behavior that vary according to such variables as space, time, gender, and cultural beliefs and practices. I use such performance studies to turn a critical eye on the nature of Mormon cultural identity, especially where that identity is expressed in communal, ritual, and theatrical settings. Anthropologists who study performance consider not only how performance affects individual identity, but also how

6 performance defines and shapes community and cultural identity. Theatrical performance studies and anthropology also help define and distinguish theatrical and ritual performance from each perspective. My own approach also stems from my dramaturgical experience. As a production dramaturg, I try to consider historical and cultural contexts as they relate both to theatrical texts and to particular productions. As a dramaturg examining the Hill Cumorah Pageant, I consider the background and evolution of the pageant, the nature of the performance space and location, and the textual and sub-textual content. As a dramaturg, I also consider both what has been done and what can be done with a performance text. I consider production dramaturgs to be liaisons between the performance text and its past productions and the current production, trying to reconcile the current production to the text and its context and trying to reconcile the text and its context to the current production. As such, my dramaturgical approach helped me to examine and consider both the processes involved in creating the production, the past traditions and context ghosts that haunt the production, and the current performance context before a mixed group of Mormon and non-Mormon spectators watching a theatrical, ritual and missionary- minded production. Finally, as a practicing Mormon, I have an insider’s view into the nature of the culture I examine. While this position colors my perceptions, this position also provides insight into the cultural history, beliefs, practices, and language. Schechner, for example, acknowledges, “I wanted to understand through observation and experience as much of the village-temple performance complex as I could. But I found myself shut out from the interiors of many temples because I was not a Hindu. This exclusion was one more reminder that I was, and would always be, an outsider” (Future of Ritual 2). Schechner converted to Hinduism in order to gain access as an insider. Facing his ritual initiation, he wrote about his conversion in his journal: “I ought to set down the motives for this act. Were I not denied entry into temples because temples are reserved for Hindus, I would not have chosen this path. . . . I am frightened because I want my Jewishness to remain ‘intact.’ Thus I go into this with my fingers crossed, winking at my Jewish self” (Future of Ritual 4). I sit in the position of being an insider, not a transformed “insider” but a lifelong member of the culture. When visiting the pageant and historic sites, the members and leaders working at the sites do not see me as a threat. They were guarded until I identified myself and provided sufficient background details into my own Mormon practices that convinced the

7 members and leaders that I am one of them. I gained access to the cast, production staff, and the various operations involved at all the sites and performances. Using my working vocabulary of Mormon lingo, I was able to discuss the performances with the participants as they related to Mormon theology. Those I interviewed shared intimate details and sensitive experiences with me without reservation. While I cannot completely escape my own belief system, I am able to consider the nature of the cultural forces involved in creating and performing the pageant. I must straddle the bridge as an insider and as a critical observer. Because I investigate performance as a means of Mormon cultural discourse, I do not directly investigate the validity of the theology of the Church nor defend the culture’s rights or faith. The recent rise in performance studies of feminist criticism and gay and lesbian studies is somewhat analogous. Scholars in these areas also often sit in such a position as a critically objective insider. Such a position has shown to be a fertile one in these areas of scholarship. I believe that such a position offers me greater viability for this study, giving me access to study both the end product and the process, examining spectator and participant. Also, my position as a Mormon and as a theatre scholar and dramaturg gives me a vested interest and affinity for my work. I believe that examination and reflexivity aid a culture. Understanding how the culture functions can help determine the directions to where those functions proceed.

Methodology

In order to examine effectively the complex processes involved in the pageant performance, I employed a variety of research methods. I began my research by attending the pageant as a spectator, sitting both within the performance as an insider, observing my culture performing, and as an outsider, a theatre scholar evaluating various production elements. Thus, my project began with direct observation and exposure to the event I wanted to analyze. At my first visit, I did not inform the pageant production staff that I was coming. I also did not inform the members of the cast who interacted with me at the preshow that I was observing the pageant for research purposes. I also did not conduct any interviews or record any of my interactions at that time. Instead, I only recorded my own observations. I also went to see the pageant the first

8 time to evaluate whether I felt the production interested me sufficiently to make it my study and also whether I felt the production presented enough material to warrant such a study. I subsequently arranged to visit the pageant the following year, in 2000. This time I did notify the production staff that I wanted to visit, observe, and conduct interviews. During the rehearsals and performances the pageant presidency and production leaders aided my research by meeting with me for personal interviews and by providing me access to the pageant activities, the facilities, and the cast members for interviews and follow-up correspondence. I interviewed several cast members, the artistic director, the technical director, each member of the pageant presidency, and other members of the production staff. I also interviewed the coordinator of the Church history sites in the Palmyra area, some of the fulltime missionaries assigned to the site and to teach the missionary dialogues to the participants, and a local Church member serving in the mission presidency for the area. I also took notes and directly observed the various production and religious elements and activities in action. I also created a sign-up list for participants who agreed to receive questionnaires from me about their pageant experience once they returned home. Following my visit to the pageant, I conducted additional interviews in Utah. I interviewed the 2000 pageant artistic director, Rodger Sorensen, for a second time. I have also corresponded with him several times with additional questions. I also interviewed Eric Fielding, the set and lighting designer and technical coordinator for the revised pageant in 1987-88. Finally, I also interviewed Charles Metten who was a member of the Church pageant committee and who helped create the revised pageant text, score, and recording and directed the first two years of the revised pageant. I also received a copy of the pageant recording from Sorensen. The pageant text exists in written form, but the main text is the recording that contains all the dialogue, the score, and the sound effects. From this text and from my own observation at the pageant performances, I have provided close readings of the pageant text and performance. These close readings helped me identify the various theatrical, ritual, and missionary elements at the textual level and examine how both the recorded and live performances express these elements. Lastly, my research has included traditional study of relevant theoretical, academic, and even popular literary sources. My research helped shape the nature of my arguments and helped me design my interviews. Through my research, I established a theoretical basis from which I

9 viewed the pageant performance and various pageant activities. As part of my research, I also read through two other dissertations focused on the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The first, by Charles Whitman, chronicles the pageant text and performance developments and practices from 1937 to 1964. This material provided archival material that provided me the pageant background details I needed to learn. The other dissertation, by Walter E. Boyden, Jr., provided insight and details about Harold I. Hansen who directed the pageant from 1937-1977.

Review of Literature

My primary critical and theoretical sources come from Richard Schechner and Victor Turner. The two collaborated on projects and work involving intersection points between theatre and ritual performance. As a theatre scholar, Schechner’s work considers parallels between theatre and ritual and what he calls “points of contact between anthropological and theatrical thought” (Between 1). These six points of contact include “transformation of being and/or consciousness”; “intensity of performance”; “audience-performer interactions”; “the whole performance sequence”; “transmission of performance knowledge”; “and how . . . performances [are] generated and evaluated” (4-25). Of these six points, I am most concerned with how the whole performance sequence reveals and involves “transformation of being and/or consciousness” and “audience-performer interactions.” I am also interested in how performances are generated and how these processes affect those who create and those who observe the performances. I have drawn primarily from Schechner’s work Between Theater and Anthropology where he outlines his performance theories. I have also considered his works The Future of Ritual and his collection of essays By Means of Performance in which he expands on his work in Between Theater and Anthropology. Schechner’s theories have helped me shape my own ideas and structure my investigations and discussion. My work extends his ideas by considering a cultural performance that uses Western theatre methods to create the performance. Schechner considers performances along a spectrum from theatre to ritual, but his primary case studies involve ritual and non-Western performance areas. The Hill Cumorah Pageant presents a case to study especially intersection points between theatre and ritual within a production that intertwines the two genres. In his work Between Theater and Anthropology, Schechner distinguishes between lasting and temporary

10 transformations, calling the temporary transformations “transportations,” which is when performers and spectators enter into the performance realm only to return to “reality” at the end of the performance. Schechner asserts, “People are accustomed to calling transportation performances ‘theater’ and transformation performances ‘ritual.’ But this neat separation doesn’t hold up. Mostly the two kinds of performances coexist” (130). I completely agree. Schechner’s primary examples of performances that combine both elements include a ritual with some public performance or elements that are theatrical in a very broad definition and a spectrum of theatre performances from Greek theatre, Indian theatre, Broadway, and experimental theatre that have varying degrees of transformation. The Greek theatre transforms the actors and playwrights into winners and losers in a theatrical contest. The Indian theatre involves a complex transmission of experience between the performers and the spectators. The Broadway theatre is slanted so far to the popular entertainments’ realm that it is relatively devoid of transformation, and the experimental theatre tries to infuse elements from a range of performance areas (133-149). The Hill Cumorah Pageant lies closest to the experimental theatre in concept but not in practice. Experimental theatre tends to reconsider theatrical convention by changing traditional ways of theatrical performance to include such elements as audience participation, different performance spaces and audience seating, film and other media elements, and other types of performance, such as modern dance and movement and shamanism. These experimental forms continually change and evolve. The Hill Cumorah Pageant, instead, uses very traditional and conventional contemporary Western theatrical methods, but also it draws from ritual the concepts of ordinariness and repetition to create lasting transformations for the performer and the spectator. The Hill Cumorah Pageant also represents cultural performance on a large-scale by performing the very narratives and sacred stories that unite and define the culture. The Hill Cumorah Pageant performance is more similar to the types of cultural performance studied by anthropologists, which brings me to Victor Turner. Victor Turner’s works that I studied focus primarily on the performance nature of cultural rituals and social dramas. Turner, like Schechner, is interested in the intersecting points between theatre and ritual and how ritual performances incorporate and even “degrade” into theatrical performances. In passage ritual, Turner is especially concerned with the transitional or liminal phase, which he saw as an area of potential where the participants exist between identities. While Schechner’s work focuses more on performers, Turner’s work focuses more on the cultures,

11 those that create performances and how those performances affect the cultures. For my work, I examined Turner’s works The Anthropology of Performance, From Ritual to Theatre, and The Ritual Process to develop a better understanding of the nature of ritual and the distinguishing points between theatre and ritual as genres of cultural performance. As with other anthropologists who discuss performance, Turner’s studies primarily involve non-Western rituals and cultures. His works were especially helpful to me in defining my ritual elements and processes, especially as cultural forces. My work draws from Turner but applies his theories to unique aspects of Mormon culture and performance that lay outside his scope of research. Approaching the pageant initially from a predominantly theatrical perspective, Turner’s works helped me better understand how the pageant functions reflexively and ritualistically, which also helped me better understand how it functions theatrically. By using Turner’s and Schechner’s theories on cultural performance, I am aware that I am turning to rather early sources in performance studies. Elin Diamond in her introduction to Performance and Cultural Politics notes, “In Turner’s concept of the ‘social drama’ . . . and in Richard Schechner’s performance models, liminality both interrupts and sustains cultural networks, tending to reaffirm an organic model for the understanding of culture” and that “postmodern skepticism about all totalizing metanarratives challenges such descriptions” (6). Her assertions state that Turner and Schechner’s theories use performance and ritual models to define culture in stable, continuous terms. Diamond further asserts, “Performance, as I have been developing it in this introduction—performance with its representational and ideological traces remembered—is an important component of culture so defined” (6). Marvin Carlson points out, “Turner’s association of cultural self-reflexivity with cultural conservatism in traditional liminal situations and with operations of cultural change in more recent liminoid activities continues to be much debated” (24). However, most performance theorists acknowledge that performance studies either begin with or at least include Turner and Schechner, and many continue to debate 5 and draw from both theorists.TP PT For my study, I believe Turner’s and Schechner’s theories provide insight into the particular nature of Mormon cultural performance practices in the Hill Cumorah Pageant because the LDS Church produces the Hill Cumorah Pageant as a cultural performance for the very purpose of reaffirming the traditional and central Mormon narratives and practices. I also assert that because of the nature of performance, the Hill Cumorah Pageant cannot only reaffirm traditional Mormon culture but can also examine cultural practices and introduce

12 alternatives. Diamond states that performance as an ongoing and developing mode of cultural study serves to identify and challenge cultural processes, traditions, and practices. She explains, “To study performance is not to focus on completed forms but to become aware of performance as itself a contested space, where meanings and desires are generated, occluded, and of course multiply interpreted” (4). The Hill Cumorah Pageant performance processes that seek to define, develop, and promote Mormon culture, that try to link members to traditional cultural narratives and practices and convince investigators to accept such narratives and practices, also generate subcultural identities, beliefs, and practices because of the nature of performance, because, as Diamond states, performance is a contested space. I also looked to Victor Turner’s work with his wife Edith Turner on pilgrimage. In their work Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives, the Turners 6 analyze the nature of pilgrimage as a liminoid process.TP PT Their work provided excellent insight into pilgrimage and provided good examples and explanations that helped me define Mormon pilgrimage, both in comparison and in contrast to their discussions. The pilgrimage information adds a rich perspective onto my Hill Cumorah Pageant investigations because of the relationship between the performance and the sacred site. I was able to identify pilgrimage as a specific ritual element both in the spectators and in the performers that adds to the complexity of the pageant’s cultural transformations. By doing so, I extended the Turners’ pilgrimage theories and discussions into my cultural performance investigations. David Glassberg’s book American Historical Pageantry was another source of great influence and information. His work details the history and nature of the American historical pageant’s movement and especially the theories and work of William Chauncy Langdon. Glassberg contextualizes the historical pageants using Turner’s theories of cultural performance and ritual transformation. Glassberg’s work provides a framework by which I considered the American pageant’s theatrical elements and purposes that have been adapted into the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The pageant emerged out from the historical pageantry tradition but differs in that, while the location of the production interrelates with the performance content, the narratives associated with the location bind a culture united by beliefs rather than proximity. Glassberg’s work also proved helpful by identifying a uniquely American theatrical form and extending cultural performance theories to such a form. My work extends some of these arguments further to examine a present and recurring performance rather than a historical period of performances.

13 Finally, the last area of literature that informed my discussions comes from Mormon Studies works. I consulted some that directly relate to my topic area, such as Davis Bitton’s The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays. Bitton examines how Mormon culture uses history and narrative to define itself and shape its cultural identity. In the essay “The Ritualization of Mormon History,” Bitton discusses how performing and publishing Mormon history for mass cultural consumption reduces the history into consumable and re-creatable ritualized elements. Thus, Mormonism identifies with condensed Mormon versions of events that reinforce Mormon identity. Bitton considers many types of Mormon cultural celebration and performance but stops short of examining the Hill Cumorah Pageant in any detail. Bitton’s work helped me correlate cultural theories regarding narrative, history, and identity specifically to Mormonism. My work enlarges these areas further into a more extended case study. Additionally, Paul L. Anderson’s essay “Heroic Nostalgia: Enshrining the Mormon Past” first extended the Turners’ work on pilgrimage to Mormon pilgrimage. Anderson’s work also provides specific history to the sites that informed my understanding and connected the Church’s development of historic sites to cultural identity. As I described above, the dissertations by Whitman and Boyden provided details that helped inform and contextualize my research. Neither of these works provided a significant theoretical basis in cultural performance to significantly overlap my dissertation. Whitman’s largely presents a pageant chronicle, and Boyden’s is largely a biography of Harold I. Hansen and uses the pageant largely as a framework for the biography. In many ways, the two dissertations function as companion volumes with the Whitman work offering an historical skeleton and the Boyden work offering fleshier human-interest details from Hansen’s experiences. Again, since both dissertations address the pageant prior to 1988, neither provides significant material for my work. Also, neither work addresses the pageant critically. Both are more reports and human-interest works rather than critical works that study the pageant from a performance perspective. I consulted other Mormon Studies works such as Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited, edited by Roger Launius and John Hallwas. This collection of essays centers on Mormon history in Nauvoo, Illinois, and presents a spectrum of scholarship from Mormon and non-Mormon scholars. These and other works helped me find a Mormon critical voice, a way to examine Mormon history and cultural issues and processes in an informed and critical way without

14 becoming an apologist or a detractor. Because of the content of my research, my dissertation overlaps into Mormon Studies areas. I find that fruitful to my own interests. I believe my work provides a model for further examining Mormon cultural performances and ritual practices such as missionary service. While the content of these works does not apply directly to the Hill Cumorah Pageant, I learned from these works how to examine Mormon culture critically rather than apologetically.

Chapter Breakdown

I have broken my dissertation into two main sections each with three chapters. Following the second section, I have a final concluding chapter. The first section focuses primarily on the nature of the pageant site, the pageant performance, and the performance text. This section also addresses the pageant spectators. The pageant seeks to transform both the member and non- member spectators by directly addressing them and by bringing them into contact with the primary Church narratives at the sacred Cumorah site. In this section, I examine the nature of the theatrical, ritual and missionary elements and how they affect, involve, and transform the spectators. Chapter 1, “The Pilgrim’s Process,” examines the Hill Cumorah as a site for Mormon pilgrimage. The Hill Cumorah Pageant production is located on the very hill where Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon from the Angel Moroni. Mormons regard this site as sacred. This site is also part of a group of Mormon historical sites in the area that serve as 7 pilgrimage sites. These sites collectively represent the birthplace of the Restoration,TP PT the origination of the Church. The physical setting and pilgrimage affect the ritual pageant qualities by including the pageant performance as part of Mormon pilgrimage worship. In this chapter, I examine how Mormon pilgrimage functions and how these functions create a unique perspective for the pageant spectators. Chapter 2, “The Hill Cumorah’s Pageants,” analyzes the various performance elements that combine to form the present Hill Cumorah Pageant. The production combines traditional Western theatre elements, historical American pageantry, missionary purposes, and ritual performance to create a unique reflexive Mormon cultural performance. I briefly look at the roots of the pageant, how it started from communitas activities to grow into a dual missionary

15 and memorialization experience. “Communitas” is a Latin term that Victor Turner uses; Turner prefers communitas to community “to distinguish this modality of social relationship from an ‘area of common living’” (Ritual Process 96). According to Turner, communitas is a state of commonality or intense social togetherness often associated with ritual that exists outside general social structure. I relate the pageant to historical American pageantry to show the relationship between the location and the content, not only as a pilgrimage site but also as a form of theatrical pageantry. I also examine the Church’s reconstruction of the pageant in 1987 as an institutionalization process that formalizes its purposes and presentation. Finally, I discuss the resulting hybrid of theatrical and religious ritual elements. In Chapter 3, “The Written Word,” I focus my attention on the pageant performance text, which is a complex combination of playwriting, musical composition, and a recorded performance of these other elements. The pageant performance text is considerably more static than traditional play texts. Additionally, because the pageant is didactic theatre, the text is dense, layering overt teaching and themes into the stories. The ritual and missionary elements also intertwine with the main dramatic narrative at the textual level. The resulting text meshes these various elements into a very unique performance text that uses theatre to try to serve ritual and missionary transformations with a text that combines recorded and live elements. In this chapter, I provide a close reading of the text and performance to break down how these various elements function and combine. In Section II, I turn my attention to the pageant participants, to the six hundred plus amateur cast comprised of old and young, single and married, families and individuals who are all members selected to travel to Cumorah at their own expense to perform the pageant. Through the process of creating and performing the pageant, the cast members change their cultural identity. The pageant as both a theatrical and ritual performance transforms the cast participants according to the nature of both performances. In this section, I will examine the transformational theatrical and ritual processes to examine how these processes affect individual and cultural identity. The main process, which I call the pageant performance process, correlates with the three phases of passage ritual in Arnold Van Gennep’s model of the ritual process, used by both Turner and Schechner. I have derived the pageant performance process from Schechner’s seven- part performance sequence that he details in Between Theater and Anthropology. Each of the

16 chapters in this section covers specific parts of the pageant performance process and together demonstrate a progression of transformation. Chapter 4, “Beginning the Process: Separation, Training, and Casting,” covers the first area within the pageant performance process. In this chapter, I focus on the nature of separation and define the first areas within the pageant’s combined ritual and theatrical process. Actors in traditional theatre develop their artistic skills through training that is outside of their work for a specific role. At a casting session, such actors display their training in two ways: by listing their background and production experience on their resume and by demonstrating their ability by performing for the audition. Depending on the theatre’s specific professional and commercial level, the actors’ training affects casting and dictates salary. Actors at the Hill Cumorah Pageant do not have theatre training. Instead, they have training and experience in Church doctrine and practices; this background benefits the ritual rather than the theatrical pageant elements. When the directors cast the Hill Cumorah Pageant, they do not depend on actors demonstrating theatrical training but instead cast according to the production’s physical needs while relying on spiritual inspiration to guide their choices. When the participants arrive, they also undergo a cultural ritual that separates and empowers them for their pageant participation. Chapter 5, “The Liminal Sub-process: Religious Training and Rehearsal,” examines two transitional and developmental areas, religious training and rehearsal. In the religious training areas, the pageant develops the participants’ spirituality and cultural identity, creating a unified pageant religious community. The rehearsal area develops the pageant performance largely using traditional theatre rehearsal methods. During these rehearsals, the cast develops their individual performance roles. But these two pageant performance process areas also work together to create a sub-process that develops a combined cultural and performance identity that underlies the pageant performance. This sub-process mirrors a similar sub-process inherent to a theatrical performance process. The sub-process, like that in traditional theatre, parallels passage rituals by creating new temporary identities, but the pageant sub-process is also a part of the larger ritual pageant process that creates lasting, transformed cultural identities. Chapter 6, “Completing the Process: Performing and Reincorporating the New Identities,” discusses the pageant performance from the preshow activities through to the aftermath when the production closes and the participants return home. This chapter examines the complex dimensions involved in the pageant performance that include incorporating and

17 performing cultural identities, temporary performance roles, and ritual identities. These various facets of identity combine during the performance as part of the overall transformational pageant performance process. The aftermath when the pageant participants return home involves an incorporation as the participants return with a new cultural identity created throughout the pageant process that culminates and solidifies that identity. The participants also reincorporate when they return by infusing their new experiences and identity with their past selves and their former community, forming a hybrid of identities that may result in a transformed status within the community. Chapter 7, “Conclusion,” brings the various chapter subjects back together to examine the varied processes and consider the Hill Cumorah Pageant as a single, albeit multifaceted, cultural event. I also consider the larger implications behind my conclusions, what significance my case study represents to other cultural performance studies and to Mormon cultural studies.

Final Thoughts

I want to end my introduction by clarifying some issues relating to LDS theology and culture. Tantamount to any other LDS doctrine is the belief that the Church is the only true and living church in the world. By true and living, the Church means that it is the only church with a full understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the only Church with the authority to act and administer in the name of Christ, and the only Church receiving direct and continual revelation from Christ through a prophet and twelve apostles. The LDS Church claims to be the same church that Jesus Christ established before his death with twelve apostles who received revelations from the resurrected Christ that guided them in directing the church. The LDS Church claims that, rather than evolving into the Catholic Church, Christ’s Church fell into apostasy and disarray as the apostles were killed, congregations were cut-off and isolated, and persecutions arose. The LDS Church asserts that the priesthood authority to direct the church and administer the ordinances was lost with the death of the apostles. The Church points to the varying doctrines presented at the Council of Nicaea convened by Constantine in 325 CE as evidence that spurious doctrines and practices dominated Christian congregations. The LDS Church further asserts that Christ reestablished his church by calling a modern-day prophet, Joseph Smith, and apostles and by restoring the priesthood authority. Thus, the foundation for

18 the church would be priesthood authority and revelation. Mormons view the Church as the restored Church of Jesus Christ and use the term “Restoration” to include the events, visions and revelations that directed and established the Church. Members also refer to the Palmyra area 8 where Smith had his First Vision, translated the Book of Mormon,TP PT received the priesthood, and organized the Church as the birthplace of the Restoration. Because members believe that the LDS Church is the only true church, they feel duty bound to proselytize for the Church. I find this point essential to understanding Mormon culture. Mormons believe that the Church’s missionary purposes are completely altruistic. Church scripture declares, “Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:81). Being warned means having the Gospel. Mormons feel obligated to share their beliefs to try to save the souls of non-believers. The Church recognizes three purposes for having a church, which the Church designates as its threefold mission: to proclaim the gospel, to redeem the dead, and to perfect the saints. All three areas relate to saving souls through the gospel doctrines, ordinances, and practices. Proclaiming the gospel means proselytizing, teaching and converting others to the Church. Perfecting the saints (any members are called saints) means continuing to teach and strengthen the Church members. The Church believes that salvation for anyone comes through receiving certain ordinances and continuing to follow Christ, thus becoming a saint or follower of Christ, and by subsequently exercising faith in Christ by obedience and by performing goodly works. The last area, redeeming the dead, relates to the Church belief that members can perform and receive baptism and other ordinances in behalf of those who died without the opportunity to hear the gospel and accept the gospel. Members perform these vicarious ordinances in LDS temples. The Church devotes its resources to these areas by building temples, sending out missionaries, and establishing congregations around the world. Being a Mormon means being engaged in these missions. Members serve in various Church capacities as lay clergy, find local opportunities to tell others about the Church, and research their ancestry in order to attend the temple in their ancestors’ behalf. The Church as an institution and the people as a culture can seem aggressive, intolerant, and self-righteous at times because of the need to live and share the Mormon beliefs and practices. Also, the Church’s belief in its own supremacy, in ongoing revelation, and in

19 additional scripture separates Mormons from traditional Christianity. The United Methodist Church declares that Mormonism “by self-definition, does not fit within the bounds of historic, apostolic tradition of the Christian faith” (qtd. in Sheler 62). The Methodists suggest that Mormonism does not fit in with traditional Christianity because Mormon history departs from mainstream Christianity’s traditionally accepted view of history. This is true. In fact, believing LDS accounts of Church history largely defines Mormonism just as accepting certain narratives about Jesus defines traditional Christianity. Because Mormons view the Church’s establishment as a divine restoration rather than a separation from another denomination, Church members regard historic events of the Restoration as sacred events. Besides the common belief in the Church narratives, Mormon’s religious otherness also unites Mormons. Besides the main Church 9 doctrines, certain practices such as what’s known as The Word of Wisdom,TP PT which was a revelation prescribing a health code, also help separate out, define, and unite members into a common culture. Finally, by discussing commonality within the Mormon culture, I am not trying to suggest that all twelve million plus members are homogeneous. At times certain regions develop a reputation for cultural characteristics particular to their region, such as Utah Mormons who are regarded by other groups of members as particularly self-righteous and too uniform due to the abundance of members in the area. California Mormons tend to be regarded by other members as arrogant and not quite as bright, stereotypes often attributed to Californians generally that carryover onto the Church culture. Certainly, Mormons also have other facets to their identity besides their church affiliation. But common beliefs, traditions, church practices, and a shared cultural heritage and history bind members across other cultural distinctions. When I attended my first Church service in Ireland, the building looked like what I expected, the format and content of the meeting proceeded as I expected, and I found common ground between the native members and myself. Also, Mormon culture is more than just the Church doctrines and practices. The Church is the administrative structure and organization, the beliefs, the history, the scriptures, the practices, and the ordinances. The Church members and the way that the members act and relate to the Church form the culture. But the Church organization as part of its mission to perfect the saints concerns itself with cultural identity and practices. Expressions of communitas that generate outside or in relation to the Church theology can cause deviations from official Church policies. Again, because the Church believes in its own supremacy, the Church

20 organization is obliged to try to correct and quell deviations from accepted Church doctrines and practices. The Hill Cumorah Pageant began as an expression of communitas, and as a reflexive cultural performance, it possesses the potential for both cultural reinforcement and deviation.

1

TP PT The official name of the Church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Because of the belief in the Book of Mormon, which has always been a central departure from mainstream Christianity, “Mormons” was an early derisive nickname—similar to what “Christian” was in the early days of Christianity. Today, the term no longer holds the negative connotations. While the Church prefers the official title, most members regard the nickname “Mormon” as commonplace and regularly use it both within and without the Church due to its ease. “LDS” or “Latter-day Saints” is more highly regarded but is not as commonplace. Members often refer to each other as simply “saints,” a term denoting the general Church population rather than certain highly regarded or canonized individuals. Throughout this work, I will use “Mormons,” “LDS” and “members” as the most common references. 2

TP PT Sources differ on the correct titling and punctuation for the production. The “Cast Notebook” given to the participants in 2000 calls the production the “Hill Cumorah Pageant, America’s Witness for Christ” (1), while the official LDS website calls it the “Hill Cumorah Pageant: America’s Witness for Christ” (“America’s Witness”). The official pageant website only calls it the “Hill Cumorah Pageant,” never referring to “America’s Witness for Christ”

(Pageant Website). The Institute of Outdoor Drama at their website also only lists the production as “TheU Hill

Cumorah Pageant” U and “The Hill Cumorah Pageant” (“2006 Directory” “New York”). The problem in part stems from the fact that there was some semblance of productions before the first “America’s Witness for Christ.” That was the title given to the first pageant staged by the missionaries for the Cumorah Conference, which I discuss later in Chapter 2. The revised text written by Orson Scott Card is also titled “America’s Witness for Christ.” So, the “Hill Cumorah Pageant” is the production, and “America’s Witness for Christ” is the text used in the pageant. For simplicity, I simply refer to the production as a whole as the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Other forms or listings that I cite at times in this work are, therefore, not in error but simply the choice of that particular writer. 3

TP PT All photographs included in the entire work are personal photographs from the author except where noted. 4

TP PT For more on primary narratives and ideology, see Hayden White’s The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, especially his introduction and the essays, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality” and “The Question of the Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory.” 5

TP PT Joseph Roach, for example, draws his definition of performance from Schechner’s “restored behavior” in “Culture and Performance in the Circum-Atlantic World” ( 125) and describes Turner’s theory of liminality as one of the three unities of Performance Studies in “Theatre Studies/Cultural Studies/Performance Studies: The Three Unities” (35-38). Susan Bennett provides a thorough discussion of Schechner’s theories related to theatre audiences in her book Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. In it she notes that while there are limitations to Turner’s and Schechner’s cultural studies approaches that “the interactivity that necessarily takes place between spectators and actors suggests that the inquiries into drama’s correlation with the social sciences are potentially fruitful. The collaborations of Turner and Schechner have, for example, identified some of the cultural markers surrounding performance” (212). I also recommend Stephen Eddy Snow’s work Performing the Pilgrims : A Study of Ethnohistorical Role-playing At Plimoth Plantation that draws from Turner’s and Schechner’s theories to examine what he calls the “living history performance” (7) at Plimoth Plantation. 6

TP PT The Turners call Pilgrimage liminoid or “‘quasi-liminal’ rather than ‘liminal’ in Van Gennep’s full sense” because the activity is “voluntary, not an obligatory social mechanism” (Image 34-35). In From Ritual to Theatre, Victor Turner defines “liminoid,” explaining, “The ‘-oid’ here derives from Greek –eidos, a form, shape; and means ‘like, resembling’; ‘liminoid’ resembles without being identical with ‘liminal’” (32). The difference comes from a modern transition distinguishing work and leisure with liminoid activities resembling liminal activities but belonging to leisure rather than work activities. Marvin Carlson explains, “Liminal performance may invert the established order, but never subverts it. In complex modern industrial societies, this sort of general cultural affirmation is no longer possible, and here we find instead what Turner called ‘liminoid’ activities, much more limited and individualistic , devoted to play, sport, leisure, or art, all outside the ‘regular’ cultural activity of work or business” (24). For further reading, see Victor Turner’s “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual” in From Ritual to Theatre. 7

TP PT See page 19 for an explanation of the term “Restoration.” 8

TP PT According to Joseph Smith, the plates he received from Moroni contained characters that he was able to translate with means called a Urim and Thummim. According to LDS scripture in the Joseph Smith—History book of the Pearl of Great Price, the Angel Moroni tells Smith “that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones,

21 fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted ‘seers’ in ancient or former times; and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book” (1: 35). As to the characters on the plates, according to Nephi, the first prophet writer in the Book of Mormon, he wrote “in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1: 2). According to Mormon, the prophet writer who edited all the records into a single work, the various writers “have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech” (Mormon 9: 32). Mormon also adds that “if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew” (Mormon 9:33), implying that the reformed Egyptian characters provided a shorter way to write. Martin Harris, an early associate of Smith’s and the person who paid for the Book of Mormon printing, recounts a visit to scholar Charles Anthon with a paper containing copies Smith had made of some characters along with Smith’s translation of the characters. As cited in the Joseph Smith—History, Harris states: I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters. He gave me a certificate, certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of them as had been translated was also correct. (1: 64) According to Harris, he subsequently explained to Anthon how Smith received the plates, and Anthon subsequently tore up the certificate. Anthon denied in writing having ever certified that the characters were Egyptian or that the translation was correct. 9

TP PT The Word of Wisdom includes the directive to not use tobacco, not drink wine or other alcohol, and not drink hot drinks, which has been interpreted to mean coffee and tea (Doctrine and Covenants 89).

22 SECTION I INTRODUCTION

In the Finger Lakes area of New York near Rochester, there is a hill that, except for the nine-foot bronze statue of an angel standing on top of a twenty-five foot granite monument and the visitor’s center at the base of the hill, would hardly draw notice. Of course, passersby in the middle of July view something quite different. A metal mesh group of seven stages that spans half the size of a football field and stands thirty feet high sits part way up the hill facing toward the road (see fig. I.1). New York Times reporter Nick Ravo, who visited the hill in 1988, observed, “The voice of God, digitally processed and 15,000 watts strong, boomed three times Thursday night down a hillside here and echoed out into an open field on the edge of this tiny farm town” (29). Each year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presents the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Ravo’s article describes the dress rehearsal for the premiere of the revised pageant in 1988. Ravo states, “Each night some 10,000 to 20,000 spectators will see Hollywood- scale battle scenes featuring hundreds of combatants swinging swords and spears on a 30-foot- high pseudo-Meso-American stage” (29). Highlighting the new affects added to the production, Ravo calls it, A pageant performed with the spirit of a George Lucas techno-dazzler and the scope of a Cecil B. DeMille epic” with a battery of special effects devised by Keith Richins, who orchestrated the high-tech tricks in ‘Robocop,’ ‘Rambo III,’ and ‘Red Dawn.’ They include a nine-ton, hydraulically controlled ship [which never worked right and has been replaced], waterfalls, explosions, real fire, and a flying Jesus. (29-30) Clearly, spectacle and special effects dominate this production.

23

Fig. I.1. Hill Cumorah Pageant stage designed by Eric Fielding for the 1988 renovated production.

The Church similarly describes the pageant on the official Church website. The Church invites spectators to “experience the excitement, drama, and pageantry of America's largest and most spectacular outdoor theatrical event” (“America's Witness”). This description is rather dense, associating the production with theatre, specifically outdoor theatre, which often includes a lot of spectacle, and with pageantry, which harkens back to earlier days of outdoor theatre and even medieval drama. Pageantry also suggests historical representation, bright costumes, banners, and parades. But spectacle, special effects, outdoor theatre, and pageantry also suggest

theatrical superficiality. The LDS website further states, “The HillH Cumorah Pageant: America's

Witness for Christ H is a magnificent, family-oriented production complete with earthquakes and lightning. Seven sound stages, all with digital sound and state-of-the-art lighting, transform the hill into a scene from America's past” (“America's Witness”). This description juxtaposes elements that do not necessarily seem congruous: family-oriented with earthquakes and lightning; seven sound stages, digital sound, and state-of-the-art lighting with a scene from America’s past; and Christ with anything other than family-oriented. The description appears to be playing two different sides, the spectacular and the family-oriented, religious side.

24 Finally, the LDS site states, “The Hill Cumorah Pageant: America's Witness for Christ is a testimony in drama and music that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world” (“America's Witness”). Testimony also seems different from spectacular, state-of-the-art, and exploding. The official Hill Cumorah Pageant website further complicates the pageant descriptions: the site invites, “Come feel the Savior's love. Experience one of the world's great outdoor theatrical productions” (Pageant Website). This description suggests a production like the Oberammergau Passion Play (a reference commonly bandied about by pageant leaders). The Hill Cumorah site continues, “A beautiful story on an enormous 10 level stage, twelve-tower lighting, state-of-the- art sound system, Hollywood special effects, and a costumed cast of over 650 provide a truly spectacular show” (Pageant Website). This description again juxtaposes the serene with the spectacular—a beautiful story with Hollywood effects. Looking at what the LDS newspaper the Church News, a publication for a member audience, says about the pageant reveals more emphasis on religious elements and raises new issues about the Restoration. The Church News reports, “The ability of the Hill Cumorah Pageant to recount the sublime events of the Restoration has long been felt by thousands over the decades” (Stahle, “Savior’s Love” 05). In this statement, Stahle does not actually call the performance sublime explicitly, but he does imply that. He also links the pageant content to “the events of the Restoration” rather than the “testimony” that “Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.” The Restoration relates to the Church origination narratives and specifically to historical sites located both at that hill called Cumorah and in the surrounding area, including the township and village of Palmyra. Stahle, reporting on the pageant in 2000, the year I visited and studied the pageant, cites comments made by Wayne Lehman, the pageant president, “For all the drama of the major scenes of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, it's the simple, tender moments that tug at the heart strings” (“Pageant Benefits” 10). This statement acknowledges the spectacle but indicates that the serene or “tender moments” appeal the most to him. These various statements reveal a multiplicity of performance elements. Considering the “sublime events of the Restoration,” Mormon scholar Paul L. Anderson links the pageant to the development and “memorialization” of both the Hill Cumorah and other Church history sites in the area. He calls the production “an elaborate annual ritual dramatization of events associated with the hill staged for the benefit of Latter-day Saint pilgrims and for missionary purposes” (53). Anderson sees the pageant as part of LDS pilgrimage sites in the area that relate to the

25 founding of the Church. In fact, the Hill Cumorah is one of the two most prominent Church history sites in the area, and for the LDS culture, the site is one where miracles have occurred. Another New York Times article, this one specifically about the Church History sites discusses the Mormon pilgrim visitors who “guided by faith and road maps . . . arrive in cars and charter buses for a few hours, or a few days, of spiritual rejuvenation” (Hu B1). The author, Winnie Hu, also talks about the pageant, noting, “Not everyone is Mormon,” but that “it is the faithful who trek to Palmyra again, and again, for spiritual fulfillment that cannot be found anywhere else” (B6). For members who attend the production, the pageant presents miraculous and sacred narratives and a way to celebrate the Mormon cultural heritage. Special effects are not necessarily an important part or even an enhancement to a ritual performance. Anderson also alludes to another important pageant element, “missionary purposes.” Another Church News article from 2004 returns the focus to Christ rather than the Restoration events, “The message of the Savior's love was felt in abundance at the pageant” but also adds, “Those wishing to receive missionaries in their homes increased 30 percent from last year” (Sutherland 10). The pageant is part of the Church’s proselytizing efforts. As such, the grand effects and spectacle may help to draw non-member visitors. Hu reports, “‘Everyone goes,’ said Kailey Sawyer, 16, a Roman Catholic, who attends the town's high school, ‘because it's so beautiful’” (B6). But for the pageant to cause spectators actually to wish “to receive missionaries in their homes,” the performance needs more than spectacle. So, what is the Hill Cumorah Pageant? Is it the Finger Lakes answer to Broadway or even Vegas; is it the Mormon Oberammergau; is it instead the Mormon Via Dolarosa; or is it really a bunch of guys with white shirts and ties who have traded in their bikes for a Mayan costume? The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a complex annual event with distinct elements: ritualistic cultural celebrations; traditional theatrical performance and production practices; the ritual recreation and performance of the Mormon Church’s founding narratives; and missionary activities involving the Church’s institutional mission to proclaim the gospel. By creating a public theatrical spectacle, the Church and the individuals involved in the pageant try to combine these various elements, resulting in a transformational performance that includes, appropriates, and combines all of these elements into something new and unique. In this section, I will examine the nature of these various elements and how they affect and involve the spectators. I will focus especially on the nature of the pageant for the spectators,

26 on the expectations the Church has for the spectators and the expectations the spectators bring to the pageant. I have broken this section into three chapters. In the first chapter, I will examine the ritual elements, focusing specifically on the area Church history sites, including both the Hill Cumorah and the Hill Cumorah Pageant. In the second chapter, I will examine the theatrical and performance ritual elements that combine during the pageant performance. Specifically, I will address the transformational potential and nature of these elements. In the third chapter, I will analyze the performance text to discover how the various elements and purposes combine within the text to create a unique text that becomes a unique performance.

27 CHAPTER 1

THE PILGRIM’S PROCESS

Convenient to the village of Manchester, Ontario County, New York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box. (Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith History 1:51) This passage, penned by Joseph Smith in 1838, provides Smith’s description of the Hill Cumorah and the location of the plates that became the Book of Mormon. This passage and Smith’s description of his first vision earlier in the same chapter are simple accounts that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reverence greatly. Thousands of members annually visit the Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove, the woods near Smith’s home, to see for themselves the sites where the plates laid hidden and where Smith had his first vision. Many of these members also come to see stories from the Book of Mormon performed on the hill in the Hill Cumorah Pageant. While these Mormon visitors arrive most often either in minivans or on tour busses rather than on foot or on horseback as in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, these visitors are pilgrims nonetheless. Because the audience is an essential element in any theatrical performance, the nature of the audience affects a production just as any other essential element. Therefore, I find it necessary to begin analyzing the Hill Cumorah Pageant’s ritual and theatrical elements by first addressing the audience’s pilgrim nature. For pilgrimage audience members, viewing the Hill Cumorah Pageant performance is part of a larger religious ritual that celebrates, memorializes, and identifies Mormon culture. In this chapter, I will begin by identifying the various area sites and describing their cultural significance. I will describe the sites and the particular events according to the typical LDS accounts. I will then discuss pilgrims and pilgrimages generally, using Victor and Edith Turner’s book Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture as a reference guide, following which I will particularly examine Mormon pilgrimage activities within this broader context. Finally, I

28 will examine the Church’s role in developing and maintaining the historical sites and how the Church subsequently influences the nature of cultural development and cultural activities. In a December 2000 article about the Palmyra LDS sites and the Hill Cumorah Pageant, New York Times writer Winnie Hu notes, “Many of the world’s faithful make pilgrimages to Mecca. Others worship in the holy city of Jerusalem. And some even find their way here to a remote grove where a 14-year-old farm boy claimed to behold God and Christ in 1820” (3). Church members do not consider it coincidental that such a remote grove and the boy who entered it resided near a hill where metal plates laid buried. Instead, members believe that God guided the Smith family to reside in Palmyra so that history could be made. These two sites, now known as the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah, are the Church’s most historically and culturally significant locations. There, Joseph Smith the boy became the prophet; there, the Restoration began. As such, the Church’s foundation narratives and most distinct doctrines have their genesis there. Not surprisingly, members revere these locations as sacred; this veneration renders them ideal for Mormon pilgrimages. Members revere more than just these two Palmyra locations; many significant events occurred in this area. Palmyra and the surrounding area are also where Joseph Smith grew up, where he translated and published the Book of Mormon, and where he organized officially the Church. Over generations, the Church has acquired and restored many important historical sites in the area (see fig. 1.1). The Palmyra area sites range from a large visitors’ center located at the base of the Hill Cumorah to small memorials that mark a site’s location and briefly describe its relevance. Specifically, the official sites include the Martin Harris Farm and Alvin Smith Grave, where there are no tours; the Joseph Smith Farm, which includes a welcome center; the Smith Log Home and the recently restored Frame House with its Barn and Cooper Shop nearby; the Sacred Grove, which borders onto the Smith Farm; the Book of Mormon Historic Publication Site in the Grandin Print Shop; the Peter Whitmer Farm, which includes the Whitmer Log Home and the Visitors’ Center situated within a Church meeting house; and the Hill Cumorah with its visitors’ center at the base of the hill and a memorial statue of the Angel Moroni at the top of the hill. In addition, the Church maintains the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration site located 120 miles away from Palmyra in Oakland, Pennsylvania, which was formerly known as Harmony, Pennsylvania. Fulltime retired-couple or single-sister missionaries, offering tours and information as well as spiritual insight, staff the interactive sites and visitors’ centers.

29

Fig. 1.1. Palmyra area Historic Sites map. The Peter Whitmer Farm lies southeast of the Hill Cumorah. Used by permission from the director of the Hill Cumorah Visitor’s Center and Historic Sites.

Alvin Smith’s grave and the Martin Harris Farm are the least prominent sites in the area. Alvin Smith was Joseph’s older brother. Alvin died suddenly after a short illness in 1823.

30 Alvin’s particular importance to Church history involves a revelation Joseph received in 1836, recorded now as Section 137 of the Doctrine and Covenants. In this vision, Joseph records he saw Alvin alongside others in a glorified state. This vision laid the groundwork for Church doctrines and temple and genealogical practices on behalf of the dead. Only a new gravestone that retains the original epitaph marks Alvin Smith’s grave. At the Martin Harris Farm, visitors see only a plaque that marks the location and describes its significance. The house at the farm is not the original and is not open to the public. This site is important both because of who Martin Harris was and for the role the farm played in the Book of Mormon’s publication. Martin Harris employed Joseph Smith, Sr., and his sons Hyrum and Joseph, Jr. in 1827, the year Joseph, Jr. was able to remove the plates from the Hill Cumorah and begin the translation. Martin Harris served as one of the first scribes and helped finance the work. He was also one of the “Three Witnesses,” three men who testify that the Angel Moroni appeared to them and showed them the gold plates and that a voice from heaven bore witness that the translation they had seen was accurate. Harris also signed a mortgaging agreement of part of his farm to secure the $3000 printing costs. Harris ultimately sold one hundred and fifty-one acres of his farm at public auction in 1831 in part to pay the remaining printing costs to E. B. Grandin (Church History 63, 65). The plaque provides some biographic details about Harris and emphasizes his role in publishing the Book of Mormon. Both the Harris Farm and Alvin Smith’s grave are of secondary importance to the other sites in that while both of these sites recognize individuals important to Church history, neither site is a location where a significant Restoration event occurred. The remaining Palmyra area sites are all associated with important events. Beginning first with the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration site in Oakland, Pennsylvania, this site has been the least developed. It sits on a large site that includes the Joseph and Emma Smith Home site and the Hale farm site. The Hales were Emma’s parents. All sites are self-guided and include only plaques and monument markers. Nearby in the Harmony cemetery, the Hales and a stillborn Smith child are buried. The Aaronic Priesthood Restoration site located in Oakland is near to where Joseph Smith lived with his wife Emma. Their home no longer stands, but the foundations remain. A plaque marks the site, but no home has been reconstructed. At that home, Joseph Smith translated the majority of the Book of Mormon with his new scribe, Oliver Cowdery. While translating the work, Smith and Cowdery walked to the banks of the Susquehanna River to pray about baptism, which was a topic in what they had been translating. John the Baptist

31 appeared to them in answer to their prayer. He conferred onto them the Aaronic Priesthood, which priesthood includes the authority to baptize, and commanded them to baptize each other. While no one knows the precise location where this occurred, the Church has erected a monument near the river to memorialize this event. The monument depicts John the Baptist centered between Smith and Cowdery, who are kneeling, with one hand on each. Writing under the representation describes the event and explains its significance to Church doctrines and practices. It also quotes John the Baptist’s words, which are also recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants. Given the importance of the Harmony events, I find it somewhat surprising that there has not been further development and restoration there. Given the amount of recent restoration activities in Palmyra; Nauvoo, Illinois; and Kirtland, Ohio, I would not be surprised to see the Church develop this site further. The Peter Whitmer Farm is a site of great significance. In the original log home of the farm, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery completed the Book of Mormon translation. In addition, the three witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer, first read the translated manuscript in the log home and subsequently saw the Angel Moroni and the plates in the woods near the home. On April 6, 1830, Smith organized the Church during a meeting for which 60 people crowded into the small home. The Church celebrated the sesquicentennial of that occasion with a conference broadcast in part from the Peter Whitmer Farm and the newly restored Log Home. The Visitors’ Center at this site is a wing of a building that also serves as a meetinghouse to a local LDS congregation. I visited the Peter Whitmer Farm in 2000. A sister missionary toured me through the Visitors’ Center and the Log Home, explaining the various events, allowing me to take pictures, and answering my questions. While she presented some bits of new information in her details, the general accounts of what happened were very familiar to me and would be to anyone else who has been taught about these events.

32

Fig.1.2. Grandin Printing Shop.

The Book of Mormon Publication Site in the Grandin Printing Shop is self-explanatory (see fig. 1.2). Joseph Smith arranged with E. B. Grandin in August 1829 to print 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon for $3000. Printing was finally completed in late March of 1830. While there are no great miracles or happenings associated with the printing shop, the site makes for an interesting tour. According to the official website for the Palmyra-area Church sites, “Visitors are invited to come to this Historic Site, see the building, the printing presses and observe the printing sequence in the room where the printing of the Book of Mormon actually took place. The visitor will also be able to walk through the bindery and into the store where the Book of Mormon was first sold” (“Historic Publication Site”) (see fig. 1.3). When I toured the site, I saw a shortened version of the tour due to the large pageant-time crowds waiting for the tour. Still, it was interesting to see printing demonstrations and to see how the pages would have been laid out for binding.

33

Fig. 1.3. Printing press in Grandin Shop.

The Church has devoted the most time recently to the Joseph Smith Farm site. When I first visited the site with my family in 1999, we viewed the Smith Log Home and the Smith Frame House. The Smith Log Home is a replica built as accurately as possible to the original construction and onto the original site (see fig. 1.4). It was completed the year prior to our visit. Parts of the Frame House were original in 1999. When I returned in 2000, workers were busy restoring and renovating the Frame House (see fig. 1.5). Since then, the Church has also opened a new Smith Farm Welcome Center, completed the Cooper Shop and Barn, and restored the grounds to a state believed similar albeit perhaps ideal to how the grounds would have appeared in the 1820s. The site now is a mixture of display in the Welcome Center, tours through the Log and Frame houses, and self-guided tours through the grounds, Barn, and Cooper Shop. There are walking paths and information markers through the self-guided areas.

34

Fig. 1.4. Joseph Smith Log Home in 1999.

Fig. 1.5. Smith Frame House, Cooper Shop, and Barn all under construction in 2000.

35 The various sites at the Smith Farm have been restored to depict a sense of “what it was like,” but unlike the Book of Mormon Publication Site, the Smith Farm is of more than just historical significance. Many miraculous events that are related to the founding of the Church occurred at these sites. In the Smith Log Home, the Angel Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith in a bedroom he shared with his brothers. Moroni appeared three times that night on September 21, 1823, and told Smith about the plates and where they were located. After receiving the plates four years later in September 1827, Smith hid them at times in a hollow log near the Frame House. He also once hid them under the hearthstone in the Frame House and once in the Cooper Shop. He hid the chest that usually held the plates under the floor of the Cooper Shop but hid the plates themselves, wrapped in linen, under the flax in the loft. That night, treasure seekers ransacked the Cooper Shop, even tearing up the floor, but were unable to find the plates. Smith left with the plates for Harmony, Pennsylvania, in December 1827 to translate them without harassment, but the Smith Farm remains the site where Joseph first saw Moroni, first learned of the plates, and where he first brought the plates. The Log Home on the Smith Farm is also where Joseph lived as a teenager when he first seriously contemplated religion. In the spring of 1820, pondering his questions, Smith sought a secluded spot in the woods bordering the family farm to pray. What transpired is the most significant of all the miraculous events concerning the founding of the Church. Those woods, now known as the Sacred Grove, are adjacent to the Smith Farm Site and are now accessed through the Smith Farm Site. Visitors, however, need not stop by the Farm Welcome Center or visit any of the other farm sites. The Sacred Grove, I think fittingly, is a self-guided tour site. Signs and markers show the entrance (see fig.1.6), and benches are placed throughout the well- maintained footpaths (see fig.1.7). Beyond that, the Church has not erected other monuments or memorials. Instead, the woods remain a place for reverence and contemplation as they were for the teenage Smith. Because no one knows the precise vision spot, the sanctuary spreads throughout the woods. Even during the busy pageant period, visitors can find secluded areas for their own meditation.

36

Fig. 1.6. Sign at the entrance to the Sacred Grove.

Fig. 1.7. Pathway through the Sacred Grove.

37 Three miles southeast of the Sacred Grove and Smith Farm sites lies the next most spiritually significant site, the Hill Cumorah. The Hill Cumorah Visitors’ Center serves as a central location for visitors, providing details about the other sites, and as the administrative headquarters to the other sites. Footpaths from the Visitors’ Center lead up the hill. At the start of the footpaths, a book-shaped monument tells about the Book of Mormon. At the crest of the hill, a large, tall monument topped by a bronze statue of the Angel Moroni overlooks the hill (see fig. 1.8). The monument tells about the angel and Smith and depicts various scenes from their encounters. The view from the monument is quite stunning, and during the pageant period, it offers a nice overview of the enormous stage. Since no markers designate the actual site where the plates were located, the top of the hill and the monument serve as the primary destinations on the hill.

Fig. 1.8. The Hill Cumorah Moroni monument overlooking the pageant light towers and at the base of the monument atop the hill.

38 The Hill Cumorah Visitors’ Center is similar to other Church visitors’ centers both at other historic sites and many Church temples. They are also similar to other tourist centers such as at federal or state museums, monuments, sites, and parks. While each visitors’ center has unique qualities specific to its location, the Church also designs each center to be an official public institution that presents and defines official Church doctrines and practices. These centers also balance dual purposes to inform inquiring non-member visitors and actively proselytize for the Church and to serve as both a resource and sanctuary to member visitors. I have visited a number of visitors’ centers including the two Salt Lake Temple Visitors’ Centers, the Los Angeles Temple Visitors’ Center, the Independence, Missouri Visitors’ Center, the Liberty Jail Visitors’ Center, the Nauvoo Visitors’ Center, the Carthage Jail Visitor’s Center, and the Hill Cumorah Visitors’ Center. Each has willing missionaries ready to assist and answer questions; each has pamphlets and information; each has numerous imagery and artwork representing Christ, present and former Church leaders, and Church history and practices; and each also has displays and multimedia presentations about Church beliefs and practices. Missionary guides at each center give a careful and formalized presentation at all the displays. Like other tourist sites, the visitors’ centers’ displays, tours, presentations, and information are carefully created to depict a specific official version of events that support the governing institution. The missionaries at the LDS sites are well-rehearsed according to carefully prepared scripts designed to be both informative and spiritually inspiring. The scripts always link the site’s representative events with official Church interpretation. Thus, the Church defines how the events are described and defined, how they are to be interpreted, and how they are important and relevant to Church 1

doctrines and practices.TP PT Such display and discursive techniques reflect the Church’s purposes for developing and restoring these historical sites. Church officials discuss these purposes in a 1996 article called “Conversation: Church Historical Sites” published in the Ensign, an official Church magazine.

The article is a brief question-and-answer between the editors and StephenT D. Nadauld, who was T the executive director of the Church’s Historical Department and chairman of the Historic Sites

Committee, T and Earl C. Tingey, who was the assistantT executive director of the Church’s

Missionary Department and vice chairman of the Historic Sites Committee.T The article’s format is unusual in that the responses are not attributed to either respondent specifically, and at times

the responses seem to be a summary rather than a direct quote. The editors ask, “CanT you give

39 background on why the Church devotes resources to restoring and developing historical sites?” to which the response is, “Whenever a group of people make the effort to better learn and understand their heritage, those people will be strengthened. . . . By studying about and, when possible, visiting the sites of important events and revelations, we can gain an unusually strong understanding of and connection with our past” (“Conversation”). The two respondents add that “the purpose of the Church’s historic sites program is to strengthen the faith of members and to interest others in the restored gospel by increasing visitors’ understanding of the significant events, buildings, and sites in Church history and of associated gospel principles” (“Conversation”). Implicit to this purpose is that the visitors, member or non-member, increase their understanding of Church history and associated gospel principles according to how the Church defines and relates these events. The respondents add, “At sites where visitors’ centers have been established, our purpose expands to invite all to come unto Christ by providing visitors with an opportunity to learn more about our beliefs and accept an invitation for missionaries to teach them the gospel” (“Conversation”). Thus, visitors’ centers provide an outlet to not only address the particular historic site and associated events but also to place those events into the larger Church context. Doing so better defines Church beliefs and practices and facilitates active proselytizing. That the staff members are obviously fulltime missionaries with their nametags displayed demonstrates that the Church neither hides nor apologizes for such purposes. The editors ask the officials another relevant question: “How do the historical sites accomplish their purpose?” (“Conversation”). The response summarizes Nadauld’s experience at a historic site, the Whitney Store in Kirtland, Ohio, to illustrate “the impact historical sites can have on individuals” (“Conversation”). The summary first describes how Nadauld noticed the th authentic items one would expect to find in a 19P P century shop, and “that can help a person imagine what life was like during the important events that happened there” (“Conversation”). The “what life was like” aspect reflects one specific purpose for the sites and for accurately restoring them. Visiting the sites helps visitors of both types appreciate the context that surrounds the specific events associated with the sites. This part of the experience parallels such experiences at any historical museum, but the interactive Church sites in Palmyra, like the Whitney Store in Nadauld’s experience, are not simply “everyday life” history appreciation sites. Instead, they are sites remembering specific and culturally significant events. For Nadauld, what

40 was most significant was the sister missionary’s explanations of the spiritual events and her own beliefs about those events. In this way, the Church is able to display the history, define and describe the event, and then interpret the event on a personal level as missionaries, as instructed, supply their own testimony regarding their belief in the events they are describing and in the Church in general. The Church officials finish their responses with a summation that serves as a call to members to visit and enjoy the sites. They state: No better way exists for gaining a stronger sense of our heritage than studying about and, when possible, visiting Church history sites. Whether members visit a site that is simply marked with a sign, or a major site like Nauvoo, they will come away feeling more appreciative and inspired by our forebears’ sacrifices and efforts and more grateful for the Restoration of the gospel. They will understand better who they are and why they should strive to be more dedicated to the gospel cause. (“Conversation”) From these statements, clearly the Church wants members to benefit from the sites by better understanding the events and the great members of the Church who have come before. Church history acts as a primary cultural identifier because the events surrounding Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the formation of the Church provide the foundation upon which all Church doctrines and practices ultimately rest. Yes, the Church’s primary faith rests in its assertion that Jesus is the Christ, like so many other Christian churches, but Smith’s revelations, his status as an accepted prophet, and the Book of Mormon all define the Church’s belief in and relationship to Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is imperative that members and potential members understand the Church narratives according to the official Church accounts. Thus, the Church has spent resources toward developing its sites and utilizing them to display, define, and interpret the events associated with the Church and the Church’s doctrines and practices. What results is that the displays and presentations reduce the events and the lives of the historic figures into transferable-sized narratives. Images, recreations, and accounts highlight those people, events, practices, and doctrines deemed to be the most important. Facts and details at times blend into simplified explanations. But these reductions are not inherent only to the sites. Instead these narratives and accounts are the traditional stories of the Mormon culture. Mormon historian Davis Bitton in “The Ritualization of Mormon History” calls such reductions a ritualization of history. He states, “Without denying that written histories have enormous

41 influence, especially those used in schools, it should be recognized that a pervasive, ultimately more important influence in fostering a sense of the past is ritual” (171). He adds that his definition of ritual is a “broad sense” that refers to the “forms and symbols whose function is not primarily the communication of knowledge but rather the simplification of the past into forms that can be memorialized, celebrated, and emotionally appropriated” (171). An intellectual understanding of the past, while important in the preservation of the past, alone is not sufficient, especially on the cultural level. The Church certainly has scholars, and in fact, Mormon studies is expanding and even becoming mainstream in academia. But for the mass cultural population, there must also be a practical form of remembering, such as celebrations, rites, or practices. These practices, according to Bitton, are necessarily reductive, intended for mass consumption, and therefore present history in simple, cause-and-effect terms, appropriating and performing history in ways Bitton likens to morality plays. These cultural rituals and practical remembrances likewise preserve the past, especially within a culture, and lead to traditions and even cultural markers and identities. Those who are raised in the Church learn from an early age about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the events of the Restoration and stories of Church history and heroes, such as the pioneers who, when expelled from Nauvoo, made their way to Utah. Adult Sunday school classes may study much more about Church history and the details of the events, but even so, adults and children learn the simple stories, view many of the same images, and perform the 2 same practices.TP PT Bitton acknowledges that ritualized history is “not satisfactory for all purposes. It celebrates what is celebratable, ignoring much of the past as it was” (183). However, he adds that “most people are not historians—which is to say that most of us will possess our history ritualistically or not possess it at all” (183). Eric Hobsbawm, in the Introduction to The Invention of Tradition, asserts that creating traditions and preserving the cultural past “is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition” (4). Such is the way Mormon history has evolved in the Church, and as it has, the doctrines, practices, and cultural identity has formed and formalized. Thus, being a Mormon or identifying oneself as a Mormon means espousing the particular Church narratives that certainly are ritualized, means believing Church history has happened the way the Church says it has happened, that such accounts are essentially true. Bitton notes a letter from another Mormon scholar, Jan Shipps, in which she describes such a process. Shipps relates that a friend

42 told her about hearing a new convert to the Church describe the historical mobbings and persecutions to members of the Church in such places as Kirtland, Ohio; Far West, Missouri; and Nauvoo, Illinois: This convert’s account failed to make any new reference to the possibility that the Saints might have been in some measure responsible for the way they were treated. . . . The convert’s rehearsal of this highly ritualized version of Mormon history is an integral part of the process of his becoming a Mormon, acquiring an identity as a Latter-day Saint—of taking the Mormon heritage as his own. It seems to me that what an experience like this does for the individual convert, the ritualization of Mormon history has done for the entire Mormon community—it has helped them acquire an identity and pride in that identity. (qtd. in Bitton 187) I agree with her conclusion that by ritualizing Mormon history, developing standardized narratives, images, practices, and celebrations, the Church has been able to make its history its own and develop its own culture. Doing so has created and established the cultural identity of being Mormon. Developing and designating historic sites and memorials is part of the ritualization of Mormon history because such allows the Church to physically possess its history, and it provides places where members can perform acts that celebrate, remember, and personalize Mormon history. While the Church encourages members to use the sites as a way to learn about and understand Church history and heritage, many members come to the sites not so much to learn the Church history but to experience it or relate to it on a personal level. In many cases, members who visit the sites are already well aware of the particular events and well-schooled in the narratives and accounts presented. When I took my family to various sites from Missouri through Nauvoo, Kirtland, and on into the Palmyra area, I did learn some new details, but for the most part, I already knew what occurred at each site, why it was important, and how I felt about it. Instead, visiting those various sites was about immersing myself in Church history and experiencing it in a more profound way, and it was about sharing that experience with my family. Mormon scholar Paul L. Anderson, in a paper given at a Mormon History Association meeting in Canandaigua, NY, a town near Palmyra, explains that they, the scholars in the association as well as Church members generally, have come to “an area where, when all is said and done, there really is not that much to see. To be sure, there is a rather unremarkable woodlot

43 near an old farmhouse, [and] there is a modest-sized hill with a statue on top” (47). In general terms, the area is pretty but lacking in mass appeal. Instead, the appeal is in the events linked to the locations. While Anderson delivered this address in 1980 before much of the current renovations occurred, his points are still fitting. “And if the ordinariness of the place is not enough,” he continues, “the sites here are explained to us by guides from back home, showing pictures we’ve all seen before, repeating scripts prepared in Salt Lake City, all in a voice and 3 spirit reminiscent of a conventional monthly testimony meeting”TP PT (47). Anderson further explains what is to gain from coming to the sites: “We have come here not so much to see surprising new things as to see familiar sights and feel familiar feelings with special intensity. So we listen attentively as the guides tell us the story of the Restoration that we could almost as easily tell them (and in almost the same words). This is as we expect it to be” (48). The point for members is not to encounter new information, although there may be new details or new insights, but instead to rekindle their faith and expand their understanding by personalizing the 4 history and cultural events.TP PT At the sites, members can see and touch, if not the actual artifacts, the better physical replications; they can hear the same old stories but hear them while actually standing where the stories occurred; and they can envision both the events and themselves within those events. Although Anderson calls the desire to visit Church history sites a “nostalgia” (48), which 5

fits into the idea of seeing life as it was, pilgrimage is more than just nostalgia.TP PT Anderson asserts, “Like pilgrims of all ages, we travel to a far country to feel ourselves at home. We come to new places to have our old ideas confirmed. We come yearning to touch with our hands and to possess with our memories a part of our heritage and history and faith that we have already owned all our lives in our imaginations” (48). I agree with this assessment that pilgrimage is about a longing to connect with one’s heritage and that it is about confirming rather than establishing faith, but the Palmyra area sites, especially the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah, are more than just historically noteworthy. Rather, these sites represent the very foundations for Mormon faith. They are what Victor and Edith Turner state about pilgrimage sites: “They are believed to be places where miracles once happened, still happen, and may happen again” (6). I also agree with Anderson that the confirmation of faith associated with the pilgrimage occurs through seeing, touching, experiencing, and ultimately possessing through performance and through shared cultural memory. These terms, however, are active; they require action rather

44 than just longing from the pilgrim. Pilgrimage is not a passive pursuit, where the visitor simply receives information from guides and “sees life as it was.” Being on a pilgrimage means performing the role of a pilgrim. I want to now consider more thoroughly the nature of pilgrimage. In doing so, I will look further at Victor and Edith Turner’s work Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, which provides a thorough anthropological examination, for insight applicable to Mormon pilgrimage. I am especially interested in how pilgrimage relates to and is a type of ritual experience. Victor Turner has published much on the nature of ritual and is especially interested in the transitional or liminal phase of passage rituals. He derived his theories from Arnold van Gennep’s model for passage rituals featuring three distinct phases: separation, limen or margin, and aggregation or incorporation. Within the liminal phase, the person or group that is changing by means of the passage ritual is outside the community or culture. They are between identities, having shed at least in part who they were and not yet assumed who they will be. Through the process as a whole, the individuals are transformed and hold a different status within the society. For the purposes of clarity, I have devised a crude figure to represent these phases that I will use to illustrate this and similar processes (see fig. 1.9). Pilgrimage, with its separation, transition, and incorporation, is a ritual performance and process and as such has transformational power. The Turners in their work refer to modern pilgrimage as “liminoid” or “quasi-liminal” rather than liminal, marking it as perhaps ritualistic rather than ritual, citing that pilgrimage is voluntary rather than obligatory and that postindustrial society has relegated all religious practice from the work/obligatory realm to the leisure/individual option realm (35-37). But even as a liminoid phenomena, pilgrimage still has the power to confirm faith and transform the pilgrim both personally and within the society.

45

Fig. 1.9. The ritual process and the Mormon pilgrimage process.

A pilgrim, the Turners explain, “is one who divests himself of the mundane concomitants of religion—which become entangled with its practice in the local institution—to confront, in a special ‘far’ milieu, the basic elements and structures of his faith in the unshielded, virgin radiance” (15). Pilgrims first separate themselves from their immediate society, even from their general religious practices, in order to see what it is that they worship or celebrate by worship, to experience the artifacts of their faith for themselves, and to gain some advanced or enhanced insight into the religious practices. This separation begins the transformational process as the ordinary member steps away from his/her routine identity and into the role of the pilgrim. In this role, as the Turners describe, “One gets away from the reiterated ‘occasions of sin’ which make up so much of the human experience of social structure” (7). Because religious practices often are subjugated by work and other life necessities, pilgrimage becomes a special devotion or even consecration. The pilgrims devote their full attention to their faith and worship, separating themselves from their mundane lives and activities that distract from religious service. “One piles up a store of nagging guilts,” the Turners assert, “not all of which can be relieved in the

46 parish confessional, especially when the priest himself may be party to some of the conflicts. When such a load can no longer be borne, it is time to take to the road as a pilgrim” (7). Even in our sophisticated age, devoting time, money, and other resources to such a pilgrimage requires a level of sacrifice, of giving up for a time other worldly pursuits, or as the Turners put it, giving up “not only the cares but also the rewards of ordinary life” (6). Separation and the subsequent sacrifice are essential to assuming a pilgrim identity. The person is able to perceive of him/herself as a pilgrim having begun with these specific acts and, consequently, becomes predisposed to experience spiritual phenomena or even miracles that will affirm or validate these acts. Thus, pilgrimage is a form of spiritual work, an investment of time and activity in hopes of spiritual rewards. The Turners focus most of their discussion on Catholic pilgrimages because, as they point out, “the performance of pilgrimage is considered by Catholics to be a supereminently good work” (30) and Catholicism is also the tradition “which [they] know best” (3). Catholic theology, as the Turners clarify, “has always been that no one can be sure of salvation until the very last gasp” (30). As such, Catholic theology holds that “good works are performed in response to graces” and “good works are defined as the ‘observance of the precepts and counsels’” (30). Precepts are commandments required for salvation, and counsels “are rules of life and conduct for those who, not satisfied with the bare minimum, aim at a greater moral perfection by means of good works not commanded but commended” (30). Therefore, “for Catholics, going on a pilgrimage is a good work in response to a counsel” (31); it is a way to demonstrate devotion and perform an acceptable labor thus improving one’s standing. LDS theology, in this area, shares commonality with Catholic theology. Mormons believe that faith is demonstrated and cultivated through good works. LDS doctrines and practices in this regard are not as formalized and prescribed as those of Catholicism; however, the Church holds that members must continue to progress spiritually and perfect themselves by increasing their understanding and faith through study, by replacing “sinful” behavior with appropriate behavior, and by developing a proper mindset and will that is religiously centered and service-minded rather than worldly and selfish. Part of the Church’s mission includes “perfecting the saints,” and the Church regards perfection as a process that members should actively pursue. Visiting Church sites, a Mormon pilgrimage, while not as formalized as Catholic pilgrimage, is similarly a good work or performance that can aid one’s personal perfection and improvement process.

47 Traditionally, a pilgrim’s journey to the sites or shrines was an important part of the pilgrimage and part of the sacrifice. Often the journey was perilous and rigorous. Mormon pilgrims face the costs of travel, especially those many with large families, rather than physically demanding or dangerous travel conditions. As such, the journey is less important to the process. While certainly some travelers read Church scriptures or histories or perform other duties to maximize their experience, the Mormon pilgrim’s most important activities occur at the sites. The Turners note that traditionally “toward the end of a pilgrimage,” which in this case would be when the Mormon pilgrims arrive at the Palmyra sites, “the pilgrim’s new-found freedom from mundane or profane structures is increasingly circumscribed by symbolic structures: religious buildings, pictorial images, statuary, and sacralized features of the topography” (10). Pilgrims recognize these “symbolic structures” as artifacts associated with their faith’s sacred persons and events. These structures are the shrine’s identifying signs, and as the pilgrims see them, they become increasingly immersed in the stories and events memorialized by the shrines. For Mormon pilgrims, the buildings, images, statuary, and topography include the restored homes, woodlands, images and statues at the visitors’ centers, and the “hill of considerable size.” Thus, even though these features are “ordinary” as Anderson describes, for the Mormon pilgrim, they are remarkable, they are real, and they are anticipated; they are the designators of the miraculous Restoration, the foundation for LDS theology. The Palmyra historic sites and shrines categorically are related to what the Turners describe as a type 1, or “prototypical” pilgrimage, and a type 4, or “modern” pilgrimage. I will begin by discussing the prototypical category. These pilgrimages are those “which, on the authority of documentary or widespread traditional evidence, were established by the founder of a historical religion, by his first disciples, or by important national evangelists of his faith.” Such pilgrimage sites, the Turners assert, “dramatically manifest—in their symbolism, charter narratives, ecclesiastical structure, and general form of international repute—the orthodoxy of the faith from which they have sprung, and remain consistent with its root paradigms” (17-18). The Palmyra area sites as divine origin sites fit neatly into such a category, which means that by their nature they reinforce and reiterate the Church’s founding narratives. By their very existence, these sites reinforce the events surrounding and including Joseph Smith’s calling as a prophet, his translation of the Book of Mormon, and the formation of the Church. Developing the

48 sites into pilgrimage shrines reinforces their ability to “dramatically manifest” the Church’s foundation. At prototypical sites, a relationship exists between the physical sites and the sacred narratives associated with the sites. Pilgrims to these sites insert themselves into this relationship, and by performing the pilgrimage and whatever duties or practices accompany the particular site or shrine, pilgrims enters into an imaginative performance world where they are able to see themselves within both the site and the narratives associated with the site. The Turners assert the following about pilgrimage at prototypical sites: The sacred narratives are paradigms of the salvific process. They concern the relationship between the timeless message of the founder, whose words and works show how to obtain release from time’s suffering or how to use it to one’s eternal advantage, and the concrete circumstances of time and place. Believers in the message seek to imitate or to unite with the founder by replicating his actions, either literally or in spirit. Pilgrimage is one way, perhaps the most literal, of imitating the religious founder. By visiting the sites believed to be scenes of his life and teaching mission, the pilgrim in imagination relives those events. (33) By visiting the Palmyra area sites, members are able to not only hear the old stories about Joseph Smith and the translation of the Book of Mormon, they are able to envision the stories and themselves within the stories. Those who walk through the Smith Log Home to see the recreated bedroom where Moroni appeared or who walk the path to the top of the Hill Cumorah recreate the narratives by performing the acts themselves as those who take up the literal cross on the Via Dola Rosa. While prototypical sites are common to many religions, the Turners use “modern pilgrimages” to describe Catholic pilgrimage sites that are of postmedieval origin. These sites, such as Our Lady of Lourdes shrine in southern France or Our Lady of Knock shrine in western Ireland, are not associated with Church founders but with later followers and saints who have had miraculous visions or other such phenomena. The Turners state that such pilgrimages “are characterized by a highly devotional tone and the fervent personal piety of their adherents, and they form an important part of the system of apologetics deployed against the advancing secularization of the post-D arwinian world” (18). These sites demonstrate to a modern world that miracles have not ceased. As such, the Turners state, “In tone, these pilgrimages are actually

49 antimodern, since they usually begin with an apparition, or vision, and they assert that miracles do happen” (19). The Palmyra area sites share similar qualities to these particular Catholic sites. Smith’s first vision not only designates Smith as a prophet and opens the door to the Church’s establishment but also unequivocally declares: God is not dead, and God has parted the heavens again and spoken to man. Divine, ongoing revelation is another cornerstone of Church theology. Part of being Mormon is accepting the miracles surrounding the Church’s origins and that miracles continue even in our contemporary lives. Thus Mormon pilgrims not only remember and celebrate the birthplace of the Restoration but also the principles of prophecy and revelation and their implications that are first demonstrated at the Palmyra sites. In fact, pilgrims come to the sites to perchance experience something miraculous for themselves. Having qualities of both types of pilgrimage makes the Palmyra area sites uniquely Mormon. The modern Catholic pilgrimage sites are not sites that particularly support or adhere to Catholic theology. The Catholic Church and the Pope do not claim ongoing revelation. Catholic theology does not deny visions and other miraculous events; in fact, the Church has canonized many individuals who have claimed such experiences, and the Church has created shrines at such places as Lourdes and Knock. But the narratives at these sites do not define or affect official Catholic theology. They affect regional customs and practices, and in fact, regional practices are often linked to regional narratives and miraculous events, but they do not change official Catholic doctrines and practices. The Catholic Church, like the LDS Church, claims a divine origin, but those original narratives are tied to ancient sites, most of which are shared among all Christian denominations. The modern miraculous sites that affirm ongoing miracles in the face of a scientific and skeptical world operate outside the long established origins, doctrines, and practices of Catholicism. The LDS Church sites, instead, are linked to the primary Church doctrines and practices. These sites both proclaim the Church’s divine origins and proclaim that such miracles are modern and recurring phenomenon. Mormon pilgrimage to the Palmyra area sites, then, relates both to the Church origins and to the miraculous nature associated with these origins. Members come not just to see that the sites are real and to hear the stories but also to experience something of the miraculous at the sites; they come to walk on holy ground. The Turners describe that when “increasingly hemmed in by such sacred symbols” found at the sites and shrines and “through their very vividness,” a pilgrim “becomes increasingly capable of entering in imagination and with sympathy into the

50 culturally defined experiences of the founder” (10-11). Performing the ritualistic pilgrimage brings pilgrims to a point where they can be transformed. By shedding the practices of their ordinary self, pilgrims are ready to inscribe new practices, beliefs, and ideas that can be fixed into their identity. “Purified from structural sins, they receive the pure imprint of a paradigmatic structure,” the Turners explain. “This paradigm will give a measure of coherence, direction, and meaning to their action, in proportion to their identification with the symbolic representation of the founder’s experiences” (11). This type of identification develops when the pilgrim inserts him or herself into the experience, when “the pilgrim ‘puts on Christ Jesus,’” or in this case Joseph Smith, “as a paradigmatic mask, or persona and thus for a while becomes the redemptive tradition, no longer a biophysical unit with a specific history—as in tribal initiations, where the individual who dons the ceremonial mask becomes for a while the god or power signified by the mask and the costume linked to it” (11). So the intensity of the pilgrim’s experience depends upon the level in which the pilgrim identifies with Smith’s experiences and with Smith himself. I learned for myself about performing Mormon pilgrimage. While conducting research, I walked through the Sacred Grove and spied numerous pilgrims, many in solitude, and some physically kneeling in prayer replicating the images of the boy Joseph propagated by the Church. Despite trying to perform the role of the detached academic, I found myself caught up in the serenity, in the beauty of the surroundings, the smells of the woods, and the sounds of birds and insects. I caught myself humming a familiar Church hymn about the First Vision, “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer”: Oh how lovely was the morning! Radiant beamed the sun above. Bees were humming, sweet birds singing, Music ringing through the grove. When within the shady woodland Joseph sought the God of Love. (Hymn #26) I have sung this hymn since I could sing. It is so ingrained in my experience that it invaded my mind. Even while performing my role as the academic grove-voyeur, I could not completely distance myself from my own identity as a Mormon. I found myself “entering in imagination and with sympathy into the culturally defined experiences of the founder” (Turners 10-11).

51

Fig. 1.10. Summer morning in the Sacred Grove.

The irony is that Smith never wrote these words; this song was composed well after the event, and while it is based on Smith’s account of the events, it embellishes the experience with romantic lyricism. Yet, the song is so prevalent; it is a ritualization of Mormon history. Members know the events of the First Vision at least as well if not better from this song than from Smith’s account in the LDS scriptures. The song lyrics have become “how it was.” I would have been much more surprised to walk into the grove on an ugly morning (which must happen when it is the winter or one of those frequent summer storms) and not see a radiant sun and hear a mixed chorus of birds and bees. Instead, the conditions during my morning’s research were so parallel that I could not keep the hymn from my mind (see fig. 1.10). There literally was “music ringing through the grove” as I watched countless “Josephs” seek the God of love or, more aptly, seek to experience being Joseph. In the Sacred Grove, experiencing Joseph means communing with God

52 and Christ on a very personal level. Of all the Palmyra sites, the Sacred Grove most profoundly affects the individual who best experiences the site in solitude, entering the grove as Joseph did, alone to seek God. The Sacred Grove also typifies the unique synthesis of prototypical and modern pilgrimage. Because this site represents how an insignificant boy could in innocence find God in a miraculous fashion, it more than any other site demonstrates not only the divine calling of Joseph Smith and the start of the Restoration but also that the insignificant individual can find God. Finding God in a personal and individual way is what the Mormon pilgrim, performing “Joseph,” comes to the Sacred Grove to experience (see fig. 1.11).

Fig. 1.11. Pilgrim family entering the Sacred Grove past an entrance sign that implies the need for reverence.

Because the Hill Cumorah, unlike the Sacred Grove, does not have secluded areas for private meditation, members experience the site differently. Cumorah is often full of activity. Because the Visitors’ Center is the central location for all the sites, most visitors gravitate to Cumorah during their visit. Also, unlike the Sacred Grove where there are many paths, at

53 Cumorah there are only two trails that lead up the hill to the monument. But the monument and the Visitors’ Center alone do not draw the most visitors to the hill; the pageant attracts the largest numbers. More Mormon pilgrims travel to Palmyra during the pageant performances than at any other time of the year. Elder Jerry Hess, who was the director for the Palmyra area historic sites in 2000, states in a personal interview that about 3000 people had visited the sites that January and that the numbers generally increase after January but spike in July during the pageant. He says, “We’ll have 30,000 through here in the month of July probably.” He adds, “Historically, it’s dropped off dramatically right after the last day of the pageant. Last year there were 4,200 people thereabouts the Sunday after pageant, and the next day was 380 or 400—something like that” (8 July 2000). Hess also explains that during the pageant the Rochester Mission adds additional couple and sister missionaries to staff the sites. Ironically, some of the tours are also abbreviated to accommodate the load of visitors; thus, the busiest pilgrimage times are not the best times to visit the sites. Visitors willingly compromise their visits to the sites in order to also attend the pageant. These statistics verify a relationship between the sites and pageant. I believe the statistics demonstrate dual support: the sites feed the pageant and the pageant feeds the sites. In other words, most visitors choose to come when they can include both the sites and the pageant. Some wanting a less crowded time at the sites come at other times, but visiting the sites when the pageant is not in performance seems like going to Disneyland when Space Mountain is closed for repair—a major attraction is missing. These statistics also demonstrate that attending the pageant is part of the typical pilgrimage experience. The pageant is part of the Church’s historical recreation. It is a physical reconstruction using actors and other theatrical elements rather than building materials to demonstrate the past, and it is a living monument created to give place to remembering and 6

celebrating Church culture.TP PT What results is a cultural performance that revives powerful stories and images from the Church’s unique history and beliefs in which the performers vicariously bring heroes of Mormon culture to life for the audience to experience. Thus, pilgrims at Cumorah during the pageant experience Cumorah in a communal rather than personal way. The Sacred Grove is a place of personal miracles where the individual communes with God; the Hill Cumorah is a place of cultural unity and common celebration where the primary narratives of

54 Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon spring to life and perform for mass ritualistic commemoration. The mass commemoration or communal part of pilgrimage is the final characteristic I will discuss. Mormon pilgrimage, like other pilgrimage, operates outside the general religious structure and practice. Those who choose to go on a pilgrimage do so on a voluntary basis. Pilgrims may feel duty-bound to go but still do so without the Church specifically assigning or obligating them to do so. When members choose to perform a pilgrimage, they separate themselves not only from their ordinary lives but also from their traditional religious service and religious community. Pilgrims abandon the close ties or “primary groupings” (13), as the Turners term them, of friends and family in their immediate community, and they abandon their general routines and schedules to travel to sites where they have a shared heritage with other Church members and to encounter Church artifacts and stories in a unique way. At these sites, especially during the pageant and at a pageant performance, Mormon pilgrims encounter numerous other pilgrims. The Turners state, “At the pilgrimage’s end . . . the pilgrim may find himself a member of a vast throng. But this is a throng of similars” (13). This throng of “similars” can intensify the experience for all assembled. The Turners continue, “It is only through the power ascribed by all to ritual . . . that likeness of lot and intention is converted into commonness of feeling, into ‘communitas’” (13). During the liminal or liminoid phase of pilgrimage, pilgrims encounter others pursuing similar pilgrimages with whom they connect, especially at large encounters such as the pageant performance, forming a commonality or communitas that exists outside the general Church social structure yet is bonded by a unity of belief. Considering the impact of an assembly of pilgrims at a pilgrimage site, Victor and Edith Turner explain: Symbols, which originate in elevated feelings as well as cognitive insight, become recharged in ritual contexts with emotions elicited from the assembled congregants. At major pilgrim centers, the quality and degree of the emotional impact of the devotions . . . derive from the union of the separate but similar emotional dispositions of the pilgrims converging from all parts of a huge sociogeographical catchment area. It is not merely the troubles of an individual village or villager that induce this affectual atmosphere. It is the confluence of innumerable individual woes and hopes: manifold woes engendered by the most various of circumstances; incalculable hopes that the religion’s paradigms and symbols will restore order and meaning to a sad and senseless state of personal and

55 interpersonal affairs—and from these hopes derive the pilgrim’s proverbial happiness. (13-14) Mormon pilgrims do not necessarily travel on pilgrimages from a state of woe looking for miraculous healing to body or soul, but most seek some sort of spiritual rejuvenation and an increase to their faith. Mormon pilgrims certainly bring individual hopes and expectations to the pageant performance that converge into a collective with the other thousands gathered. As such, the pageant performance creates a communitas among the pilgrim audience. While it is the commonality or communitas that unites Mormon pilgrims and intensifies the experience, this same communitas, because it operates outside social structure, poses a threat to mainstream social structure. With expressions of communitas, there is the possibility for subcultures to arise that may challenge the established society. The Turners acknowledge, “From the point of view of those who control and maintain the social structure, all manifestations of communitas, sacred or profane, are potentially subversive” (32). The practice of pilgrimage can create a culture of pilgrims who begin to operate outside the traditional church practices. Because traditional church practices are predicated on official interpretations of church doctrines and theology, subcultural practices may diverge from such traditional practices and develop beliefs, doctrines, and rituals that also lie outside of the traditional church, even becoming apostate to the traditional church. The LDS Church leaders, therefore, have a vested interest in not only the Church doctrine but also in the Church culture or in the manner in which individuals collectively live the Church doctrines and practices. Such is not just an issue of control; if the Church doctrine s and practices are correct, as the Church claims, then deviations would be detrimental to the membership. Nevertheless, deviations in cultural practices that do not threaten the mainstream Church doctrines and practices can enhance and strengthen the society by causing it to adapt and grow to the needs and tastes of the individual members and collectives. The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a good example of such activities. In the next chapter and in the next section, I will discuss the pageant’s communitas origins and subcultural activities. Considering specifically the Church history sites, over the years the Church has responded to the members’ desire for pilgrimage, for the expression of communitas, by acquiring and developing these sites. As the sites have been developed, more pilgrims have visited them, but pilgrims visited the sites before the Church officially developed them. In fact, the Church has particularly developed sites because of members’ attraction to these sites. As the Turners note,

56 “Religious specialists have attempted to domesticate the primitive, spontaneous modes of peregrination, with their freedom of communitas, into orderly pilgrimage, more susceptible to ecclesiastical control” (32). By developing the sites, the Church also controls the nature of the site and the manner of discourse and display of imagery. In short, the Church facilitates the pilgrimage and yet dictates the manner of the pilgrimage. Shortly after returning from my own pilgrimage with my family to various sites in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, and New York, I had a discussion with another member who told me about taking his then young family to many of the same sites. Some but not all, at the time, had already been developed. He showed me a book written by some prior pilgrim that described how to get to certain sites by traveling over fences and through fields (which required some amount of trespassing) in order to get to specific sites. The book also described how to recognize some specific sites that lacked any official markers. By the time I took my family, the Church better facilitated yet also dictated such manifestations of communitas. Therefore, I saw official Church displays and descriptions and met Church missionaries and listened to official accounts at these sites, but I did not have to try to take small children over fences and through fields to see some rise and meadow that is more significant than the adjacent rise and meadow. The Church develops and maintains the history sites for several reasons. The Church recognizes the benefits members derive from such pilgrimages. Pilgrimage is transformative, and the Church wants its members to cultivate their faith and identity as Mormons. While Mormon pilgrimage is still a voluntary activity, the Church encourages such efforts and has devoted considerable resources to developing these sites. By maintaining the sites, the Church offers members these beneficial activities while maintaining some control over how pilgrimage transforms the members. The Church also recognizes that there are opportunities for missionary work at these various sites. Mormon history is also a significant part of U.S. history, and the sites attract many non-members. Finally, by acquiring and developing the sites, the Church lays claim to its own history. By owning, developing, and maintaining these history sites, the Church dictates how history is to be remembered at these sites, not only for Church pilgrims or for curious non-members but also for the world at large. The Church through the sites can identify and define itself, can possess its own history. Part of the Church’s threefold mission statement is to proclaim the gospel. Members and leaders generally interpret this tenet as missionary work, declaring the Mormon theology to individuals to gain converts throughout the world. But

57 proclaiming the gospel also means defining the doctrines to the members, as it does at the various sites, and it means declaring to the world: this is what we believe, what we stand for, and who we are. The Church as a collective is not so different from the individual members who visit a site in part to identify with their own cultural history; the Church acquires and develops the sites as a way of creating and possessing its own cultural history, of creating the Church’s unique identity.

1

TP PT The Church’s exhibition practices that slant the details to benefit Church beliefs are not unique to LDS sites. Steven D. Lavine and Ivan Karp in “Museums and Multiculturalism,” the Introduction to the anthology Exhibiting Cultures, note “Every museum, exhibition, whatever its overt subject, inevitably draws on the cultural assumptions and resources of the people who make it. Decisions are made to emphasize one element and to downplay others, to assert some truths and to ignore others” (1). Karp in “The Politics of Public Culture,” the Introduction to the anthology Museum and Communities, further notes that “the selection of knowledge and the presentation of ideas and images are enacted within a power system. The sources of power are derived from the capacity of cultural institutions to classify and define peoples and societies” (1). The LDS Church uses the historic sites and displays to define Mormon culture according to traditional and official accounts of history. Karp calls such exhibition “the power to represent: to reproduce structures of belief and experience through which cultural differences are understood” (“Politics” 1-2). Michael Wallace in “Visiting the Past” similarly asserts, “From the mid-nineteenth century on, most history museums were constructed by members of dominant classes, and embodied interpretations that supported their sponsors’ privileged positions” (137). He adds, “The museum builders simply embedded in their efforts versions of history that were commonplaces of their class’s culture” (137). Wallace’s article considers such history museums as Colonial Williamsburg, investigating how what is and is not reconstructed and represented portrays a select version of history that supports the culture of those who created the historical area. 2

TP PT This is not to suggest that the Church discourages individual learning, education, or scholarship. In fact, the Church strongly encourages each of these pursuits and believes that its doctrines, practices, and history stand up to scrutiny by members and non-members alike. However, simplicity, generalization, and ritualization enable broad acceptance, understanding, and appeal on the mass cultural level. 3

TP PT On the first Sunday of each month, the main congregational meeting is open for anyone to speak. No one prepares a formal address to deliver to the congregation. Instead, any member who feels inspired to bear testimony to the congregation can do so. Bearing testimony is when a member shares his/her own beliefs about the Church generally or about specific doctrines, principles, or practices. Such a parallel is fitting because the missionary guides share their own testimonies throughout their presentations at any Church site. 4

TP PT Lavine and Karp in “Museums and Multicultualism” state, “Exhibitions made today may seem obviously appropriate to some viewers precisely because those viewers share the same attitudes as the exhibition makers, and the exhibitions are cloaked in familiar presentational styles” (1). Lavine and Karp’s statements fit with Anderson’s description that the site exhibition and stories are “as we expect it to be” (48). The sites reinforce the official LDS version of the cultural history. 5

TP PT For a more thorough definition and examination of nostalgia, see David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country in which he has a section on nostalgia in his chapter “Reliving the Past: Dreams and Nightmares” from pages 4-13. 6

TP PT See Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s essay “Objects of Ethnography” where she discusses human performance events in relation to cultural exhibition, stating “Not only inanimate artifacts but also humans are detachable, fragmentable, and replicable in a variety of materials” (397).

58 CHAPTER 2

THE HILL CUMORAH’S PAGEANTS

As a college theatre instructor, I am often asking my students, “What is theatre?” In fact, I generally ask students to write their own definition of theatre as part of a final exam in theatre history and introduction to theatre classes. While I receive a lot of variety in the responses, a few general elements recur. In the introduction to theatre responses, I regularly see: theatre is collaborative, combining various artists into a single production; theatre combines other fine arts such as music, dance, literature, and visual arts into a single production that is unique to other fine arts; theatre is ephemeral, existing only in performance as a shared experience between the performers and the audience; and theatre at its most basic requires only actors, audience, a space, and some content or story not necessarily written down. In theatre history, the responses differ. The course does not provide an overview of theatrical elements and performance but rather investigates the nature of theatre among different cultures and periods. Studying theatre history provides a certain insight into the cultures from which theatre emerges. I get responses such as: theatre forms reflect social influences such as politics and religion; domestic issues such as love, sex, greed, and jealousy are pervasive in drama among unrelated cultures and periods; theatre reflects the tastes and values of the cultures from which they emerge; and theatre is a form of cultural entertainment popular to rulers and the mass populous that can be both an entertainment as well as a critique of culture—it can be both embraced and viewed as a threat to the social order. Considering these various answers together, I believe they actually provide a rather comprehensive view of theatre. While certainly various theatre forms differ across cultures and periods, a few common characteristics make these forms theatre. The various responses reveal some implicit qualities: theatre evolves and adapts; theatre is timely and timeless; and theatre functions whether it is to serve a religion, a monarch, a radical, a cause, a community, or a traveling entertainer trying to survive.

59 From these various definitions of theatre, I will address the theatrical and performance elements of the Hill Cumorah Pageant in this chapter. In doing so, I will consider three quotes that pageant artistic staff told me. The first is, “Ultimately this isn’t about theatre” (Hanson); the second is, “This is not a theatrical experience . . . exclusively” (Sorensen 8 July 2000); and the third is, “The fact is, we could do this [perform the pageant] anywhere” (Sorensen 16 Nov. 2000). My purpose is to demonstrate how the Hill Cumorah Pageant combines traditional Western theatre elements, historical American pageantry, and ritual performance to create a unique reflexive Mormon cultural performance. I will specifically consider the use of theatre in relation to the Church purposes. I will then address the question of location, especially regarding the pageant’s history and relationship to historical American pageants. Finally, I will discuss how the Hill Cumorah Pageant is unique in its theatrical performance, how the Church has institutionalized and formalized the performance, and how the results hybridize theatrical and ritual performance. As I am going to demonstrate that the Hill Cumorah Pageant is a unique reflexive cultural performance, I will first define the terms cultural performance and reflexivity. Cultural performance as a concept is central to Victor Turner’s performance studies, social dramas, and liminality ideas. He draws his definition from Milton Singer. According to Turner, Singer, while conducting field research in India, “found himself ‘confronted with a series of concrete experiences’” that “Singer found to be discriminable ‘units of observation’ which he called ‘cultural performances’” (Anthropology 22-23). Singer identified these experiences as what “we in the West usually call by that name—for example, plays, concerts, and lectures. But they include also prayers, ritual readings, and recitations, rites and ceremonies, festivals, and all those things which we usually classify under religion and ritual rather than with the cultural and artistic” (qtd. in Turner Anthropology 23). Turner describes, “Singer found that ‘cultural performances’ are composed of what he calls ‘cultural media’—modes of communication which include not only spoken language, but such nonlinguistic media as ‘song, dance, acting out, and graphic and plastic arts—combined in many ways to express and communicate the content of Indian culture’” (23). Turner’s and Singer’s concepts of cultural performance fit nicely with some of my students’ definitions of theatre: combined arts and communication of culture. Turner notes that the concept of combined arts or combined methods of expression “is an important point—rituals, dramas, and other performative genres are often orchestrations of

60 media, not expressions in a single medium” (23). He argues that each medium is associated with certain sensory codes. These sensory codes are “a vocabulary and grammar founded” on the stimulation of each of the senses to create messages. “For instance,” he adds, “different types of incense burned at different times in a performance communicate different meanings, gestures and facial expressions are assigned meanings with reference to emotions and ideas to be communicated, soft and loud sounds have conventional meaning, etc” (23). The performance coordinator, or for the theatre, the director, “creates art from the ensemble of media and codes, just as a conductor in the single genre of classical music blends and opposes the sounds of the different instruments to produce an often unrepeatable effect” (23). The priest or shaman likewise creates the ritual by blending together various media in a specific and often prescribed way. Thus theatre and ritual are comparable at the elemental level and are subcategories of cultural performance. But Turner differs from Singer in his theory of cultural performance. Singer argues that cultural performances cast “much light on the ways in which cultural themes and values are communicated as well as on processes of social and cultural change” (qtd. in Turner Anthropology 24). They are as a mirror that reflects back on the culture. While Turner agrees, he qualifies his opinion by calling these performances “not simple reflectors or expressions of culture or even changing culture” (Anthropology 24). Instead, Turner asserts: My thesis is that this relationship [between “sociocultural processes” and the “dominant genres of ‘cultural performance’”] is not unidirectional and “positive”—in the sense that the performative genre merely “reflects” or “expresses” the social system or the cultural configuration, or at any rate the key relationships—but that it is reciprocal and reflexive—in the sense that the performance is often a critique, direct or veiled, of the social life it grows out of, an evaluation (with lively possibilities of rejection) of the way society handles history. (21-22) Turner sees cultural performances as not simply mirrors of culture held aloft by the contrivers of the performance but instead as “magic mirrors,” which “make ugly or beautiful events or relationships which cannot be recognized as such in the continuous flow of quotidian life in which we are embedded” (22). In simple terms, cultures fail to see the forest for the trees, that without cultural performances, individuals do not always recognize the culture’s defining qualities and parameters. For Turner, what the cultural performances communicate is not just a

61 reflection or version of the cultural life but a reflexive view that raises questions about life and the culture even as it demonstrates and defines it. As a reflexive rather than reflective process, Turner believes that cultural performances “may themselves be active agencies of change” by “representing the eye by which culture sees itself and the drawing board on which creative actors sketch out what they believe to be more apt or interesting ‘designs for living’” (24). Turner calls this process “performative reflexivity,” which he says is when “a sociocultural group, or its most perceptive members acting representatively, turn, bend or reflect back upon themselves, upon relations, actions, symbols, meaning, codes, roles, statuses, social structures, ethical and legal rules, and other sociocultural components which make up their public ‘selves’”(24). This active agency in theatre as a cultural performance, for example, is what closed the theatres at the end of the English Renaissance. The Puritans recognized that theatre could do more than just reflect society; it could influence society. When the theatres reopened, Charles II and his cavalier supporters used the theatres to demonstrate their return to power. Theatres helped to dictate the fashions and values in the culture, thus furthering the rift between the Puritans and theatre. When the middle class found a “sentimental” voice in theatre with Lillo’s The London Merchant, apprentices were encouraged or even dragged to performances by their masters in order to gain instruction in proper, moral behavior. The Hill Cumorah Pageant as a cultural performance can be an active medium for cultural change. If it were not, then the Church would not support and produce it. The Church as an institution seeks to proselytize for new members through its mission to “proclaim the gospel,” and the Church seeks to improve its members, to inspire and instruct them into greater conformity and uniformity through its mission to “perfect the saints.” The Hill Cumorah Pageant performance seeks both of these transformational goals by transmitting messages or sensory codes that encourage non-members to ac cept and embrace the culture and that inspire members to amend their behavior and beliefs more completely to the Church doctrines and dictates. So why a pageant? The Church obviously dedicates vast resources towards other ventures dedicated to the same goals. The Church has a missionary force of over 50,000 operating worldwide to proclaim the gospel. The Church also makes copies of the Book of Mormon available in numerous languages free to anyone who wishes a copy, and the Church spends millions of dollars promoting these free copies through television, radio, the Internet, and print

62 media. The Church also has more than 27,000 congregations worldwide to help perfect the more than 12,500,000 members (“Statistical Report”). Each year the Church prints millions of copies of support materials for its various Sunday school and other auxiliary meetings that are distributed free to members or interested non-members. In the last chapter, I discussed the value of obtaining and maintaining church history sites as pilgrimage sites. Certainly a cultural performance element exists in the various presentations and interactive displays, but why does the Church invest in theatrical cultural performances like the Hill Cumorah Pageant? I believe this choice relates to another quality of cultural performance Turner defines that relates to cultural performance as an orchestration of media. As I stated, Turner asserts, “Certain sensory codes are associated with each medium” (Anthropology 23). Turner adds, “It is worth pointing out, too, that it is not, as some structuralists have argued, a matter of emitting the same message in different media and codes, the better to underline it with redundancy. The ‘same’ message in different media is really a set of subtly variant messages, each medium contributing its own generic message to the message conveyed through it” (23-24). Thus, when the Church’s messages are transmitted through theatre, the nature of theatre as a medium enhances or changes the message by layering its own sensory codes on to the transmission. The message cannot be separated from its medium. Anyone who has had someone misunderstand the intent of their email message recognizes the limitations and additions that a specific medium layers on to the message. As the complexity of the message and media grows, the reflexive capacity of the performance also increases. According to Turner, the end result for cultural performance is more than just a reflexive “magic mirror”; it is “something like a hall of mirrors—magic mirrors, each interpreting as well as reflecting the images beamed to it, and flashed from one to the others” (24). The nature of the cultural performance genre with its associated sensory codes affects the nature of the message transmitted between performer and audience. As such, the specific performance as an active agent can affect the culture and change the culture differently than the transmission of the same message through a different medium or different performance genre. Turner explains, “The many-leveled or tiered structure of a major ritual or drama, each level having many sectors, makes each of these genres flexible and nuanced instruments capable of carrying and communicating many messages at once, even of subverting on one level what it appears to be ‘saying’ on another” (24). Thus, a seemingly benign theatrical performance that

63 appears to be an informative and entertaining presentation on Mormon history and culture may include ritual elements with a different transformational agenda. Finally, as my students assert: theatre is live; theatre’s power, as well as ritual’s power, lies in the performance. Turner states, “The genres are instruments whose full reality is in their ‘playing,’ in their performance, in their social settings—they should not be seen merely as scripts, scenarios, scores, stage directions, or other modes of blueprinting, diagramming, or guiding. Their full meaning emerges from the union of script with actors and audience at a given moment in a group’s ongoing social process” (Anthropology 24). Actors and audience share an experience that also includes space and story; that is theatre. These fundamental concepts and theatrical elements make theatre and ritual, which shares similar versions of these elements, unique. The Hill Cumorah Pageant combines theatre and ritual into a hybrid performance. Because ritual and theatre combine, the pageant performance creates its own distinct set of sensory codes different from either theatre or ritual. Turning first to the theatrical elements, as a theatre doctoral candidate, the theatrical nature, process, and history are what first interested me. In one of my first interviews, Brent Hanson, the technical director in 2000 and the current pageant artistic director, said something that I have considered since many times. He asserts, “Ultimately this isn’t about theatre.” Hanson is a theatre professional who currently directs the theatre program at Dixie College, a two-year college in St. George, Utah. Hanson knows theatre, and he brings his theatrical knowledge and expertise to the pageant. His blanket statement caused me to consider whether I am on a valid course. I believe Hanson is correct in that the results the producing agency wants are not artistic goals. Rodger Sorensen, the artistic director in 2000, made his own similar statements that qualify what Brent Hanson said. Sorensen says, “This is not a theatrical experience . . . exclusively,” and he adds that the pageant is “principally a spiritual experience” (8 July 2000). Those who create the pageant view the end result as primarily a spiritual experience. A spiritual experience, in this case, means that the audience feels spiritual manifestations that inspire them to believe the doctrines and narratives presented. Theatre or performance serves as the medium through which the doctrines are presented and through which the spiritual experiences or phenomena take place. The Church believes that conversion as a process occurs when investigators experience two essential elements. First, investigators confront a particular doctrine or principle. Conversion comes in part through acquiring knowledge and understanding,

64 but the Church believes that knowledge and human perception alone are inadequate for conversion. Second, investigators “feel the Spirit.” In Mormon theology, a spiritual manifestation, an actual phenomenon, must accompany acquired knowledge. Such a manifestation confirms the validity of the doctrine or principle. The Church believes that God communicates with humans and that they learn and understand spiritual truth, or Truth, through such manifestations. Thus, for the pageant to be capable of transforming and converting, the performance must include both elements. The audience does not need to aesthetically appreciate the theatrical performance, nor do they need to be entertained by it. However, the pageant directors do have aesthetic goals for the pageant but recognize theatre aesthetics and artistry as a means to the end; if the theatre works artistically, then it will facilitate the spiritual experiences, and if it does not, then it will detract from such experiences. Sorensen acknowledges that while the pageant is primarily a spiritual experience, “it is told through theatre” (8 July 2000). The pageant may not be about theatre, “ultimately,” but theatre cannot be separated from the pageant. As such, the pageant directors and production staff use traditional Western theatre techniques to create and perform the pageant. Actors perform stories live on a stage in a setting designated for the performance to an audience. Spectacle abounds in costumes, sets, props, lights, and special effects. Directors coordinate these elements and rehearse the actors according to a production concept they have formulated during a pre-rehearsal process. That production concept integrates the text with the directors’ vision for the production—what the directors want the audience to see and take from the production. That directors’ vision includes or is dominated by the need for the spiritual experience. The Church wants the pageant to proclaim the gospel to non-members and members, to actively convert the audience to Mormon doctrine. The “Cast Notebook,” given to each pageant participant, states this point clearly: “Our primary objective at Pageant is to bring others to a knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (17). The phrase “the gospel of Jesus Christ” signifies the gospel according to LDS theology rather than a broad traditional Christian view. And the phrase “bring others to a knowledge” defines the Pageant’s goal as more than just proclaiming, which can be inactive. Instead, the goal is to convert. For the non-members, the pageant emphasizes converting them into members or on starting them on the conversion process; for the members, the pageant emphasizes conforming them to the Church practices. The goal to convert

65 is a goal to transform. Thus, the pageant directors’ concept must primarily focus on creating a transformational performance. Transformational performances generally fall under the ritual genre of cultural performances. Richard Schechner asserts, “Either permanently as in initiation rites or temporarily as in aesthetic theater and trance dancing, performers—and sometimes spectators too—are changed by the activity of performing” (Between 4). Schechner’s focus in Between Theater and Anthropology is on the performer more than on the audience. When he speaks of transformational performances, Schechner refers specifically to performances, such as initiation rites, “whose very purpose is to transform people from one status or social identity to another” (127). I will consider the transformative effects on the performers in the next section of this dissertation. But what about performances designed to transform the audience? I will term these performances such as church or worship services congregational performances. Turner’s theory of reflexive cultural performance better relates to these types of performances. He calls man a “self-performing animal—his performances are, in a way, reflexive, in performing he reveals himself to himself” (Anthropology 81). He says that such reflexivity through performance occurs in two ways, the first of which relates to Schechner’s type of transformational performance: “The actor may come to know himself better through acting or enactment” (81). In this case, by performing a ritual, the performer becomes aware or learns his/her role or place in the culture, such as when a boy recites at a Bar Mitzvah. In the second case, “one set of human beings may come to know themselves better through observing and/or participating in performances generated and presented by another set of human beings” (81). In this case, transformation can occur when spectators watch a performance and apply that performance to themselves. Turner explains, “In the second case, reflexivity is plural and is based on the assumption that though, for most purposes, we humans may divide ourselves between Us and Them, or Ego and Alter, We and They share substance” (81). If pageant spectators are to be converted from watching the pageant, they must be able to personalize what they are watching; they must be able to recognize and accept the greater personal significance and doctrines of faith within the performance and want to become associated with the group that espouses these doctrines. Turner was also very interested in the distinctions between theatre and ritual. When I ask my students what is the difference between watching your friend, sibling, relative, or parent

66 married at a wedding and watching a wedding in a play, they generally respond that the couple in the “actual” wedding are “really” married; whereas, the actors playing Petruchio and Kate, for example, are not once the play ends. The difference, as they state it, is that the wedding is real and the wedding in the play is not—it is only play-acting. Therein lies the primary distinction between theatre and ritual—rituals are real and theatre is not, or in better terms, ritual is efficacious at least to those who give it such power through their faith in it. Turner describes, “One has the feeling that rituals are magical, that for some reason as yet unknown to science they can communicate to people, not despite their artificiality, but because of and through their artificiality” (Anthropology 150). I find it odd to consider both artificiality and reality as terms related to ritual, and yet such is the case. Considering a wedding again, that a priest, or minister, or justice of the peace transforms two individuals into a couple with the words “Man and wife” or some other variant certainly rings artificial. Yet, the society and even the governing powers accept this change and accept the priest, minister, or justice of the peace’s legal right to use this power. Turner continues, “Rituals are efficacious and we wonder how. . . . We marvel at the mastery of illusion in ritual while we reaffirm its illusionary nature” (150). The illusionary nature of ritual parallels theatrical illusion also created through performance. Yet, there is a difference. Spectators watching theatre suspend their disbelief during the performance until the end when Hamlet joins hands with Claudius, Ophelia, Gertrude, and Laertes, and the actors bow, thus casting off their characters and transporting them back to the “real” world. In ritual, instead of suspending disbelief, the spectators and the participants unite in common belief despite the artificiality, recognizing that the artificiality represents a reality only visible or perhaps accessed through the ritual performance. Considering the nature of theatrical performance and of art generally as communicative between the artists and the spectators, is not transformation possible for theatre spectators? Certainly, on various levels spectators can be, are, and have been transformed by watching theatre. One accepted definition for Aristotle’s concept of “catharsis” is that the “catharsis” causes a purgation of the emotions pity and fear in the audience and that such an experience is 1

beneficial to the culture, thus justifying tragedy as an art form.TP PT Such a purgation of emotion certainly is transformational to a degree. Horace in the Art of Poetry asserts that the aim of poetry is to delight or instruct or combine both. Since Horace, theorists, critics, and poets/playwrights have used instruction as a standard to argue both for and against forms of

67 theatre. If theatre can instruct, then spectators can learn from the performances, a transformational experience. Modernist theatre artists from the realists through the various other “ists” created theatre assuming that their performances could create social awareness and even social change. Turner’s second case of performance reflexivity where human beings come to know themselves through watching others perform certainly applies to theatre as well as ritual. Theatre uses storytelling to imitate, represent, reflect, or even distort life. Spectators both learn what happens in a story and often can make connections to their own experience; using Turner’s terms, spectators can “come to know themselves better through observing” what occurs in the play performance. But are these types of spectator transformations different from theatre to ritual? Or is the difference a matter of degree and purpose? Turner asserts that “the critical difference between aesthetic theatre and ritual” is that in theatre “the actors on stage must always seem to be the characters they portray or they have failed.” Regarding ritual, “the ritualist must always seem to be nothing other that what he is, a frail human being playing with those things that kill us for their sport” (Anthropology 150). This seems like a difference in context and perspective. Returning to the idea of a wedding, the audience at a play may hear and see identical elements to those spectators in the congregation at a wedding, but the audience at the play remains aware that the officiator is an actor playing the role of the officiator. This audience will suspend their disbelief, or their knowledge that the events are not real and the performers are not real, in order to appreciate the performance. In fact, often the audience will evaluate how much they enjoyed such a performance by how easily they can suspend their disbelief and “buy into” the performance. Conversely, the spectators in the congregation understand that the officiator uses a power granted by the state, or perhaps even by the church and state. The officiator is a man or woman performing a role that the state and possibly the church give them the right to perform. The words and the performance itself may be indistinguishable between the two weddings, yet the context and the spectator’s perspective distinguish the two performances. The concept of reality, of efficaciousness, defines the context and, I think, distinguishes the type or perhaps level of transformation. In theatre, the spectators even when watching a naturalist performance recognize that what they are watching is not real. That perspective often provides a barrier of safety, of security from the performance: the spectators can dissociate themselves from violent acts or other provocative aspects within the performance by modifying

68 the level of their suspended disbelief. Theatre spectators, although they are an essential part of theatre and although they engage in a shared performance experience with the theatre artists, are largely passive, even voyeuristic, participants in the performance; they are the audience rather than the performers. Ritual spectators do not have a barrier of disbelief unless they create such a barrier as a skeptic to the ritual. They instead accept the events as a type of reality, as a type of truth even if it is not phenomenological. Ritual spectators also are active participants in the performance even if they only observe the events. In order to be transformed by some type of congregational ritual such as a worship service, the spectators must engage in the performance to a degree that they can be transformed. Their learning must be active, consciously reflexive, consciously considering, “How does this apply to me?” and “How do I fit into this paradigm?” Speaking of performance generally, Schechner offers four variables that he asserts are present in “any performance, transformative or transportational” (Between 133) that I believe help to distinguish between ritual and theatre: (1) Whether the performance is efficacious, directly making changes in ordinary life (initiations, weddings, and so on), or whether it is fictive, even about “real events” (The 2

Deputy,TP PT ordinary plays, documentaries); (2) the status of the roles within a performance; (3) the status of the persons playing the roles—whether they are playing themselves (as in initiations), are possessed by others, or have, in the Stanislavskian sense, “built a role” [ . . . ]; and finally (4) the quality of the performance measured by the mastery performers have over whatever skills are demanded (and these vary from society to society, occasion to occasion)—even, sometimes, the skill to feign a lack of skill, as in many con games. (132-133) At this point, I am most interested in the first and third variables. “Whether the performance is efficacious,” relates to my discussion of context and perspective. The distinction between ritual and theatre lies within the concept of the relationship to “reality” or even to the concept of “truth.” The spectator in a congregational performance determines whether they willingly believe or at least are open to believing the event, message, or performance or whether they raise a barrier of disbelief, which barrier separates the spectator from both the performance and from the congregation. Schechner’s third variable, “the status of the persons playing the roles,” relates to how the spectators view the performers, whether they view them as actors playing a role for the performance or as persons who represent the culture in the ritual performance.

69 Concerning the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the lines distinguishing ritual and theatre blur. The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a large outdoor drama, often classified with other outdoor dramas and included among the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute of Outdoor Drama’s production list. The performance text includes stories from the Book of Mormon and Church history, but the stories are adapted for performance rather than recited from the scriptural accounts. Theatre professionals staff the production, but the actors and tech crews—the majority of the participants—are all amateurs, most with little if any theatrical experience. Considering Schechner’s first variable, the performance’s efficacy depends on how spectators view the performance text. For believers, the events portrayed are “real events.” Yet, as with documentaries, the creators’ biases affect the nature of the discourse. Whether the performance is efficacious depends on the spectators’ perspective, whether they raise a barrier of disbelief or whether they are open or willing to believe in the events as performed. Concerning the third variable, the performers do not play themselves; they are performing theatrical roles. Yet, the spectators also know that the performers are not actors but members of the Mormon community; they are representatives of the culture. As such, the performers also vicariously represent the spectators in the performance and, in that sense, do play themselves. For the pilgrim audience, the actors recreate or re-member the primary Church narratives upon which the culture is founded. The stories represent the Mormon creation myths. Rodger Sorensen says this regarding the pageant text, “We speak our stories. We tell our stories in performative forms, thereby giving them new life, a different kind of life, a similar life. We read them in the Book of Mormon; well, we perform them here” (16 Nov. 2000). Sorensen’s statements demonstrate the production’s reflexive quality; th e performance at one level is about the culture performing itself. Sorensen adds, “We speak the Book of Mormon stories, and those become a part of now, us as speakers and the audience, we as receivers of those stories” (16 Nov. 2000). By performing the primary narratives, those narratives become a part of the performers’ and participants’ present consciousness, and they define the culture. The context for the pageant performance also affects the production’s efficaciousness. The pageant participants perform these Church narratives at the Hill Cumorah. For both ritual and theatrical performance, space is an essential element. The space as a place designated for performance and separated from ordinary life provides the separation element for liminal/liminoid experiences. Designating the Hill Cumorah, a site of such tremendous historical

70 and spiritual significance, a holy mount, as the site for the pageant performance makes the pageant performance part of a pilgrimage ritual for many of the spectators, as I discussed in the previous chapter. Watching the performance is worshiping at this religious shrine. Staging the Church narratives and Book of Mormon stories where Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon plates also adds significant authenticity to the performance. This stage site becomes much more than just a stage. And yet, the other quote I wish to discuss in this chapter raises doubt about the significance of this performance site. Sorensen during a personal interview acknowledges, “I think the merging of where they [the Book of Mormon stories] are performed is important,” but then asserts, “The fact is, we could do this anywhere; we could tell our stories anywhere, and tell our Book of Mormon stories anywhere” (16 Nov. 2000). I agree that the Church narratives and Book of Mormon stories can be “told” and performed outside of the Hill Cumorah, and they are. The Church produces other theatrical performances and pageants some of which have Book of Mormon stories. The Church also has made and continues to make films on Church history and on the Book of Mormon. But, none of these are the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and I disagree with Sorensen that the Hill Cumorah Pageant could be performed anywhere. Yes, the performance text could be physically performed elsewhere, but it would cease to be the unique theatrical and ritual cultural performance that it is when annually performed at the Hill Cumorah. The connection between the site and the pageant performance dates to the very roots of the pageant. The site has always been the reason for the performance; performing a Hill Cumorah pageant has been a way to venerate the site and celebrate Mormonism. The pageant history dates to a time when the American Historical Pageant was a popular form. Theatre was a popular and recognized medium for celebrating and communicating American histories. American pageants grew out of civic holiday celebrations that are designed to celebrate 3

cultural identity and nationalistic pride. In American Historical Pageantry, David GlassbergTP PT notes, “Just as children could learn about their social obligations as citizens from their peers on the playground as well as their teachers in the classroom, adults could learn these same obligations as citizens from their peers in playful, artistic communal ritual as well as from the town fathers on the speaker’s platform” (62). Pageantry, led especially by William Chauncy Langdon, spread throughout the country. Langdon believed that pageants could not only rekindle national or local pride, but that they could serve as “an instrument of community self-discovery

71 and reform in America” (Glassberg 72). “Community self-discovery” certainly follows Turner’s theories of performance reflexivity with these pageant performances as a hall of magic mirrors “interpreting and reflecting” back on the communities. Communities sought Langdon’s assistance to revitalize their towns. The pageants as “artistic communal rituals” would transform the community by bringing its members together for a common cause that also served to unite and define the culture both through its shared history and through its vision for the future. Glassberg explains: Langdon’s historical pageants—especially the five “Pageants of the New Country Life” that he staged in rural New England between 1911 and 1914—combined mass participation and historical reenactment into a unique format. The form reflected Langdon’s conviction, shared by many of his fellow “pageant-masters,” that a historical pageant could offer local townspeople not only a novel holiday entertainment and wholesome recreation, but also a stirring experience through which they could visualize solutions to their current social and economic problems. Local residents in acting out the right scenes from their town’s past, present, and future would become more aware of the enduring traditions of a New England village, as well as how they must adapt those traditions to the direction of modern social and economic progress. Historical pageants would revitalize rural towns by enabling local residents to catch up with history by preserving a particular version of their traditions, helping them to recognize outmoded practices while promoting a unique local identity, sense of cohesion, and attachment to place. (71) Transformation through reflexivity fills Glassberg’s descriptions. The town was to transform by visualizing solutions to their social and economic problems. Performing the “right scenes” from the “past, present” and even “the future” facilitated these visualizations and recognitions. Community members performed their own cultural heritage and narratives in an effort to gain access to their cultural identity and synthesize it with their present experience to forge a better future. The performances were a communitas activity that bonded the members. These pageants also operated through both of Turner’s ways of performance reflexivity. Individual town members by performing the town stories would “come to know” him/herself through “acting or enactment.” Other members as the audience would “come to know themselves better through observing.” Towns could rehabilitate through rediscovering or remembering their past and

72 visualizing their future. Rehabilitation is certainly a transformational goal. But complete rehabilitation requires action after the performances have ended. The actors and spectators would need to act on what they had commonly visualized. The performances could transform them by the actors and spectators uniting as a culture through recognizing a shared heritage and common cultural goals for the present and future. The performances created a cultural awareness and defined a cultural identity that the actors and spectators needed to embrace in order to be a part of creating a rehabilitated future. Pageants differed according to the nature of the individual communities, but for each pageant the text grew out of the location. The relationship between the performance and the production site defined and distinguished each pageant. Towns commissioned Langdon and others to come and create a pageant for and about that particular community. Glassberg states, “Furthermore, the historical pageant would root the spirit of unanimity around a unique local identity” (78) and Langdon declares, “The place is the hero and the development of the community is the plot” (qtd in Glassberg: 78). The location distinguished and unified the 4 community; the location linked the individual residents as a community.TP PT This same dependant relationship exists at the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The Hill Cumorah and what the hill signifies to Church history is the hero because the hill bridges the Church’s Book of Mormon ancient stories with the modern Church narrative. The plates transferred from Moroni’s hands to Joseph Smith’s at the Hill Cumorah. Beyond just the hill, the other Palmyra sites give the performance further historical and spiritual context. These locations serve as identifiers to the Mormon culture in much the same way that Langdon asserted. By calling the place the hero, he meant that the various events that formed the community’s history produced the present community—the location is the common denominator. Likewise, the events that form the Church’s primary narratives took place at the Palmyra locations, thus giving the locations their particular significance. In this case, however, not towns’ residents but Church members are linked by the historical events and by a common acceptance of the narratives as a shared history. Yes, the Hill Cumorah Pageant’s text, America’s Witness for Christ, could be performed anywhere, but that performance would not be the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The performance grew from the location and from the rituals associated with reverencing these sacred sites, from communitas activities shared by those Church members who first sought a formalized way to celebrate their shared heritage and culture.

73 As I explained in the previous chapter, the Church ultimately purchased the Hill and the surrounding sites out of a recognized need to preserve them. At the time, Mormon pilgrims, including prominent Church members and leaders, already regularly visited the sites. For the few members and the missionaries residing in the area, the sites provided a connection to the larger community of members largely still located in Utah. Often members held religious services and other important activities at the Hill or at the Sacred Grove. Members also used the Hill as a site for their Pioneer Day celebrations. Pioneer Day is rather a Mormon “Founder’s Day.” It recognizes the day that the Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, where Brigham Young declared the area “the place.” Pioneer Day serves as a Church solidarity celebration, recognizing the transition from the East to the West and ultimately from persecution to prosperity. While the th celebrations are largest in Utah (Pioneer Day celebrations often exceed those of the 4P P of July), members worldwide celebrate Pioneer Day. As a missionary in Ireland, I celebrated Pioneer Day with other missionaries and with Irish members who had no ancestral association to the Pioneers but had a cultural association as members of the Church. Members and congregations commonly celebrate Pioneer Day with stories and recitations from Church history. At Palmyra, Pioneer Day became a reason for missionaries and members to gather for a Cumorah Conference. Former pageant director Jerry Argetsinger compiled a short “History of the Hill Cumorah Pageant” included in the “Cast Notebook.” In it, he explains: The tradition of the Cumorah Conference was begun in 1917, when a group of missionaries traveled to the Joseph Smith Farm to celebrate Pioneer Day. Part of the celebration included the acting out of some scenes from the Book of Mormon [sic] and Church History. Over the next seventeen years, the Cumorah Conference expanded to include sermons, athletic events, a Hill Cumorah pilgrimage, and a variety of entertainment programs to which the public was invited. (9) Missionaries first conceived the Cumorah Conference not to further missionary work but to celebrate Pioneer Day, to symbolically unite with the greater LDS community. Although the Palmyra sites have no direct relationship to what Mormons celebrate on Pioneer Day, they are still sites important to the Church at large; therefore, they function as a fitting substitute. I find it interesting that from the beginning, the celebrations, although they were in association with Pioneer Day, featured Book of Mormon stories and Church history relating not to Salt Lake and

74 the Pioneers, but instead to Palmyra and the Hill Cumorah. Pioneer Day provided the reason to celebrate, but the area provided the source material for the celebration. The Church acquired the hill in the late 1920s. In 1935, because of the dedication of the Angel Moroni monument on top of the hill, the LDS Eastern States Mission’s annual Palmyra conference was relocated to the hill. According to Argetsinger, the conference included a presentation called “The Book of Mormon in Song, Picture, and Story” which featured “vocal selections by such eminent soloists as Margaret Romaine, formerly of the Metropolitan Opera” (9). In 1936, the conference, which theme was “America’s Witness for Christ,” included a pageant centered on the Book of Mormon called “Truth From the Earth.” At that conference, Mission President Donald Cotton “announced plans to make a pageant at the Hill Cumorah an annual event” (9). Cotton hoped that the pageant could help to break down barriers with the local community. At this point, the conference celebrations, which often included cultural performances, became more than just cultural celebrations. From this point forward, the new Hill Cumorah Pageant considered non-members and focused on missionary work rather than on missionaries’ celebrations. Even though there was no specific script, the Eastern States Mission wanted to present a quality pageant “that would quickly be recognized as ‘America’s Oberammergau’” (9). The mission developed an annual pageant titled America’s Witness for Christ, which was taken from the 1936 conference theme. A new missionary, Harold I. Hansen, who arrived to the mission only a few weeks prior to the opening, directed the pageant, or perhaps better said, he had the project thrust on him. Hansen held a Bachelor’s degree in dramatic arts, his primary qualification. Hansen continued as the annual artistic director for the next forty years. Argetsinger summarizes Hansen’s work, “He oversaw script revision, installation of a stereophonic sound system, computerization of the stage lighting, a cast that grew to upwards of six hundred participants, and the run extended to seven performance nights” (10). Charles Whitman in his dissertation copiously records the specific changes made to the production and text between 1937 and 1964. His records show that the production continued to evolve. Hansen continually tried to solve clarity problems, tried to make the text accessible to non-member spectators, and tried to make the production work dramatically while still holding faithful to the 5

Book of Mormon.TP PT But clarity, especially for non-members, continued to prove difficult.

75 Diverse production purposes make the pageant challenging. Although the Eastern States Mission declared that the pageant would serve as a missionary tool, the pageant also continued to serve members and always has. The pageant project blended three otherwise disparate elements: pilgrimage communitas expression from those seeking their own miracles at the historic sites; general Mormon identity celebrations embodied in the commemoration of Pioneer Day; and the ongoing, at times seemingly futile, missionary work in the upstate New York area. The Eastern States Mission chose to produce a pageant, but they did not create a formalized process for doing so. The pageant production developed and evolved primarily based on Hansen’s experimentations. The production grew in its scope, adding new technology and increasing its cast size and its audience. The pageant served as a missionary tool; it served local members, missionaries, and traveling Mormon pilgrims; and it served itself. The production proved problematic for the Church as well. The Church did not officially commission or create the pageant. Instead, the Eastern States Mission, with Church sanctioning, created the pageant based on ongoing activities dating back to those first modest performances. Communitas activities that bind individuals to a common experience that lies outside the general power structure can lead to subcultures that threaten the mainstream. In the last chapter, I discussed how the Church purchases and develops its historical sites, and that by doing so, the Church dictates how Mormon pilgrims and visitors observe and perform at its sites. The Church also recognized a need to institutionalize and formalize the Hill Cumorah Pageant. A new pageant with a new script, a new set, a new soundtrack, a new director, and a new production structure premiered in 1988. I had an extensive interview with Charles Metten about the changes made to the pageant in 1988. At the time of our interview, Metten was Dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts at Southern Utah University. In the mid 1980s, he was a professor of theatre at Brigham Young University, and he was on the Church’s pageant committee. He was also chosen to direct the first performance of the new pageant, and he helped create the new text. Argetsinger states, “By the mid-eighties, it was evident that a new pageant was needed for the audience of the ‘television age’” (10). The pageant committee did make updating the pageant technology a priority, but the ‘television age’ alone did not necessitate the changes. Metten explained that non- members who watched the Hill Cumorah Pageant had sent back comments that they were confused about what they were watching. Metten states, “Cumorah had become pretty isolated in

76 terms of who the audience really was for this pageant. We were getting a lot of interesting comments back from Cumorah, positive and negative. The negative ones of the old text: ‘I didn’t understand a word of it.’ ‘I didn’t understand; the names were confusing.’” He adds that there were positive comments about the spectacle and staging. The primary problem seemed to be clarity rather than technology. Beyond the confusion for non-members, the pageant had also become its own unique entity for members. By the 1980s, Hansen had retired from the pageant, but his legacy there continued. Metten explains that a Hill Cumorah Pageant subculture had developed complete with its own developing mythology and traditions. In Metten’s words: We got all the stories from the Mormons—Saints—who participated in it, of all of these miracles that happened at the time the pageant—for the 41 years that Harold I. Hansen and his staff were in charge of it—happened, and all of a sudden it was becoming a self- religious kind of ‘hoodoo voodoo’ and the audience saying “I don’t understand what’s going on—love to go, but gee it’s pretty to look at.” The Church became concerned about the subculture and the practices involved in creating the pageant. The Church did not want to give up the pageant. In fact, since the creation of the pageant, the Church had authorized and developed other pageants around the world with similar goals. Many of these pageants are like what Sorensen suggests when he says, “We could tell our stories anywhere.” The Church recognizes the transformational potential in performing Church history and scriptural stories. But the Hill Cumorah Pageant began before the Church had a pageant committee, and the Hill Cumorah Pageant involves more than just the theatrical performance of Church stories at a designated site. Instead, this pageant includes the communitas expression from those pilgrims who attend mixed with the communitas activities involved in creating the pageant. The Hill Cumorah Pageant had become its own entity, one that could powerfully subvert the Church as easily as convert one to the Church. In our discussion, Metten went out of his way to try to be diplomatic. He certainly did not want to disrespect all that Hansen had done in creating and developing the pageant. But clearly, the pageant committee and the leadership of the Church worried about two issues: the results of the pageant on non- members, specifically whether it played well and was clear and effective as a missionary tool; and whether the pageant was a good and doctrinally sound experience for the member participants.

77 According to Metten, who at this point also acknowledged that his specific facts might be a little jumbled by time, the President of the Church at the time, Ezra Taft Benson, working with his First Counselor, Gordon B. Hinckley, sent Dallin H. Oaks, a newer member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, to view several performances of the Hill Cumorah Pageant and report his observation. Oaks observed the casting and rehearsals as well as the performances, and he interviewed audience members. Oaks sent a report to the pageant committee in which, according to Metten, the final comment states, “For Mormons, not for non-Mormons, and it is not Christ- centered.” A pageant titled America’s Witness for Christ should be focused on Christ; moreover, such a focus can fuel anti-Mormon sentiment. Christian communities often accuse the Church of teaching Joseph Smith more than Christ. The Church is sensitive to these criticisms and has made sure the Church’s public persona is Christ-centered; hence, the Church de-emphasizes the nickname “Mormon” in favor of the Church’s official name. The First Presidency, responding to Oak’s report, assigned the pageant committee to review the text and begin working toward creating a new Christ-centered pageant that would continue using the text of the Book of Mormon. Also, the pageant had to be clearer for non- members by simplifying the language, the story, and the names, and also by more clearly distinguishing the story between ancient Israel and the settings in the Americas. To accomplish this task, Metten went to the pageant to review it; he had never before actually seen the pageant. Metten asked the current director, Lund Johnson, how he could be actively involved, and Johnson gave him some scenes to direct. The committee also sent letters to LDS writers to commission a new script. Ultimately, the committee selected up-and-coming writer Orson Scott Card. The leaders of the Church also wanted accomplished composer Crawford Gates to compose a new score. Gates had composed the previous score. The Church leaders also asked Metten to direct the pageant, and so he began actively working with Gates and Card to create the new pageant. Metten anecdotally adds that Orson Scott Card was a former student of his and that “we didn’t get along. Orson Scott and I. Oh boy, he just bothered me terribly, and I bothered him— we just did not—and here we were assigned to be intimate buddies working on this pageant and so, first we had to work out our relationship.” Metten would work out the text with Card until they thought they had a story that could be followed and then take the text to Chicago to work with Gates until they got the script to where they thought President Benson and President

78 Hinckley would approve it. Prior to submitting the script to the First Presidency, the pageant committee decided to test the script with a reading for non-members to get feedback from them about its clarity and story. The text was acted out along with slides at the Salt Lake Temple grounds two to three times a week for about a month. Following the reading, the audience completed a questionnaire about the clarity of the story and the clarity of the message about Christ. Finally, the committee felt they had gathered enough positive statistics and feedback that they were ready to turn the script over to the First Presidency. Metten recalls his visit to President Hinckley to discuss the script. He says, “He’s, uh, you know, he’s tough, he’s really tough, and he’s demanding, and boy he’s right on. I remember he used a felt tip green pen on the copy that we sent him.” Metten recalls President Hinckley’s approach fondly, adding that “it was always ‘what are you—are you sure you want it said this way?’ Never ‘change this’ and ‘do this.’ It was always ‘would you really look at this? Would you really think this through?’” Eventually the script was approved, and the pageant went forward adding in the development of a new stage, a reconstruction of the Hill itself, and new effects. Metten’s account shows just how involved the Church leaders, especially President Hinckley, were in the formation of the new pageant. Metten also mentions difficulties and some hard feelings during the renovation with those associated with the former pageant. Certainly, changes of this scope could not have occurred while Hansen was the director, and indeed that they did not occur until ten years after his release shows that the Church leaders were sensitive toward his work and those who worked with him. The pageant was what Hansen had made it. I do not say this to be accusatory or to minimize the work Hansen did in his forty years of service as the director and largely the creator of the pageant. He completed most of his work without the resources and technical ability to fulfill his ideas. The changes the Church made in 1988, while they were certainly improvements, more importantly show the change in the way the Church views the pageant. While it began largely by individuals and became something of which the Church approved, the pageant was changed into a Church institution, an official operation that included new resources to create a first rate production. By formalizing and institutionalizing the pageant, the Church took control over the Hill Cumorah Pageant. As with the historical sites I discussed in the last chapter, the Church wants to dictate its public face and control its official images. Since the pageant presents the primary

79 Mormon narratives, the Church wants to ensure these performed narratives represent the official accounts. The Church recognizes the missionary potential and reflexive transformational potential with the pageant; hence, the Church leaders want these processes to convert non- member and member audiences to the official and correct Church doctrines and practices; the Church leaders want the pageant to proclaim the gospel and perfect the saints and thus serve the Church’s mission. So, to summarize to this point, the Hill Cumorah Pageant is a large outdoor drama conceived in the tradition of American historical pageants that blends both theatrical elements and ritual elements to create a unique transformational and reflexive cultural performance. The primary theatrical elements include traditional theatrical use of a space, an audience, actors, a theatrical text, and coordination of theatrical elements according to a director’s concept. The theatrical elements also draw from American historical pageantry, which pageantry served as a transformational social ritual designed to unify and rehabilitate a community. The pageant’s ritual elements include an audience who learns reflexively from watching members of its culture perform the culture’s dominant stories; actors who perform not only the theatrical roles but also themselves as members of the culture; a sacred text regarded by the culture as scriptural truth; and a site venerated for its spiritual and historical importance. This site as a context for the performance adds layers of meaning to the performance. Cumorah has served as a pilgrimage site, to which the pageant serves as an additional element to the pilgrims’ experience at the site, and Cumorah has served as a celebration site for Mormon cultural celebrations that led to and were infused into the pageant. These contexts may affect the spectators’ perspective by validating the performance or by positioning it more as a cultural or spiritual ritual. The spectators’ perspective contributes to the pageant’s transformational potential because it determines their concept of reality; their perspective determines whether they are willing to consider the pageant as a ritualized performance of sacred stories or whether they raise a barrier of disbelief through which they view the performance as merely theatrical. The Church renovated the pageant because it recognized the pageant’s potential as a theatrical and ritual performance to further the Church’s missions, the pageant’s confusing and questionable production elements, and the pageant’s growing subculture. These renovations shaped the nature of the discourse performed at the Hill Cumorah Pageant, defining the theatrical and ritual elements according to Church purposes and practices.

80 Finally, I want to address one other very unique pageant performance element. I have discussed how ritual and theatre share common qualities, how the Hill Cumorah Pageant blurs distinguishing lines between the two genres of cultural performance. One quality that is especially common between the two forms is the element of liveness. Live performance by nature is ephemeral, a shared experience between performers and spectators. Live performance even in ritual guarantees a unique performance. Performers subtly or even overtly gauge their performance by variances in the audience’s and other actors’ responses. While the Hill Cumorah Pageant is a live performance, the pageant utilizes a broadcast soundtrack for its performance text. The soundtrack includes all the dialogue, music, and sound effects used in the performance. The pageant performance hybridizes live and recorded performance wherein the live performers lip-synch the dialogue that is broadcast from the soundtrack. Because technicians broadcast the soundtrack from a recorded medium rather than performers creating the sounds live, the broadcast creates a barrier between the performers and the audience that affects the nature of the live performance. Both live theatrical performance and broadcast recorded performance have unique “sensory codes,” to use Turner’s term. Combining the two draws from both, but the product also departs from both. To repeat Turner, “The ‘same’ message in different media is really a set of subtly variant messages, each medium contributing its own generic message to the message conveyed through it” (Anthropology 24). The recorded soundtrack enables the pageant and dictates a base level of quality, and yet, that base level also limits the live performance with 6 a ceiling, past which the performance cannot aesthetically or spiritually transcend.TP PT Using a broadcast recording affects how the performer performs for an audience. The broadcast text mediates the performer’s performance, dictating that the performer respond and direct his/her performance to the broadcast text rather than to the audience. To illustrate this point, first consider a singer accompanied by a live musician. When that relationship works correctly, the singer dictates the performance, and the accompanist follows the singer. The singer’s performance will differ from the rehearsal because the singer will direct his/her performance to the audience. The singer will adjust to the audience’s response and may change tempo, or volume, or any of the performance elements; the accompanist follows the singer and adjusts accordingly. If the singer broadcasts recorded accompaniment, then the singer must perform not primarily to the audience but to the broadcast. If the singer varies his/her performance elements, then s/he will get off of the playing music. The singer’s timing, volume,

81 and other elements, and nuances to the performance must be considered in advance and set when the recording is created. After that point, the singer must perform to the broadcast music, must accompany the recording, rather than the music accompanying the singer. The broadcast music creates a barrier between the singer and the audience, preventing the singer from forging a relationship that would influence the performance. The broadcast music mediates that performance. For the audience, because the singer sings to the music rather than singing primarily to the audience, the broadcast music becomes the dominant performance element and, therefore. commands the primary response from the audience. Just as the performer performs as directed by the broadcast, so the spectators receive the performance as directed by the broadcast. Part of the uniqueness, part of the ephemeral nature, part of the shared relationship between performer and spectator is compromised because part of the performance is not unique, is not ephemeral and does not share a relationship with the spectators. The implications for theatre are far-reaching. A musical production that uses a broadcast soundtrack differs from a production of the same musical that uses a live orchestra. The production using a live orchestra has a conductor who watches the performance and mediates the orchestra to the performers. The performers in the production using broadcast music must instead mediate their performance to the soundtrack. Where there are more performers in a number, such a situation also changes the performer-to- performer dynamic. The broadcast music also mediates this relationship because the soundtrack dictates the performance elements that performers can otherwise vary when the performers dictate the performance. Considering the singer with the recorded accompaniment, the singer still sings, using that tool along with his/her body and mind to perform. But when a performer is lip-synching to broadcast singing and music, then the performer loses a major performance tool. In such a case, the broadcast even further dictates the performance. The performer to be convincing must be more conscious of pace and must employ his/her body and mind to conform the performance to the broadcast. When the audience is unaware that a performer is lip-synching, the audience may react harshly when they find out that the performance included lip-synching. Audience members may feel cheated, may feel they were deceived, as shown by the controversy over Ashlee Simpson’s performance on Saturday Night Live, over Elton John’s accusation of Madonna, and, of course, over the ultimate lip-synching con artists, Milli Vanilli. When performers perform acknowledged lip-synching, spectators watch performers react to and perform to the broadcast

82 performance. The broadcast performance obviously mediates what the live performers do. Both the performers and the spectators are keenly conscious of the broadcast performance. Both the performers and the spectators also recognize that the performance is an overt combination of live and recorded elements in which, no matter how creative and clever the live performers, they are subject ultimately to the broadcast performance. Besides being ephemeral and a shared event between performer and spectator, live performance also always possesses a level of uncertainty, the possibility that anything can and sometimes does happen, spawning the motto, “The show must go on.” Even between two ideal performances there will be differences due to such variables as the recall of spoken text by live actors, the uniqueness of each audience interacting with the performers, and the inability of live performers to completely reproduce all the elements of voice and movement necessary to duplicate a performance. When you tell theatre performers that you have seen their production, they are apt to ask when you saw it, because they know some nights are better than others. The show indeed must go on, but the show will never be the same twice. To illustrate this point, I will describe a unique theatrical moment I witnessed at the opening performance of Hamlet at Grand Valley State University on September 30, 2005. This production tried to break down some traditional barriers between performers and spectators by removing a few rows of seating to create more of a thrust out of the apron in the proscenium theatre; by bringing performers down through the aisles from the back of the house at various moments, such as when the players enter; and by making some dialogue, especially the soliloquies, overtly presentational to the audience. The production divided the play into three parts with two short intermissions. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech followed the first intermission. Hamlet, played by Paul Riopelle, entered through the house right aisle. As he started in, an audience member got out of her seat to leave and started up the aisle, apparently unaware of Hamlet’s entrance. Riopelle caught the audience member, put his arm around her, and started escorting her back down the aisle toward her seat. As he did so, he began the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Riopelle directed the speech to the audience member as if he were explaining his thoughts to her. He returned her to her seat and talked to her with his dialogue for a few additional moments. He then made his way up onto the stage and continued his speech more generally to the audience. The audience, aware that what they were watching was a “live” and unplanned moment, chuckled some. Certainly what happened affected the performance and

83 affected a pivotal moment in the play, a moment most of the audience anticipated and may have even come to see. Such a moment became more of a shared moment between the actor and the audience than either anticipated. This example demonstrates first that the performer can and does react to the audience; the audience does influence the live performance and contributes to the shared experience. Secondly, this example demonstrates that live performance creates uncertainty: live performers and a live audience are primary variables that affect what happens during the performance. As a very large outdoor performance, the Hill Cumorah Pageant has three especially unique production demands that increase the variables of live performance. First, the production is performed outdoors on the Hill Cumorah. The hill’s importance to Church history contributes to the pageant’s popularity, but it also brings spectators with high expectations that the production will celebrate the site. Second, the popularity of the pageant brings an average of seven to ten thousand spectators a night to view the one and one-half hour performance. An audience consistently this large greatly increases the audience variability factor. Figure 2.1 shows the location of the stage physically on the hill. It also shows the scope of the stage and the amount of seating necessary to accommodate the size of the audience. Third, and most significant, the pageant features an all-amateur cast of more than six hundred who arrive only one week before the production opens. During this week, these would-be performers audition and are cast in their roles, most of them playing two to three characters, and they rehearse the production. Such a large amateur cast and such a short rehearsal and training period enormously impacts the actor variability factor of live performance. Preparing such a cast for performance to such an audience in such a location in a week seems an impossible feat. The pageant uses its recorded text, its soundtrack to do so. The soundtrack minimizes the variables of live performance, and it helps to create an atmosphere appropriate to the site and conducive to the production’s religious message and transformational performance. By reducing the variables of live performance, the soundtrack also ultimately limits the pageant’s theatrical and ritual potential; however, it enables the pageant to be performed annually despite the pageant’s unique production demands.

84

Fig. 2.1. View of multileveled Hill Cumorah Pageant stage and seating in the bowl from the top of the Hill Cumorah.

These three production demands make sound transmission an obvious dilemma: how do you transmit sound adequately outdoors with an enormous cast to the ten thousand spectators? With the stage set partly up the hill overlooking the widespread seating area, natural sound transmission would be very inadequate (see fig. 2.1). Since its genesis, the pageant has used lip- synching, or more appropriately movement-synching, since no one can see the actors’ lips, rather than having the actors onstage speak the lines. This broadcast speech addresses two problems with live actor speech. The first problem is the cast of amateur actors. Neither time nor a talent pool sufficient to use live actor speech exists. Director Rodger Sorensen acknowledges, “Having a recording makes it possible to maintain a high level of excellence in performance.” The actors who performed the dialogue for the recording were trained theatre professionals who read the text in a sound booth. Sorensen adds, “We would have to spend many more weeks in rehearsal to get the voices to project in that space. I don’t know that we could do it. So, it makes it possible, the fact that we have the recording” (16 Nov. 2000). With only a week of rehearsals, directors do not have time to cast actors with suitable voices, train them to perform in the space, and have them learn and perform the dialogue. Instead, during the rehearsal week, the directors train, or perhaps choreograph, the

85 cast to move according to the speech and sound broadcast offstage and to react and interact not primarily with each other or with the audience but with the broadcast. Rehearsals focus primarily on movement rather than voice as a means of expression; vocal training is irrelevant. Considering the artistic quality of the sound, for the pageant to be effective at communicating the Church narratives, the dialogue needs to be clear and persuasive. Early in this chapter, I discussed how theatre serves as a medium for the transformational performance and that the pageant staff view the production as a spiritual rather than a theatrical experience. I discussed how the production concept focuses on facilitating a spiritual experience. The artistic quality, including the quality of the dialogue, impacts the pageant’s effectiveness as a transformational experience. The Church views cultural arts and especially performing arts in a very romantic fashion. Simplistically stated, the Romantics believed that arts are a way to tap into a world spirit beyond sensual phenomenon. Similarly, the Church believes that arts can be a way to worship God and express God’s word. Moreover, arts can serve as a conduit through which humans can experience God—feel these spiritual manifestations. For instance, Brent Hanson asserts, “The artistry is what’s going to invite the Spirit,” meaning that the successful artistic performance will create an atmosphere conducive to spiritual phenomena. For the conversion process, the spectators need to be able to hear and understand the doctrines and principles, to acquire knowledge, and to experience the spiritual manifestations. To do so, the performance environment must be conducive to such spiritual manifestations; the artistic presentation needs to be of a quality that inspires rather than disrupts the mood. The second problem is the nature of sound. Recorded dialogue transmits better and more easily than live speech in this setting. Live actor speech is very difficult to transmit on the natural-hill stage out to the audience seated at the base of the hill. Live actor speech would require considerable electronic amplification. Due to the costs, outfitting each cast member with microphones would be implausible, and providing only certain actors with microphones would not be a realistic solution. Because the play is an epic, no central characters remain throughout the entire play. They have only a limited time onstage and give way to other central characters. Thus, either the actors would have to exchange microphones with other actors, or the production would need a still too large number of body microphones. Setting aside the cost, using body microphones for more than six hundred would enormously increase the variability factors of human error and technical difficulties. The final possibility would be to fix microphones

86 throughout the stage, which would also prove extremely difficult. At times, the entire cast is on stage. The microphones would have to work in such a way as to amplify the actors’ speech without amplifying the sound of six hundred people entering and exiting the metal stage. The stage, as well, is so large that logistically placing the microphones would be nearly impossible. The quality of live sound is another problem. Amplifying and transmitting live actor speech would be significantly inferior, technically, to that of the broadcast soundtrack. Transmitting live, amplified speech would require using a sound system like what the production uses for the soundtrack, but the source sound, that given outdoors by live actors into microphones, would be technically inferior to that digitally recorded in a sound studio and broadcast from the soundtrack CD. The transmitted speech from the soundtrack is superior both technically because of where is it created and artistically because of the training and skill of the studio performers to that which could be created by the actors themselves, except that the soundtrack is not live. Primarily, what the performance loses by not having live actor speech is the uniqueness of a performance tailored to the audience who is present, a performance mediated by the director’s concept, by the playwright’s text, by the actor’s skill, by the other performers, 7 and by the response from the audience rather than also by the broadcast recorded text.TP PT As I said, the Hill Cumorah Pageant has used lip-synching since its genesis, but it has not always used a recorded text. In the first production in 1937, two readers performed the lines offstage in a sound booth. They read the lines into microphones, and the sound was transmitted through a sound system to the audience. In an interview given to Walter E. Boyden, Jr. in 1981 8

for Boyden’s dissertation, Harold I. HansenTP PT discussed his decision to use lip-synching in the performance: They [those working on the pageant before Hansen’s arrival] had not resolved how the audience was going to hear the pageant [. . .] and we had the first lavalier mikes in the history of the world, the ones that hang around your neck. Microphones, in that day, were about three and a half inches in diameter and twelve to fourteen inches long. When you put them on, it looked as though you had a large growth. And when the actors dragged the cables, the static was so fantastic, it would just cause the place to shake. No one could

understand a word, and thatU U wouldn’t work. So then I tried putting them down in front of the stage in a sort of footlight position. But the wind would come down off that hill and hit the Queen Anne’s Lace, the wild onion that has a nice surface, and built up a nice

87 cascade of sound which was just as bad if they were dragging the mikes. You couldn’t 9

hear or understand anything. [. . .] And then I said to the Elders,TP PT “Will you build me just a small shack with windows in two sides of it looking up to the hill . . . so that the person standing in it can see all sides of the hill?” [. . .] What I had in mind was to plant a microphone in there with the speakers attached . . . put the actor out on the hill [. . .] and synchronize the voice and the actor. And that’s what we did. (289-290) The process Hansen describes accounts for most of the problems I just discussed: logistics, sound quality, and feasibility. What it does not address is the artistic quality of the dialogue or the artistic feasibility. By having two actors perform the dialogue offstage, the actors could read from the written text, and there would only need to be two performers who would need vocal preparation. The dynamic such a performance creates is intriguing to consider. The stage performance is mediated by the live offstage sound, but there would be more possibility for interaction and variance in the performance, more of a shared relationship as with a live orchestra. But the offstage performers generate the dialogue, which initiates the performance rather than supports the performance, as orchestral music supports lyrics. The offstage performers also face the stage rather than the audience. They perform to the performers who then translate and interpret that performance to the audience. Live readers continued to perform the dialogue from offstage until 1957. A review of the pageant’s history reveals that sound transmission continued to be a major problem that improved as available technology advanced. In 1957, the pageant for the first time used recorded dialogue. This recorded text also featured Crawford Gates’s first Hill Cumorah score. The musical score featured the Utah Symphony and combined choirs from Brigham Young University recorded on an innovative five track recording system provided by renowned Brigham Young University sound scientist Dr. Harvey Fletcher. Fletcher also designed a new stereophonic sound system used to broadcast the musical score and dialogue. Prior to Gates’s musical score, Harold Hansen acknowledged, “We gathered the music from every place we could get recorded music.” The problems with this practice, Hansen related, were that the music “never really fitted [sic] what we were showing,” and Hansen discovered that “most of the records that I was using were not in the public domain and we had no right to be using them” (qtd in Boyden 307). The newly created recording gave the pageant its own music and provided recorded voices, limiting the variability

88 factors of live readers performing into offstage microphones but also removing a live performance element and a level of distinctiveness to individual performances. In 1988, the new soundtrack combined Card’s words spoken by actors Metten gathered from among his colleagues and friends with Gate’s score performed by the Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Argetsinger notes, “A new score was written by Crawford Gates which mixes the music to the dialogue and sound effects in a cinematic manner” (10). Argetsinger appropriately describes the soundtrack as cinematic because it incorporates two film methods into the live performance: using recorded performance and using music to underscore the performance. These two methods directly address live-actor variability and a performance atmosphere conducive to ritual performance and spiritual manifestations. First, trained actors in a sound studio perform dialogue that is taped, edited, enhanced, and preserved on a soundtrack. By recording and broadcasting the dialogue, the pageant uses an idealized text, an edited, reproducible text. Dialogue is the principal rhetorical tool in drama, and the actor’s vocal interpretation and performance is central to performance. By creating the recorded text, live-actor variables that affect the actor’s interpretation and performance are of lesser consequence. If the performer makes a mistake, then the show does not go on; another take is made. Engineers edit the best of the moments together, forming not a single best performance, but a combination of best takes and moments. Thus, the audience will always experience the dialogue at a particular artistic level, night in and night out. Like a film, the performance or broadcast of the recorded text is duplicated. Each night, the broadcast dialogue achieves a high artistic standard, which serves as a minimum, a base level or foundation for the live performance. The amateur cast members also use the recorded dialogue to gain access to their character. The recorded interpretation gives the performers an idealized, already realized performance that provides insight to their roles. Sorensen indicates, “The performers themselves make connections to this recorded interpretation of the scriptures, and that’s what they tie themselves to” (16 Nov. 2000). In other words, the text comes already interpreted for the cast. The actors do not need to go through traditional exercises of script analysis and character development. Instead, they develop their character according to the recorded interpretation. Sorensen adds, “If we encourage our performers to get inside their characters, and inside what the characters are saying, and understand their characters, and speak those lines as if it were them, . . . making emotional connections and physical connections to the line, it [the live

89 performance] can be very powerful.” When that does not happen, when the variability factor occurs, “when we don’t accomplish that,” Sorensen acknowledges, “at least there’s the recording” (16 Nov. 2000). The recorded dialogue acts as a foundation for the performance, a base of artistic excellence that compensates for inexperience and human frailty. The second cinematic method the pageant uses is the musical score included on the soundtrack. The score works artistically in much the same fashion as a musical score in a film. The score consists of nondiegetic music, or music which does not issue from an onstage or on- camera source. Music in film forms a unique relationship with the visual imagery. Kathryn Kalinak states that film music “shares with the image track (and other elements of the soundtrack) the ability to shape perception” (15). She adds, “Film music’s power is derived largely from its ability to tap specific musical conventions that circulate through the culture. But that power is always dependent on a coexistence with the visual image” (15). Claudia Gorbman goes further stating that typically, “nondiegetic music does not denote anything in the represented space. Rather, it figures in the expression of mood, pace, feeling in relation to the represented space” (32). And finally, Tony Thomas states, “Music comes to bear in helping to realise the meaning of the film, in stimulating and guiding the emotional response to the visuals” (16). While the musical score does not represent a specific element on the stage, it shapes the perception of what happens onstage. The music affects mood and environment by adding layers of meaning to the performance experience. Musicologists, as Kalinak explains, debate exactly how music does so: “The question of how music can stand for concrete and identifiable phenomena when its method of signification is neither direct nor inherent is one not yet fully theorized”; however, as she asserts, none deny it (8). The theorists all agree that music in film shares a relationship with the visual image and that music has the ability to affect the emotional and atmospheric perception of that image. Once linked, the music and the visual image become connected in a joint signification of image and sound. For example, in Jaws, once the theme music or leitmotif links to the visual image of the shark, the visual image and the sound create a joint association. When the music is heard again, it refers to its previous signification with the visual image of the shark. These moments of music continue to signify this association even in contexts outside of Jaws. Anyone who has seen Jaws continues to think or even visualize the shark when they again hear the music. Inside the context of Jaws, the music creates suspense and increases tension. The visual may show a calm sea or a

90 swimmer, images that would not create tension in their own right; yet, mixed with the music, spectators’ perception of the image may change because they anticipate the shark. Music elicits and intensifies the emotional impact of the visual image. The Hill Cumorah Pageant uses its score in a similar manner to add layers of meaning and emotion to the performance. Gates’s score uses leitmotifs for characters such as Christ to affect the perception of the visual image. However, the music used in the pageant has additional layers of meaning because it is a recorded performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Few Mormons cannot identify the distinct sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; they are the musical voice of the Church. Non-Mormons as well often recognize the choir. Mormons equate the choir with Church doctrine and with religious devotion. The choir performs every six months at LDS General Conferences. As such, the choir’s music links with the religious instruction, spiritual manifestations, and ritual worship at these conferences. While the pageant’s musical score is original, it still carries with it the connotation each spectator associates with the choir. These layers are then joined to the pageant’s live performance and visual images, shaping and enhancing the religious atmosphere of the experience. There are, of course, drawbacks to using the soundtrack. As I said, the soundtrack reduces the live performance variables. While these variables may be an obstacle to a perfect performance, they are also essential features to theatre. By its nature, theatre is changeable and changing. Most directors recognize a play text as a blueprint for performance, an incomplete art requiring their touch. As such, few have qualms about exerting their influence on the script, sometimes leading to radical changes. The recorded text limits pageant directors’ influence and ability to make changes. The pageant text is set and static; the dialogue and the interpretation of the dialogue already have been performed. If there are moments with which the directors are not satisfied, and Sorensen acknowledges that there are, the directors are stuck with them, performance after performance, year after year. The recorded text used from 1957 to 1987 was on tape. As such, it was still feasible to make changes to the recorded text. Charles Whitman describes changes made to the 1961 text, stating that “last minute tailoring of the script at Hill Cumorah was possible because the voices were on tape and it was relatively easy to cut out one speech or more and splice another speech from previous Pageants where it was deemed necessary” (351-352). This is no longer an option available to directors. Changes would require remixing the spoken text in a studio. It would

91 10 require nearly the effort used to create the master recording.TP PT As such, the soundtrack used at the Hill Cumorah Pageant is a fixed text. Metten admits constraints, especially of time, that limited the success of the recording. The Church decided to revise the pageant after the production in 1987 and decided to stage the revised pageant in 1988. The new script had to be written, the new score composed, and the soundtrack recorded and edited all in less than a year. Such a schedule meant late nights at the recording studio, and it meant difficulties in finding suitable, available performers. Discussing some problem moments, Sorensen says, “The music is telling one story, and the voices are telling a story; there are places that they are not working. And then we have the other question, and that is the interpretation of some of the lines, and some of them are just not right. . . . And then we have a couple of voices that are just wrong” (16 Nov. 2000). Metten as well acknowledges, “Some of the voices are wanting, and I can understand Rodger’s dilemma.” The variability factor of performance still existed during the recording’s creation, since it recorded live performance. As a recording, there was the ability to have multiple takes, but editing can only incorporate the best of what was available rather than necessarily the best possible. In film and recorded media, the finished product represents an edition not necessarily of the best possible moments but of the best available or the best achievable. Similarly, the recorded text of Hill Cumorah represents not necessarily the best that can be done but what was done. Time constraints limited the number of possibilities. Problems created from such variables that survived the editing became permanent. These same problems, if occurring in a live performance, might be solved either by further rehearsal, direction, or cast changes, options no longer available to Hill Cumorah’s directors. The recorded text that acts as an artistic foundation also acts as a ceiling, ultimately limiting the potential of the live performance, the potential for emotional impact, and ultimately the potential to serve the purposes of the Church. Using a recorded broadcast text creates a different type of performance than a live performance. If reflexivity in cultural performance operates either from acting or from observing others acting, then adding a recorded and broadcast performance affects and possibly limits performative reflexivity, thus also affecting the transformational potential. The soundtrack, as Sorensen declares, has defects as well as positive effects, but ultimately, as he acknowledges, “It makes it possible; we couldn’t do without it” (16 Nov. 2000). The soundtrack makes it possible to incorporate Gates’s music performed by the

92 Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Utah Symphony with the performance at Cumorah. Such a combination certainly enhances the atmosphere conducive to spiritual manifestations and appropriate to the site. While such a feat might be possible for a single or few performances, it would never be possible to do so annually. The soundtrack also makes it possible for a cast of more than six hundred amateurs to perform in that outdoor setting and for that performance to emotionally impact as many as 100,000 spectators annually. It does so by limiting the variability of live performance that such a production presents. However, while the recording limits the variability factor, it does not remove it. There are still more than six hundred live bodies on stage. The recorded text adds a new set of variables, new sensory codes, inherent to synchronization and to integrating electronic broadcast performance with live performance. Numerous variables to live performance remain that are not addressed by the soundtrack, such as abundant new special effects also added in the renovation (see fig. 2.2). Even at the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the show, a reflexive and transformational combination of traditional theatre, historical pageantry, ritual, and broadcast performance, will never be the same twice.

Fig. 2.2. Rusty Terry, the actor who plays the Resurrected Savior, rehearses his entrance in the flight harness. Hill Cumorah Pageant directed by Rodger Sorensen, July 2000.

93

1

TP PT Gerald F. Else in the Introduction to his translation of the Poetics details the problem with defining catharsis. He explains: A note on “catharsis” seems to be unavoidable here. The term appears just once in the extant part of the Poetics (sec. 9, 1449b28), and then not in a context that offers a firm handle to interpretation. We are hindered rather than helped by another concept, that of the “appropriate (or specific) pleasure,” which is clearly said at one point (sec14, 1453b12) to be based somehow on pity and fear, but whose relationship to “catharsis” is left wholly obscure. The most that can be said with confidence—and this much can be said with confidence—is that “catharsis” belongs in some way to Aristotle’s defense of the emotional side of poetry against Plato. The arousing of pity and fear is an integral part of the work of tragedy, at least, and something about that production is such that those feelings are, or can be made, beneficent rather than hurtful. (6) 2

TP PT Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 “Documentary Theatre” play Der Stellvertreter about Pope Pius XII. 3

TP PT My primary source for American pageant development is David Glassberg’s book American Historical Pageantry. I recommend it to those who desire a much more thorough discussion of American pageants and their history and development. 4

TP PT For a modern parallel, I suggest examining Richard Geer’s Swamp Gravy in Colquitt, Georgia, where Geer tried to ease Colquitt’s racial tensions through creating a theatrical text based on town oral histories. Like the historical pageants before, the production makes “Colquitt” the hero, and it features the townspeople as performers rather than hired actors. Geer describes his experiences in “Out of Control in Colquitt: Swamp Gravy Makes Stone Soup.” 5

TP PT Whitman’s dissertation provides a much more complete history of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. 6

TP PT In Liveness, Philip Auslander notes, “Live performance now often incorporates mediatization such that the live event itself is a product of media technologies” (24). He cites for example large video screens used at sporting events and concerts: “The spectator sitting in the back rows of a Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen concert or even a Bill Cosby stand-up comedy performance, is present at a live performance, but hardly participates in it as such since his/her main experience is to read it off a video monitor” (24). His examples illustrate a similar phenomenon at the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Spectators at the events Auslander describes hardly distinguish between the live and mediatized performance because their synthesis has become commonplace. Such is the case at the Hill Cumorah Pageant; the audience so accepts the inclusion of the soundtrack that its invasion and disruption of the live performance goes unnoticed. 7

TP PT This concept of liveness in theatrical performance considers an aspect of live performance that Auslander fails to address in his work Liveness. In his book, Auslander discusses the nature of repetition, viewed generally as part of the ontology related to film and media and absent from the ontology of live theatrical performance. Auslander notes that in the 1930s and 1940s spectators experienced film only in specialized settings that they could not replicate at home, which is now how many of us experience most of Hollywood’s offerings. As such, he explains, “Whereas film was once experienced as evanescence, it is now experienced as repetition. The crucial point is that this transition was not caused by any substantive change in the film medium itself” (46). He follows with the conclusion that “as a medium, film can be used to provide an evanescent experience that leaves little behind, in the manner of a live performance” (46). Auslander’s assertion is a broad, general statement, yet he really only considers a single facet in the “evanescent experience” of live theatre. What Auslander fails to mention is that the evanescent experience he describes only considers the spectator and not the performer in the liveness equation. There is no evanescent performance experience for the movie performer. There is no continuity in performance or a live audience to perform for. Even in a television performance taped for a live studio audience, the performance realm can and does get broken by the nature of the medium when there are mistakes or retakes or duplicate shots required. Auslander does not consider the interaction between spectator and performer in the ephemeral performance. Generally, Auslander disregards the notion of community established between the performers and the spectators at a shared live event. He states: Investigating live performance’s cultural valence for the present volume, I quickly became impatient with what I consider to be traditional, unreflective assumptions that fail to get much further in their attempts to explicate the value of “liveness” than invoking clichés and mystifications like “the magic of live theatre,” the “energy” that supposedly exists between performers and spectators in a live event, and the “community” that live performance is often said to create among performers and spectators. (2) As such, he also fails to consider such a community when stating that a film experience in the 1930s and 1940s can “provide an evanescent experience that leaves little behind, in the manner of a live performance” (46). Regarding

94 such a community, Auslander states, “Another version of this account of the appeal of live performance proposes that live performance brings performers and spectators together in a community. This view misunderstands the dynamic of performance, which is predicated on the distinction between performers and spectators. Indeed, the effort to eliminate that distinction destroys the very possibility of performance” (56). I assert that such reasoning is very shortsighted and limiting in its consideration of theatrical performance. First, Auslander does not specifically identify his argument as being limited to theatrical performance. Instead, Auslander specifically and erroneously uses the broader term “live performance” which would include ritual and other types of cultural performance. And yet, the gap he describes is more particular not even just to theatre but more specifically to realistic and representational theatre. Ritual requires the spectators to view the performers not as removed characters but as members of the community, as Turner notes, and as I discussed earlier in this chapter and will return to later in this work. In his statement, Auslander also fails to consider presentational theatre traditions that incorporate performer and spectator interact ion or the traditions of the middle ages where actors from the trade guilds were not distant, unrecognized performers but members of the community staging the drama. While Auslander’s reasoning is compelling and his theories offer much for performance studies to consider, especially related to theatre’s continuing evolution, a weakness in Auslander’s argument is that he generalizes about theatre often ignoring all but representational and proscenium style conventions. The representational concept of the fourth wall is relatively a very young part of theatre performance. In fact, further considering theatrical performance more in terms of a plastic art that has and does evolve, adapt, and appropriate ever-emerging technologies would add new dimensions to Auslander’s arguments. Finally, Auslander also fails to consider the theatrical performer in dismissing the concept of shared community. In the second half of this work, I will more particularly consider this question and examine Cumorah’s live performance as a type of rite of incorporation into a formed community. 8

TP PT At the time of the interview, Dr. Harold I. Hansen was the Chairman of the Department of Theatre and Cinematic Arts at Brigham Young University. 9

TP PT Fulltime male missionaries are referred to as Elders. 10

TP PT Emerging technologies make re-editing more feasible than in 2000, but adding new material still involves generating new material and coordinating it with either the original score or generating additional music and choir source material.

95 CHAPTER 3

THE WRITTEN WORD

Hamlet, while trying to decide how to proceed with his sworn revenge, decides to create a play. The play, he posits, will confirm the king’s guilt: Hum—I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play, Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions. For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks; I’ll tent him to the quick. If I do a blench, I know my course. (2.2. 584-594) While the Hill Cumorah Pageant does not cause guilty kings to demonstrate their guilt when pricked by their conscience, the Church and pageant creators hope that the spectators will still be motivated to act when they view the performance. Hamlet then says the oft quoted line, “The play’s the thing” (2.2 600). And so now, the play’s the thing; in this chapter, I will examine the text, the content performed at Cumorah. Certainly, I bend Hamlet’s phrase, as is often the case when quoting Shakespeare, but I would be incomplete if I did not examine and analyze the text and performance as major elements in the Hill Cumorah Pageant. When the Church renovated the pageant for the 1988 production, they commissioned a new text. That text had to be based on the Book of Mormon, but it also had to be clear for those not familiar with the book. The text also had to be Christ-centered, and it had to declare the major Church doctrines by relating the primary Church narratives. The text had to be in all: clear

96 enough for the unfamiliar; potent enough for the familiar; doctrinally informative and sound; persuasive in its propaganda; spiritually inspiring; visually engaging and even entertaining for a massive audience considerably distant from the stage; appropriate to be performed at a sacred site; and functional for a cast of more than six hundred. Certainly, the Church had high expectations. The resulting text is an epic dramatic piece with a multi-dimensional structure that is overtly theme-driven. The primary theme promotes conversion to the Church and active adherence to the Church doctrines and practices, but the text also uses secondary themes that appeal to different audience dynamics to point to the primary theme. The text incorporates missionary practices and not only borrows the stories from the Book of Mormon, but it also appropriates the book’s inherently dramatic nature and rhetorical style. The Church regards the Book of Mormon as scripture written by ancient prophets, preserved by God, delivered angelically to Joseph Smith, and translated by him using prophetic 1 power.TP PT The book spans 1000 years and primarily details two civilizations that lived in ancient America. Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon contains a series of smaller books written by different authors over generations. Unlike the Bible, the Book of Mormon contains an uninterrupted record of these ancient peoples from the time they left Jerusalem in six hundred BCE until one of the civilizations perished around 400 CE. Mormon, one of these ancient prophets and record keepers, compiled and edited the records passed down among the generations into a single volume, giving the book its name as the Book of Mormon. Mormon’s son Moroni finished the record after Mormon died, and then Moroni hid the record before his own death. This same Moroni appeared as an angel to Joseph Smith and delivered it to him. The Book of Mormon account begins in Jerusalem just prior to the Babylonian captivity with a prophet named Lehi who was contemporary to the Jewish prophet Jeremiah. Lehi left Jerusalem with his family and another family and eventually arrived by ship to the Americas. Two of Lehi’s six sons were wicked and caused contention with the other four sons. After Lehi’s death, the sons separated into two groups, which led to two distinct civilizations. The four righteous sons called themselves Nephites, after one of the sons. The two wicked sons together with members of the other family that traveled with them called themselves Lamanites after the eldest of the six sons. Nephi, the leader of the Nephites, created the first records. The Nephites kept the records, providing both a historical and spiritual account of the Nephite civilization. The

97 book also reports that Jesus Christ visited the Book of Mormon civilizations soon after his resurrection. Christ’s visit and ministry are the most important events recorded in the work. The Book of Mormon translates to drama quite easily. The prophets who recorded the book chose events to preserve with a future audience in mind. Moroni, when he finished the work, left a preface that defines the book’s purpose; Moroni declares the book is an abridgment of the Nephite record “written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the House of Israel; and 2 also to Jew and GentileTP —WrittenPT by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation” (Book of Mormon Preface). Moroni asserts that the record is more than just a history; instead, it is a divine book containing revelations and prophecies. Moroni also establishes that he and other writers recorded the history and doctrines specifically for the world. Much like the novel in form, the Book of Mormon consciously anticipates, acknowledges, and references its future audience, which creates a presentational rhetorical style that parallels drama. Dramatic writers envision an audience that will watch and hear their words, writing and drafting the text for such an end. The Book of Mormon writers did not envision a theatrical performance, but they envisioned an audience that would both read the words and declare the words to others. The pageant text translates the Book of Mormon’s rhetorical style into a presentational theatrical style that also consciously addresses the pageant audience the way the Book of Mormon addresses its audience. Additionally, the Book of Mormon writers, especially Mormon as the editor, recorded their history and beliefs for a specific purpose. Certainly, all historical writers record history based on their biases and personal or political agendas, but they do not always publish their intentions. Moroni declares the objective for writing the Book of Mormon in the preface; he states that the book shows “unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; . . . that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever.” The writings demonstrate to the readers God’s power and doctrines by using the Nephite civilization and the Nephite stories as an example. The writers use history to demonstrate the religious doctrines and practices and to emphasize the prophecies and revelations they received. As a result, the characters and stories are paradigmatic, which tends to make them less complex, more allegorical or parabolic, and more dramatic. Dramatic characters bend to the needs of the story and theme to serve the dramatic necessity. Because the Book of

98 Mormon stories and characters are didactic and because they are already edited in their complexity to serve the book’s thematic purposes, the stories already translate well to drama. In the Book of Mormon, Jesus as the Christ is the central theme; the Nephite’s beliefs, practices, and revelations focus on Jesus Christ throughout the work. Moroni in the preface declares that the book is designed to convince the world “that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” The Nephite prophets and people anticipate Christ’s 3 visit to them throughout the majority of the book and then record his visit and teachings. Nephi,TP PT the book’s first writer, explains in his record, “We keep the law of Moses, and look forward with steadfastness unto Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled” (2 Nephi 25:24). In the simplest terms, the Book of Mormon shows a society that flourished when it followed Christ and suffered and ultimately failed when it did not. The new pageant text by mandate had to also be Christ- centered. As such, the text draws stylistically from the Book of Mormon by presenting stories that emphasize Christ and dictate doctrines and revelations concerning him, ultimately telling the Nephite’s Christ-centered story. The Book of Mormon’s overtly thematic writing stylistically creates a dual purpose. The characters and events are both emblematic and historical. While the emblematic quality serves the book’s thematic purpose, the characters and stories must also retain their historical or “real” nature to be effective at declaring its theme. The stories point to Jesus, but if the events are no more than stories, then the work loses its testifying power. By documenting and presenting eye witness accounts of Christ’s visit to the Nephites and Lamanites in ancient America, the Book of Mormon stands as a second witness to the Bible that Jesus is the Christ and that he was resurrected following his crucifixion. The Church emphasizes this point by subtitling the book “Another Testament of Jesus Christ” and by promoting it as such though various media. For the pageant text, the characters’ and events’ duality creates strong plot elements and good dramatic characters with strong intentions and clear objectives. For the pageant text to be effective, the text must also present the characters and events dualistically. Casting these characters and events as “real” also serves the drama and especially serves the ritual. Turner states, “Stage drama is about the extrapolation of the individual into alien roles and personalities; ritual drama is about the complete delimitation, the total definition of person” (Anthropology 150). Turner describes the role of the actor in either drama: watching a play is about watching the actor transform into roles outside him/herself, and the ritual is about

99 watching the performer within the role. But I think this distinction also works for the dramatic content. For the drama to have ritual power, the spectators must be able to see the characters and events as real characters and events even while recognizing that their stories are condensed for “dramatic necessity.” By real, I do not just mean that what happens “really happened” but that beyond the characters and events lies spiritual truth, that these characters and events expose a greater drama between God and man, in which the characters as real humans reveal God’s interaction with man. The spectators must be able to recognize the characters and events as larger than life “heroes,” representing a universal example, while also recognizing them as very human and real in order for the spectator to personalize and be reflexively transformed by observing the drama. The Book of Mormon’s stylistic dual purpose also creates dual and even competing 4 structures, one serving the historical account and the other the thematic purpose.TP PT Because the Book of Mormon recounts the Nephite civilization from its inception through to its demise, the book presents a linear history. The history unfolds episodically, and yet as an overall narrative, the Book of Mormon builds dramatically towards a final battle between the Nephites and Lamanites wherein the Nephites are ultimately destroyed. The pageant text adheres to this same linear episodic progression, condensing it for dramatic necessity, while still preserving the basic format and chronology. Diagramming the overall plot in the book according to a traditional narrative demonstrates the story of the Nephites from the beginning to the end with the final battle between the Nephites and Lamanites as the climax (see fig. 3.1). According to this structure, Christ’s visit occurs as part of the rising action leading to the Nephite destruction. This event ultimately leads to the crisis, when the Nephites again turn wicked and begin warring with the Lamanites. While the Nephite history narrative serves as a dramatic plot for the Book of Mormon, the primary theme preaches Christ. Considering the play thematically presents an alternative dramatic structure, which figure 3.2 demonstrates. According to the thematic structure, Christ’s visit is the climax, and the Nephite destruction is part of the resolution.

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Fig. 3.1. Book of Mormon historical narrative structure.

Fig. 3.2. Book of Mormon thematic narrative structure.

101 Because the Church leaders directed the pageant to be Christ-centered, the pageant text, structurally, largely follows the Book of Mormon’s thematic structure, but the dual structures affect and complicate the pageant text structure. The pageant text title remained America’s Witness for Christ. As the title suggests, the text emphasizes Christ’s visit as the key dramatic event, with following Christ forming the spine of the play. The text is divided into ten episodes or stories. These scenes are titled: “Story 1: The Prophet Lehi, Jerusalem, six hundred BC”; “Story 2: The Visions of the Christ, About 598 BC”; “Story 3: The Building of the Ship, 592 BC”; “Story 4: The Voyage to Ancient America, About 591-589 BC”; “Story 5: The Burning of the Prophet Abinadi, About 148 BC”; “Story 6: The Ministry of Alma, About 147 BC”; “Story 7: The Prophecy: A Day, A Night and a Day, 6 BC to 1 AD”; “Story 8: The Resurrected Christ Appears to Ancient America, 34 AD”; “Story 9: The Written Word: A Golden Message”; “Story 10: The Restoration of Christ’s Kingdom, 1823-1827 AD” (“Historic Hill Cumorah Pageant” program 2-4) (see fig. 3.3). The historical narrative complicates the pageant text structure because, as I mentioned, for the play to serve the transformational ritual, the stories must ring true. The Nephite story from the historical narrative must still inform Christ’s visit in order for that scene in the pageant text to be climactic, meaningful, and reflexive. The audience must be able to understand the Nephites’ stories and their significance to Christ’s visit.

Fig. 3.3. Pageant stories and key elements.

102 To do so, the pageant text tries to make the Nephite story clear and trace key elements throughout the text. These elements include: (1) Nephite prophets wrote the Book of Mormon; (2) the Nephites originated in Jerusalem; (3) God led the Nephites to the ancient Americas; (4) the Nephites became Nephites by separating themselves from the Lamanites; (5) Nephite success depends upon righteousness, defined as following or serving Christ; and (6) the Lamanites destroyed the Nephites because the Nephites failed to follow Christ (see fig. 3.3). The first three elements are expositional points from the Book of Mormon’s historical narrative structure, and the fourth element is the inciting incident for the historical structure. Element five demonstrates the play’s central spine. Although the pageant text’s central theme is Jesus is the Christ, success or salvation or prosperity through righteousness is the text’s main argument. As such, this element must be traced throughout the various stories like a thesis in an essay, and like a thesis, this element must be clearly defined within the introduction or exposition. Element six is vital to the spine of the play, demonstrating the consequences for not adhering to this principle, but the two structures differ as to where to place the destruction of the Nephites. In the Nephite history, this event provides the climax, but thematically, this event is part of the denouement. The text must emphasize this element even though it falls into the denouement. Reconsidering the expositional elements, the pageant text needs to develop these points clearly within the expositional structure. The exposition needs to both clarify the Nephite story and introduce the primary thematic thesis. The first four pageant stories do so. These are about Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem and arriving in the Americas. Assuming that each story is of relatively equal length, the pageant devotes forty percent to the exposition, to Lehi and his righteous son Nephi. Giving so much time to Nephi’s story, while making the exposition disproportionately long, establishes the needed plot elements and provides some continuity for the beginning of the pageant. Figure 3.4 shows the extended exposition in the pageant text narrative structure. Although spanning roughly eleven years, the first four stories follow a continuous plot with the same set of characters.

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Fig. 3.4. Pageant text narrative structure showing the exposition.

The first four stories depict particular events that establish the necessary expositional elements. The first story establishes primary characters, location, and the conflict. At the start, Lehi preaches to a disbelieving crowd who threatens his life. Lehi subsequently has a revelation from God that tells him to take his family and leave Jerusalem because God will destroy the city. God promises to lead Lehi to a land of promise for his descendants. This first story characterizes Lehi as a prophet in Jerusalem. Some dialogue even ties him to the Jewish prophet Jeremiah, thus placing Lehi within an established context. As the family travels in the wilderness outside Jerusalem, Lehi receives other revelations instructing him to have his sons return to Jerusalem first for scriptural records that contain prophetic writings Lehi’s descendants will need to preserve their religious teachings and practices and second for another family that is to travel with them. The first stories also reveal a central conflict: Lehi’s son, Nephi, faithfully obeys his father and has revelations of his own that help him do so, while Lehi’s older sons, Laman and Lemuel, dispute with Lehi and only reluctantly follow Lehi’s instructions. Nephi and Laman and Lemuel oppose each other based on their faith and obedience. Nephi is righteous, and Laman and Lemuel are wicked. The second story introduces the primary thematic elements. Lehi has an important vision, one well-known to members. In the vision, Lehi sees a tree with desirable fruit that fills him with joy when he eats it. He sees his family and tries to get them to also come eat. His wife, Nephi, and another son travel through peril but reach the tree. Laman and another wicked son choose not to come to the tree. The vision further cements the traditional binary opposition between

104 Nephi and Laman. But there is more to the vision than Lehi tells. Nephi, while trying to understand his father’s vision, has a vision of his own. In this vision, Nephi sees that the tree and fruit represent the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. In his vision, Nephi sees the life of Christ from his birth through to his death and resurrection. The staging for the vision involves numerous special effects and multiple locations. Nephi is centered on the stage while different events appear at different locations. An angel guides Nephi through his vision and shows him the crucifixion. Christ is not depicted on the cross, but instead three crosses appear in silhouette near the rear of the stage. The angel states, “The Son of the everlasting God will be judged of the world,” and dissonant music swells with the choir singing, “Crucified” and “He shall be crucified and slain.” At the music’s apex, Nephi states, “And they shall kill him” (Track 18). This vision also introduces the Christ theme in very traditional Christian terms and demonstrates that the Christ of the Book of Mormon is the accepted Jesus Christ of Christianity. Immediately following the crucifixion, the angel tells Nephi, “He shall rise again. He shall come to your descendants in the Promised Land, and teach them, and heal them” (Track 19). Nephi receives a promise that Christ will visit the Nephites. Nephi responds, “You could promise me no greater blessing. My children’s children will know the Son of God” (Track 19). This depicted event is the inciting incident for the Book of Mormon’s thematic narrative, and correspondingly in the pageant text, this event launches the play’s thematic spine. Nephi further sees and understands that his people prosper only when they follow Christ. The pageant also connects prosperity to freedom. This condition downplays a connection between blessings and wealth in favor of an American concept of freedom: obedience equals freedom rather than worldly success. The pageant also links the theme of following Christ to the “Promised Land” or to America. In fact, the land is not just promised to Lehi, but it is also a land only for those who live faithfully by covenant or promise to the Lord. In other words, America is a “Land of Promise” because it is a land requiring that the inhabitants keep their promises to the Lord by living faithfully. The pageant uses this concept linked to the spine to connect the pageant directly to the spectators. The angel involves the spectators, as representatives of modern America, when he introduces the “Land of Promise” promise to Nephi. He first states, “As long as your descendants obey the Lord, the land will be theirs forever,” addressing Nephi and the Nephites, and then the angel adds, “but no people will be permitted to posses the Land of Promise unless they live righteously, serving the Lord Jesus Christ” (Track 19). That statement

105 spells out the play’s spine or thesis and explicitly includes modern Americans. According to the text, like the Nephites, the spectators must follow Christ in order to prosper and remain free. Serving Christ is not only a religious duty, but it is also an American duty. Nephi’s vision presents a multitude of doctrines, but primarily, it foreshadows Christ’s visit, setting this event up as the climactic moment, and the vision declares the pageant’s thesis, the spine that ties together all the pageant stories thematically and also bridges the gap between the pageant text and the spectators. In the pageant text, Stories 3 and 4 cover the events that transition the group from the old world to the new world. Nephi emerges from his vision as the main focus while Lehi grows older and less physically capable. Nephi receives the revelation to build a ship and contends with his brothers over it. The brothers grow increasingly threatened by Nephi as he assumes a greater leadership role. Once the group sets sail, Laman and the other wicked members of the group attack Nephi and tie him to the ship’s mast. With Nephi bound, a storm rises and threatens to capsize the ship. In a visually spectacular moment, the simple stage boat tosses about while water, light, and sound effects create the storm. When the repentant brothers finally free Nephi, the storm calms, and the group resumes their journey. This event, while visually exciting, reinforces the theme that prosperity only follows obedience. Nephi’s faith in Christ preserves his life and resumes the journey. Time passes not only between but also within the stories, especially the third and fourth stories. Time passages generally present difficulties in theatre. A play such as The Duchess of Malfi that spans a long period of time with multiple time jumps never fails to confuse my students. The difficulty lies in depicting or indicating the time passage. Directors sometimes settle on a theatrical indicator such as a light or music change to smoothly mark the passage. Some playwrights have taken a more direct approach. Brecht, in Mother Courage and Her Children, denotes the time passage in the scene summaries that accompany each new scene. Productions typically project these summaries or post them onstage on placards. Shakespeare, in The Winter’s Tale, perhaps had the most novel, direct approach. The character Time as a one- time narrator simply comes onstage prior to the start of the fourth act and announces that 16 years have passed. Time also fills in the gap by relating what the characters have been doing in the interim. The pageant text also uses a direct approach, a narrator, not only to mark time passages but also to fill in story gaps. No actor plays the narrator. The faceless voice booms out

106 into the night with the actors only taking the character roles. The narrator also never identifies himself or refers to himself. He is simply a guiding storyteller voice, a pageant convention that, along with the musical score, has no realistic justification. However, the narrator stylistically parallels the Book of Mormon. As the editor, Mormon regularly interjects, summarizes, clarifies, and even preaches into the main body of the book. Mormon applies a presentational style not only by considering an audience but also by directly addressing his audience. The pageant text follows by also directly addressing the audience to summarize, transition, clarify, and most certainly to preach and emphasize important points. The narrator through the direct address also baldly emphasizes main expositional and thematic elements. For instance, when Lehi and his group arrive at the Promised Land, the narrator not only explains the event, but he also emphasizes the play’s spine. He explains that we now call the Promised Land North and South America. He then states, “He [the Lord] gave this promise to us, and everyone who ever lived here: as long as we are righteous, we will be free” (Track 29). If the angel was too subtle when connecting the spectators to the promise, the narrator makes this connection very clear. Freedom, or prosperity, comes from righteousness, from serving Jesus Christ. The pageant text also uses a heavy hand to introduce and explain what I have designated as element (1) that prophets wrote the Book of Mormon. Nephi created the first records that continued to be written and handed down among the Nephite prophets. In the Book of Mormon account, Nephi explains with a little narration of his own that the Lord instructed him to make metal plates on which he wrote his record, but he does not relate the event where he made the plates. In other words, Nephi explains why he is writing rather than depicting how and when he started. The pageant text instead stages this event in order to make it more clear and dramatic. This event must demonstrate that the Book of Mormon has divine origins. Nephi makes the metal plates and writes on them while the narrator states, “The Lord commanded Nephi to make thin metal plates and write on them the history of his people” (Track 32). For further emphasis, the voice of God speaks to Nephi commanding, “Nephi, my son, write the plain and precious teachings of your ministry. Write your prophecies and the prophecies of your father” (Track 32). God explains that the record is not just a history but also scripture, a source for prophecies and gospel teachings. Who is better than God to explain exactly what the record and, hence, what the Book of Mormon contains? The scene connects God to the book directly through the prophet,

107 which is a very key LDS doctrinal point, a divine pattern. God leads and directs through a prophet. Members easily recognize the plates Nephi creates. The youngest children sing songs about the “Golden Plates.” This image is always connected to the Book of Mormon. To see Nephi create the plates is to see him write the Book of Mormon. But this point must not be lost on non-members. All the audience must recognize that what they are seeing is the Book of Mormon being created and that we have it because God commanded his prophets in the ancient Americas to write it. The narrator follows the voice of God and clarifies the staged image: “The words that Nephi wrote became part of the Book of Mormon [the narrator gives special emphasis to the phrase “Book of Mormon” with a slight pause preceding the phrase]. This sacred record would be continued by one prophet after another through all the thousand years that Nephi’s people would live in the promised land of America” (Track 32). The narrator makes sure that everyone connects the dots between the plates, the direction from God, the work of the prophets, and the Book of Mormon. Near the end of Story 4, Lehi gives his children a final blessing, instructing them to be righteous, to “obey the Lord so that you may live in freedom in this beautiful new and promised land” (Track 30), emphasizing the play’s spine as Lehi’s final counsel. Lehi dies. Nephi receives a revelation that warns him to take the righteous and flee into the wilderness. Nephi has replaced Lehi as the leader, and like Lehi, Nephi receives a revelation from God to take his family and flee into the wilderness. Nephi does, forming the Nephites. The wicked become the Lamanites. This event is the inciting incident for the Book of Mormon’s historical narrative, and it is the inciting incident for the pageant text. This event transitions the story from the personal Lehi family to the new civilizations. From this point on, both in the Book of Mormon and in the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the stories are Nephite stories rather than Nephi stories. This event serves as the book’s historical inciting incident because it marks the beginning of the two civilizations. For the pageant, this event starts the rising action because it ends the exposition. The exposition stories establish where the Nephites came from, why they came, and how and why they started the Book of Mormon, and they introduce the theme that the Nephites thrive when they follow Christ. Figure 3.5 illustrates the first five elements in relation to the exposition and inciting incident.

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Fig. 3.5. The pageant text narrative structure showing the exposition and inciting incident with the first five key elements.

The pageant text and performance emphasize the Nephites separation from the Lamanites as the inciting incident, depicting it spectacularly as a key transition. The narrator describes the separation, stating that Laman and his followers sought to kill Nephi and his followers after Lehi’s death. He states, “Warned by the Lord, Nephi led the righteous to safety” (Track 33). Following is an extended musical score as the Nephite group escapes the Lamanite group, depicting what the narrator described. The narrator then states, “They became two nations. The people who followed Nephi and served the Lord were called Nephites. The people who followed Laman and rebelled against God were called Lamanites, and they made constant war against the Nephites” (Track 35) (see fig. 3.6). This statement defines the two civilizations along the traditional good versus evil binary. The event ends the story of Lehi’s family by establishing the two civilizations, and the performance visually demonstrates the point by filling the stage with two distinct groups who then engage in a thrilling battle scene, what one would expect from the binary opposition. The conflict is a very simple one, and it is effective, spectacular drama. The spectacle also visually emphasizes the shift from Nephi to Nephites by enlarging the visible cast. While a crowd occupied the stage when Lehi first preached, the visible cast remained fairly small throughout the Nephi stories. The onstage cast grew during the eleven-year span in the first four stories, but quite suddenly, the small groups expand into two enormous civilizations onstage. The play now involves much larger groups of the cast.

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Fig. 3.6. Lamanite Warriors. Hill Cumorah Pageant, directed by Rodger Sorensen, 1999. Photos by Tim Wilkes; used by permission from the Hill Cumorah Pageant President.

110 Continuing with the pageant text narrative structure, three prophet stories follow the four Nephi stories. These middle stories provide the rising action. Each story furthers the Nephite civilization story, emphasizes the play’s spine, and looks to Christ’s forthcoming visit. Story 5 and Story 6 are about separate prophets, but Story 6 closely follows the events of Story 5, and the two stories share the same conflict. Story 5 begins with a four hundred year jump from the Nephite separation and visual battle sequences that end the previous story. Music; the battle sequence from which the Nephites emerge victorious; a stray line; and the narrator bridge Stories 4 and 5. As the war ends, a Nephite declares the stray line, “We could not have defeated the Lamanites with our strength alone. The Lord God almighty delivered us from destruction” (Track 37). The music shifts as the Nephite victory turns to Nephite life. The narrator during the transition music states, “The Nephites became a mighty nation with great cities and temples. But in their pride, the Nephites forgot that their freedom depended on their righteousness” (Track 38). The music becomes more conflicted while the stage transforms into the wicked Nephite king scene. These passages condense and ignore many important Nephite events and prophecies, but the pageant does not try to tell all the Book of Mormon stories. Instead, the pageant text restates the spine and, then with Stories 5 and 6, shows two dramatic contrasting examples that demonstrate the play’s central themes. Story 5 shows a wicked and isolated Nephite city with the worst and most evil Nephite king. A prophet named Abinadi prophecies that the Lord will destroy the city because the people do not follow Christ. Abinadi faces off with the king and foretells not only the city’s destruction by the Lamanites but also prophesies of Christ. The king burns Abinadi to death in another spectacular stage effect (see fig. 3.7). As the flames rise, Abinadi prophesies again that the city will be destroyed and that the king will likewise suffer death by fire. Story 5 ends without any resolution to Abinadi’s prophecy. Instead, the story ends with a new prophet emerging to carry on Abinadi’s work. Alma, one of the wicked king’s priests, believes Abinadi’s prophecies and becomes a follower of Christ. Story 6 begins with Alma fleeing the wicked king. Alma begins teaching and prophesying about Christ to others and gains a multitude of converts. Like Abinadi before him, Alma anticipates Christ’s arrival. Alma and his congregation flee into the wilderness to avoid the king. There, Alma and his people form a righteous society that contrasts with the wicked society in Story 5. The righteous society thrives. The story ends with the wicked city being destroyed by the Lamanites and the king being burned to death by his own people for his wickedness. The

111 Lord preserves the righteous society, and they are able to escape the Lamanites and join with the main branch of the Nephites.

Fig. 3.7 Abinadi burns to death. Hill Cumorah Pageant, directed by Rodger Sorensen, 1999. Photo by Tim Wilkes; used by permission from the Hill Cumorah Pageant President.

Story 7 jumps another 140 years in the story. This story depicts the main Nephite civilization in decline because of wickedness. As with Story 5, a prophet comes forth to testify to the people, to try to turn them again to righteousness. But Story 7 presents a twist: the prophet is a Lamanite. The Lamanites have become more righteous than the Nephites. The prophet testifies not only about the society’s wickedness, but he also prophesies that Christ will shortly be born and will subsequently appear to them after his ministry, death and resurrection. He reveals specific signs of Jesus’s birth and signs of his death. The sign of his death will be cataclysmic destruction to the land that will kill all unrighteous inhabitants. Most of the Nephites reject the prophet and even try to kill him by throwing stones and shooting arrows at him. The Lord

112 miraculously preserves the prophet, and he departs to his own lands. Following his prophecy, the people see the signs for Christ’s birth, a night without darkness. This event sets the stage for the climax, for Christ’s appearance to the Nephites. In a rather ironic structural twist, Christ’s birth serves as the play’s crisis event, transitioning from the rising action into the climax. Considering the middle stories or narrative complications together, they further the Nephite story, jumping from the Nephite/Lamanite formation to glimpse the Nephites in wickedness and in righteousness and settle in just before Christ’s appearance. Stories 5 and 6 together demonstrate with a single extended story the major Nephite conflict and spine of the play: when the Nephites become wicked, they face destruction from the Lamanites; and when they follow Christ, they are miraculously preserved—the Lord blesses and prospers them. By staging just these two stories, the pageant text makes its point and does not need more episodes showing this same pattern. Story 7 shows the Nephites and Lamanites reversed with a Lamanite prophet urging the wicked Nephites to righteousness. The Lamanite prophet again emphasizes Christ and articulates the play’s spine, telling the Nephites that Christ will be coming and that only the righteous will be preserved to see it. The three stories also bridge, as rising action should, the inciting incident and the climax with story chronology building towards the primary event but also thematically building, raising the stakes thematically. The destruction that awaits the wicked builds from threatening a small group of people on a ship, to a single wicked city, and finally to anticipating the cleansing of all wicked when Christ comes. At the same time, the salvation that comes to those who follow Christ also builds from the small group arriving at the Promised Land, to Alma’s society escaping the Lamanites, and finally to anticipating Christ personally ministering to the righteous preserved from the destruction. Story 8 begins with the narrator describing how despite the signs of Christ’s birth, after thirty-three years, “many people forgot, and many others simply didn’t care” (Track 59). Following those words, the pageant begins the climax with a series of strong theatrical images. The first follows these words by the narrator, “Far away on a hill outside Jerusalem, three crosses arose.” Three crosses rise in shadow on a distant part of the stage accompanied by a burst of music and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing, “He shall be crucified and slain” (Track 60). This linked moment duplicates Nephi’s vision of Christ from Story 2. In Nephi’s vision, he sees the crucifixion, and this same image of the three crosses is erected while a longer version of the “He shall be crucified” music plays. Thus, this moment fulfills the earlier prophecy and

113 foreshadowing. The music turns darker, and the destruction begins. The effect combines music, special lighting, explosions, different audio crashes and booms, broadcast screams, and actors performing general chaos. Also, a thirty-seven foot volcano erupts (see fig. 3.8). While the pageant performance includes many striking effects throughout the production, including some impressive water effects used as curtains to distinguish visions from live action, the most extraordinary effects occur in this story. The climax parallels a grand finale at a fireworks show; while all the other fireworks are beautiful, the grand finale is the most striking because of its magnitude and the sheer volume of fireworks within a short moment.

Fig. 3.8. Volcano set piece for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, 2000.

The destruction lasts for just over one minute followed by darkness. After a pause, a voice in the darkness says, “The Savior has died” (Track 61). Other voices join in a crescendo of lament: “Oh that we had repented,” “Forgive us, forgive us,” and, “Oh my Savior, come quickly” (Track 61). The lines calling Jesus “Savior” are significant. The pageant text uses the name Savior for the various Christ roles in the performance. This title emphasizes Christ’s pageant role

114 as both the spiritual savior and physical savior who preserves and prospers his followers. The voice of the Savior follows the lament, declaring, “I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I was with the Father from the beginning. I am the light and the life of the world” (Track 61). After the Savior’s words, a gentle strain of angelic sounding music plays, beginning with a soft chime followed by a mixture of strings and the choir that gradually swells. The voice of God then announces, “Behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name, hear ye him” (Track 62). The choir then crescendos, singing, “Hail to Jehovah, alleluia, rejoice be filled with the love of God” (Track 62), but the music never overpowers, retaining a calm and quiet reverence and understatement. During these sound effects, the actor playing the Savior, harnessed to a wire, begins to descend. He wears special reflective fabrics shrouded in a dark cape. When he throws off the cape, powerful lights hit him and make him glow. He then descends down to the stage and is crowded with those ready to welcome him. This is one of only a few moments where the entire cast is on stage. Their sheer volume adds to the spectacle of this visual (see fig. 3.9). The effect is an astonishing moment marred only by the strobe lights of flash photography in the house despite the requests otherwise in the preshow.

Fig. 3.9. Descending Savior. Hill Cumorah Pageant, directed by Rodger Sorensen. Used by permission from the Hill Cumorah Pageant President.

115 The destruction and the Savior’s appearance to the Nephites include two spectacular series of effects. These two effects contrast each other, thus also heightening each other by their juxtaposition. These two effects theatrically climax the spine and follow the build-up from the middle stories. The destruction Samuel prophesies for the wicked stuns by its magnitude and horror. The appearance for the righteous must be as spectacular and awesome in contrast. This effect impresses by its build. The voice of Christ followed by the voice of God certainly provide weight, but the voices are tranquil transitioning from horror and lament to peace. The crescendo in the music transitions from peace to joy, and then the Savior suddenly and magnificently appears at the apex of the music. These moments spectacularly depict the great opposites—hell and heaven, the depths of despair and the pinnacle of joy. This scene illustrates the great and 5 terrible day of the Lord,TP PT or the terrible and great day of the Lord. Of course, that biblical description refers to Christ’s anticipated return, his second advent. But Christ’s appearance to the Nephites in part parallels such an event. The resurrected Christ appears to a people, fulfilling centuries of prophecy. Christ’s appearance brings destruction to the wicked and salvation to the righteous. Christ’s return also ushers in two hundred years of peace, analogous to the expected millennial peace following Christ’s return. While Christ’s appearance and ministry to the Nephites was not “the Second Coming,” the event represents a type of Christ’s return, which, as I will explain, the pageant text emphasizes at the end of the play. In Story 8, after the Savior lands, he beckons the crowd forward to feel the marks in his hands, feet, and side and begins his ministry (see fig. 3.10). The narrator relates how Jesus taught the people as he taught his followers in Jerusalem. The Savior then also heals the sick and afflicted and then calls for the children. Children come forward, and he blesses them. While this moment does not have the visual effects of the appearance and descension, Christ blessing the children resonates powerfully with the audience. For Mormons, the event represents a favorite passage in the Book of Mormon when the great, resurrected Christ devotes precious time to the simplest and weakest. Interestingly, pageant staff distributes souvenir pictures to spectators, but the picture depicts the Savior with the children rather than his appearance in the sky. Following some final words, the Savior ascends as before, although with less fanfare, and the story ends. Ultimately, the Savior’s long-anticipated ministry does not last long theatrically. Dramatically, the story depicts the good people who survived the destruction, overcoming the evil, and being preserved, receiving their reward, accompanied by a spectacle-heavy

116 production’s most spectacular moments. Dramaturgically, the scene culminates the foreshadowing laid down throughout the text. Thematically, the scene certainly loudly proclaims Jesus is the Christ, and, more specifically, the scene proclaims the Book of Mormon Christ is Jesus Christ. The pageant text declares the Church’s and the Book of Mormon’s boldest claim that the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to followers in the Americas, making the Book of Mormon another testament of Christ. The scene balances the doctrine with a conventional Christ. The scene shows Christ doing Christ things. He shows forth his hands, feet and side for the crowd and for the spectators to convince each “doubting Thomas” that he is who he claims to be (see fig. 3.10). The Savior proceeds to heal the sick, consecrate twelve disciples, and bless the children. In fact, what seems remarkable is not really what Christ does or what he has to say, but simply that he has appeared to these people, and that he is the same Jesus Christ known from the Bible. Presenting a recognizable Christian Christ minimizes the event’s radical statement. Still, the pageant’s central theme is not “Jesus is the Christ, and the Mormons are like any other Christians.” The pageant text needs to facilitate transformation.

Fig. 3.10. A Nephite approaches the resurrected Savior, played by Rusty Terry. Hill Cumorah Pageant, directed by Rodger Sorensen, 2000. Photo by Hoss Firooznia.

117 The pageant text’s central theme is actually quite complex. At the surface, the pageant text simply proclaims, “Jesus is the Christ.” The subtext also quite clearly states that the Christ described in the Book of Mormon is the same Christ described in the Bible. The corollaries to these proclamations are what make the theme more complex. These corollaries define what the theme and subtext to the theme together signify. They provide the “so what,” and the “so what” calls for action, for conversion. The first corollary involves the spine, that following Christ leads to spiritual and physical salvation, prosperity, and freedom. This does not mean all Mormons will be rich, happy, and successful, but it means that, like the Nephites, Christ will support his followers. The second corollary defines how to follow Christ. LDS theology asserts that the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, or continuing to live as a disciple of Christ. The pageant emphasizes these doctrines and connects them to Christ throughout. Of these, the pageant text especially emphasizes baptism as a necessary part of having faith in Christ and becoming a disciple. The Church regards baptism as a necessary ordinance. People become members of the Church through baptism, and the Church believes that baptism must be by immersion and can only be performed correctly through the Church. Therefore, baptism expresses conversion and marks what the Church hopes the pageant performance will lead to for the non-member spectators. To this end, the pageant text and performance emphasize the importance of baptism as well as the proper mode for baptism. Nephi sees Christ baptized by immersion by John the Baptist. Alma, after teaching the people about Christ, baptizes the new converts as a witness that they are willing to be followers of Christ. At the sign of Christ’s birth, a Nephite prophet speaking of Christ proclaims, “By his sacrifice, he will save us all from sin if we believe, if we repent, if we are baptized, if we live faithful to the end” (Track 58). Most emphatically, the Savior himself proclaims this doctrine directly as his final message to the crowd before his ascension: “Whosever has faith, and repents, and is baptized in my name shall be filled, shall be sanctified by the Spirit of God, and if he endures to the end, I will hold him guiltless before my father on that day when I judge the world. This is my gospel” (Track 67). The Savior connects the two corollaries together, that following Christ through having faith, repenting, and being baptized leads to salvation: Christ’s path leads to salvation, and faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end are how you walk it. Such a proclamation

118 appeals to both non-members and members by marking a path to follow regardless of where along the path the spectator reflexively recognizes they stand. Members who have been baptized still have the end to endure, to continue to follow Christ’s teachings, and non-members can locate themselves along the faith and repentance path leading to baptism. Another major underlying assumption that pervades all the layers of the themes is that the Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ. By connecting the Jesus Christ of the Bible to the Book of Mormon and its prophets, the Church tries to establish the Book of Mormon as a divine and sacred record. If what the Book of Mormon says is true, then the Church likewise is true, which means that following Christ involves being baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, and the Church become intrinsically linked together. In Story 8, the Savior tells the Nephites, “Write the things which ye have seen, and all that I have said” (Track 67). This statement serves as a reminder that all of this account comes from the Book of Mormon. The Savior continues, “Someday I will establish a great nation in this land, a free nation, and I will give them the words ye write. Ye shall be a witness unto them” (Track 67). The Savior refers to the establishment of the United States, and he designates the U.S. as the site and its citizens as the receivers of the Book of Mormon. Thus, these lines specifically link the ancient inhabitants with the audience as the givers and receivers of the Book of Mormon. These last statements also implicitly link the Book of Mormon and Christ with the Church. The Church provides the “how” or the method by which the Savior will “give them the words ye write.” If “them” are the present inhabitants, then the Church is the Savior’s medium through which he will provide them the Nephites’ words. Making that connection implicit, however, does not sufficiently link the Church with the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ. Hence, the pageant text needs to bring that underlying assumption to the foreground, but doing so affects the pageant’s narrative structure. Early in my discussion, I explained the dual structures, historical and thematic, operating in the Book of Mormon. These competing structures affect the pageant’s structural nature. The pageant structure accommodates the differing inciting incident points by using the historical narrative’s inciting incident to launch the pageant’s rising action while using the thematic narrative’s inciting incident to introduce the text’s central spine. Thus, Nephi’s vision of Christ introduces the concept that following Christ leads to prosperity and abandoning Christ leads to destruction, while Lehi’s death ends the exposition and moves the story from Nephi to Nephites.

119 Considering the historical and thematic structures again (see figures 3.1 and 3.2) reveals that the two structures also have different climaxes, which also complicates the pageant text structure. I have shown that the pageant text structure builds to Christ’s appearance as the climax, which matches the thematic narrative. The Nephite destruction, while important, occurs as part of the denouement in this structural model. In fact, considering the six key elements that the pageant text must make clear, the pageant structure diagrams traditionally through to Story 9, as figure 3.11 shows. The problem is where to place Story 10.

Fig. 3.11. The pageant text narrative structure through Story 9 showing the inclusion of the key elements.

The last two stories include many significant events, yet these two stories are easily the shortest and have a rapid pace that has the feel of tying loose ends. Story 9 begins with the

120 narrator describing the content Christian civilization that followed Christ’s appearance, but the pageant text spends no time dwelling on this ideal and righteous civilization. Within two hundred years, the people become wicked again and redivide into Nephites and Lamanites. War returns, and because the Nephites are mostly all wicked, the Lamanites destroy the Nephites. During the last wars, Mormon abridges the records onto a discrete set of plates that he passes on to Moroni, who, as the last Nephite, buries them in Cumorah before he dies. These events are staged and described in just over seven minutes. Although the prophets warn the Nephites about destruction as often as they foretell of Christ, the actual final destruction does not receive the build up that Christ’s visit receives. By giving the destruction such little emphasis, the pageant text clearly departs from the Book of Mormon historical structure in which the Nephite destruction is the climax. The final battles have little spectacle and excitement compared to other battles and to the destruction scene preceding the Savior’s appearance. The story focuses not on the fate of the Nephites, not on Mormon’s abridging, or even on Moroni burying the plates but instead on Moroni’s final words. These are often termed “Moroni’s Promise” or the “Book of Mormon Promise.” Moroni states that if those who read the Book of Mormon with sincerity will ask of God about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, God will manifest its truth to them through the power of the Holy Ghost. This section of the pageant text reveals a marked stylistic shift in the pageant discourse. While the text is stylistically presentational throughout, including direct narration to the audience, the narration always filtered the content between the stage and the house. Up to this point, only the narrator as a faceless voice directly addresses and acknowledges the audience. During Moroni’s promise, the performance changes to where Moroni speaks directly to the audience as representatives of the future readers he presumes with his address. Besides shifting stylistically, at this moment the pageant text also departs from the traditional dramatic structure established throughout the text. The problem is that while the pageant text to this point appropriates the Book of Mormon structure, using elements from both the historical narrative and thematic narrative to tell a largely thematic story, other pageant purposes require emphasis affecting the largely thematic pageant narrative structure. First, to be effective, the Church needs the pageant to explicitly connect the events and themes to the Church, to make the intrinsic connection between Christ, the Book of Mormon, and the Church obvious and clear. The Book of Mormon connects the Nephites and Christ to the audience, but that connection comes through the Church. The pageant text is not just the story of Jesus Christ’s

121 appearance to the Nephite civilization. That may be the most significant and even climactic event, but the story does not and cannot end there. The Savior’s statement, “Someday I will establish a great nation in this land, a free nation, and I will give them the words ye write” (Track 67), more than just implies the Church’s establishment in the U.S. as a means of delivering the Book of Mormon; the statement also foreshadows events that must be explained for the Church to be included in the pageant themes and proclamations. To connect the Book of Mormon and the Nephite teachings, prophecies, and witness of Christ to the LDS Church, the pageant must stage the events that transition the Book of Mormon between the ancient prophets and the Church. Second, as I have discussed in earlier chapters, the pageant’s site impacts the nature of the performance. The ritual qualities that the site adds to the performance must be addressed on the textual level. Pilgrims travel to Cumorah not specifically to remember Christ’s appearance to the Nephites. That event did not occur at the Hill Cumorah and is only indirectly tied to Cumorah as the major event in the Book of Mormon. Instead, two other pivotal events occurred at Cumorah. Ritually, the Hill Cumorah Pageant would not be the “Hill Cumorah” pageant unless the performance includes these two events: Moroni must hide the plates in the hill, and the Angel Moroni must deliver the plates to Joseph Smith. These two events together are the Hill Cumorah story, the Cumorah miracle. In the last chapter, I explained, “The hill bridges the Church’s Book of Mormon ancient stories with the modern Church narrative” (73). The Hill Cumorah’s importance stems from its role as the Book of Mormon’s preserver or receptacle. Cumorah pilgrims come to remember those two events that depict the Book of Mormon’s miraculous coming forth or transition from the hands of ancient prophets to the hands of the modern prophet—the passing of the torch. These transition events that the Church needs to perform in order to be explicitly linked to the Book of Mormon and the Nephites also must be performed to satisfy the pilgrim spectators’ ritual. But these two events alone do not satisfy the ritual element requirements. The Hill Cumorah is part of a group of Palmyra area historical and spiritual LDS sites. As such, Cumorah not only represents a transition point between the Book of Mormon and the LDS Church but also furnishes a prominent site for parts of the Church’s primary narratives. Two early events establish Joseph Smith as a prophet in Church history and theology. The first event is the First Vision, which occurred at the nearby Sacred Grove. The second is the appearance of the Angel

122 Moroni, first in Smith’s bedroom and later at the hill. In the first Moroni appearance, Smith sees Cumorah in a vision. He subsequently meets Moroni at the hill every year for four years until Moroni entrusts him with the plates. Therefore, the Church esteems not only what Joseph Smith received at the Hill Cumorah but also how he received it. Palmyra pilgrims celebrate Cumorah as part of the larger Church origination narratives. As such, any ritual recreation of these narratives requires staging the First Vision as well as the Hill Cumorah story. Finally, because missionary work is also an important pageant purpose, the text incorporates Church missionary methodology. When I was a missionary, which was soon after the new pageant premiered, we used a set of six discussions when we taught investigators. The first two discussions are fundamental discussions designed to introduce the Church, establish common ground, and introduce essential Church elements. The second two discussions present significant LDS doctrine, and the last two help prepare investigators to become converts. We tried to teach as many first discussions as possible to generate an investigator pool. The first discussion establishes belief in God and Christ first. Where I predominantly taught Christians, I used these principles to build common ground. The next two principles give an account of the First Vision and introduce the Book of Mormon. We explained the Book of Mormon by first explaining about how God led Lehi and his family out of Jerusalem to the ancient Americas. We explained that two civilizations developed, one that was predominantly righteous and the other that was predominantly wicked. We explained how prophets taught and prophesied of Christ. Quickly, we moved forward to the part where Christ appeared as the climax of our Book of Mormon narrative. After that, we turned to the end of the book and read Moroni’s promise. We always had a goal to try to leave a copy of the Book of Mormon and get a commitment from investigators to read and pray about the book. Moroni’s promise facilitated obtaining those commitments. The second discussion concerns faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. After this discussion, if we felt the investigators believed what we had taught and were enthusiastic toward the Church, we tried to commit them to be baptized (not right then, but to set an upcoming date for baptism). If we did not feel the investigators were ready, we tried to get them to consider baptism if they came to believe the Church teachings. We also actively tried to get the investigators to feel and recognize spiritual manifestations. Missionaries believe that by creating a reverent environment (when possible), having a prayer, and teaching the Church doctrines, the Spirit will manifest in recognizable ways that the

123 missionaries can identify. According to the Church, these manifestations validate the doctrines and practices. Missionaries believe that conversion is only possible when these manifestations accompany the discussions. The pageant text presents the Book of Mormon more thoroughly than the missionary discussions, but the two emphasize the same areas. Essentially, non-member spectators leave the pageant having heard most of the first two discussions. The pageant text also invites these non- member spectators to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, using not just Moroni’s promise but Moroni himself to extend the invitation. The pageant text does not individually invite spectators to set a baptismal date, but the text and performance certainly demonstrate baptism’s importance. Through performance reflexivity, spectators may recognize that they need to be baptized. Like the softer missionary invitation, the pageant invites spectators to consider baptism. Finally, as with the missionary discussions, the pageant tries to facilitate spiritual manifestations that confirm the themes and doctrines. The difficulty for the pageant text lies in trying to accommodate and incorporate these varied purposes into something cohesive and performable. Part of the problem stems from the inherent dichotomy found in the audience demographics. While the pageant creators hope the performance will be transformational both for members and non-members, the two types come at the pageant text differently. Members see the pageant reflexively and ritualistically. For them, the performance recreates beloved Book of Mormon and Church History stories—stories that identify what it means to be Mormon. Non-member spectators are a more varied group ranging from unaware to amused or bemused, to polite, to inquisitive, to mildly interested through to nearly converted. I can speculate about how these groups (and surely others outside my tidy spectrum) view the pageant, but I think the better question for me is how does the Church want them to view it? As I described and discussed in the last chapter, the pageant directors largely consider the pageant to be a spiritual rather than a theatrical experience regardless of whether the spectators are members or non-members; theatre serves as the medium to inform and facilitate the spiritual experience or ritual experience that can transform the spectators. Because theatre serves as the means rather than the end, at times theatrical processes and elements must be compromised and subjugated to serve the other purposes. Likewise, the traditional narrative dramatic structure serves the text as a means to the text’s other purposes. The Nephite story facilitates presenting

124 Christ thematically and proclaiming and demonstrating that following and serving Christ are necessary. If the pageant only needed to present such themes, the pageant could simply perform the first nine stories up to where the Lamanites destroyed the Nephites. The play would have a nice beginning, middle, and end, with a clear climax and denouement. However, that story alone does not sufficiently serve the pageant’s primary purposes. The pageant text compromises and complicates the traditional dramatic structure. Predominantly, the pageant purposes break into two main purposes, a dichotomy not coincidentally similar to the audience demographics: member ritual celebration and non-member missionary proselytizing. This dualistic nature began with the first pageants that incorporated member celebrations with area missionary activities. As the pageants continued, the member celebrations incorporated and generated pilgrims visiting the sites and coming to see the performances. Analyzing these main purposes and the corresponding story elements that coincide with these purposes, I arrive at the following. I begin with the ritual elements. For members celebrating and revering the Church narratives at Cumorah, the pageant must perform the modern Church narratives. For this story, Moroni burying the plates serves as exposition; the First Vision becomes the inciting incident; Moroni appearing in Smith’s bedroom and subsequent appearances on the Hill Cumorah provide rising action with the fourth year as the crisis event; Moroni turning the plates over to Smith climaxes the story; and Smith translating the plates and organizing the Church resolve the story (see fig. 3.12). Now, certainly the Church organization could be considered climactic, but this story will be performed at Cumorah, which makes the transference the climax. Watching the Book of Mormon come to life also celebrates LDS culture and doctrine by performing what is unique and sacred. Nevertheless, while such a performance at Cumorah where the book came forth is appropriate, such a performance without the Cumorah narrative is insufficient. Next, I will consider the missionary purposes. While proselytizing and conversion dominate this area, the missionary purposes also include simply informing the world about the Church. So, while the Church hopes those who see the pageant will be transformed by it, the Church also recognizes that not all who see it will be. The Church still wants those to leave with both a favorable impression and a clear understanding, or if not both, at least a clear understanding. The variety found among the non-member spectators convolutes the missionary purposes. Clarity of the story at times requires compromising content that may be more

125 spiritually inviting and engaging for those more interested. The Book of Mormon stories the pageant text includes follow a clear narrative that emphasizes key elements. These stories are not necessarily the best examples of Church doctrine or practices. The earlier pageant included other stories at the expense of a clear narrative and compromised non-member understanding. When the pageant text changed, the Church settled on a package that compromised all the non-member and member areas. The text includes a strong narrative for clarity and the “Christ-centered” themes that dictate pageant content. The resulting text narrows the scope and levels the spectators into more of a presumed homogeny, a middle ground with the hope that the package will be clear enough to follow and doctrinally engaging enough to be persuasive and inviting.

Fig. 3.12. Cumorah ritual narrative.

126 Story wise, the missionary purposes require a primary pageant narrative with an extended exposition explaining the Book of Mormon’s origins and a story that demonstrates the Christ themes traced through the Nephite narrative culminating with Christ’s appearance and firsthand instruction. The Nephite destruction resolves this dramatic narrative. However, such a dramatic narrative only provides two of the three key ingredients the Church needs to establish: Christ, the Book of Mormon, and the Church. To establish all these, the text must indicate that the plates become the Book of Mormon through Christ establishing the modern Church; the pageant text must include Moroni burying the plates and Joseph Smith receiving them. For clarity and to link Christ directly with the LDS Church, the text must also at least include the First Vision. This missionary narrative needs to connect Christ with the plates, the plates with the Book of Mormon, and Smith with Christ, the plates, and the Book of Mormon. Structurally, God commanding Nephi to create the plates is the inciting incident; prophets writing about Christ and passing the plates down through to Christ appearing and commanding that his words be written and explaining that they will be preserved for a future generation is the rising action; God commanding Moroni to preserve the plates by burying them is the crisis; Smith seeing the First Vision and subsequently receiving the plates is the climax; and publishing the Book of Mormon and organizing the Church by revelation is the denouement (see fig. 3.13). Clarity becomes a problem with this narrative on its own, and this narrative also emphasizes the Church and Joseph Smith over Christ. Christ’s appearance becomes only part of the rising action leading to Smith’s vision. Other churches and religious leaders criticize the LDS Church about Joseph Smith and accuse the Church of emphasizing Smith above Christ. The Church cannot allow the pageant to do so; consequently, the pageant must incorporate the missionary narrative into the main Christ thematic narrative by including the missing Church origination narrative but only as a secondary story to the main Christ thematic narrative (see fig. 3.14).

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Fig. 3.13. Missionary narrative.

Fig. 3.14. Combined missionary and primary pageant narratives.

128 The missionary purposes also consider the Church’s missionary methodology as a performance strategy. The pageant text tries to incorporate the first two discussions into the text. The text integrates the second discussion’s principles and ordinances into the various stories and teachings as I described; however, the first discussion elements that establish Church doctrines concerning Christ, God, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon are more awkward to include. The pageant text presents the Book of Mormon similarly to how missionaries present the work, but the first discussion is more than just the Book of Mormon. For this part of the missionary purpose, again the pageant text needs to introduce Joseph Smith as a prophet and link him to the Book of Mormon. But considering stylistically and structurally the way that missionaries present or perform the first discussion, God and Jesus Christ are expositional; the Joseph Smith story is inciting; the Book of Mormon presents the rising action with Christ’s appearance as the crisis; and Moroni’s promise is climactic with the invitation to read and pray resolving the discussion. Missionary methodology presents yet another possible dramatic structure that further disrupts creating a central dramatic structure for the pageant text (see fig. 3.15).

Fig. 3.15. Missionary methodology.

129 I believe the way to combine these various purposes and structures involves finding the overlapping points (see figures 3.16 and 3.17). The ritual purpose and the missionary purposes and methodology all require that the text include Moroni burying the plates at the Hill Cumorah, the First Vision in the Sacred Grove, and Moroni transferring the plates to Smith. However, the missionary purposes and the ritual purposes oppose the type of emphasis these events receive. Including the Nephite narrative combined into the Christ thematic narrative as the primary pageant dramatic narrative principally serves the missionary clarity and Christ-centered purposes, but the primary pageant dramatic narrative also accommodates the ritual purpose. However, this pageant dramatic narrative presents a compromise that sacrifices some beloved Book of Mormon stories (some of which were included in the pageant prior to the 1987 revisions) that might also appeal to the more interested non-members in order to facilitate clarity and center the pageant on Christ. Including Moroni’s promise also enhances the ritual purposes; members associate spiritual manifestations with this event, and so its inclusion likely reflexively facilitates such manifestations within the pageant ritual. However, this event’s magnitude for the missionary purposes, especially the missionary methodology, is immense. For the missionary methodology, all the other events need to build toward this invitation, and the investigative spectators need to connect reflexively to this moment, perceive Moroni’s promise as a personal invitation, and accept it. For the non-members to be lastingly transformed, this event must be the climactic moment. However, making this event climactic compromises the primary pageant dramatic narrative by elevating it out of the denouement into a second climax; it compromises the pageant’s theatrical nature. Elevating Moroni’s promise also affects the pageant’s ritual nature by relegating the Church narratives to the denouement (see fig. 3.18).

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Fig. 3.16. Various pageant narratives with pageant stories in place.

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Fig. 3.17. Narratives overlap. For this figure, the narrative diagrams are scaled and placed in relationship to the primary pageant narrative. For example, the Cumorah ritual narrative is very small and placed in relation to the primary pageant narrative’s denouement, and the missionary methodology is divided and placed where its elements overlay.

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Fig. 3.18. Resulting pageant narrative.

Emphasizing Moroni’s promise also affects the Christ-centered theme. In order to retain Christ as the center, Moroni’s promise must also overtly link the Christ theme and spine to this event. The event begins with exposition between Mormon and Moroni. Mormon acknowledges that the next day will be the final battle and destruction of the Nephites. He then passes his abridgment onto Moroni to complete the record. In the exchange between Mormon and Moroni, the text connects all the necessary elements: Mormon’s plates are an abridgement of all the

133 Nephite prophetic records; the Lord will instruct Moroni where to hide the plates; the Lord will preserve the plates; the Lord will deliver the plates to a new prophet; the plates are the Book of Mormon; and the Book of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ. Mormon’s final words are, “Then the Lord will keep these plates safe until he raises up a prophet in the latter-days. He will send our record forth to convince the world that Jesus is the Christ.” Moroni replies, “It will be called the Book of Mormon. The world will know that in this land there lived a nation that saw the face of Christ and heard his voice” (Track 73). With these closing statements, the text links the Nephites, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, the Church, and Christ. The phrase “prophet in the latter-days” cleverly alludes to both Smith and the Church. This moment sets up Moroni’s promise by clearly attributing the Book of Mormon not just to Mormon, Moroni, and Joseph Smith, but to Christ as the Lord who will lead Moroni to the spot, preserve the plates, raise up a new prophet, and then use that prophet to publish the book to the world. This moment also again emphasizes that the Book of Mormon’s purpose is to testify of Christ. Moroni continues to emphasize Christ as he introduces his promise and dominates the performance. The text elevates Moroni’s promise by shifting the performance style so that Moroni directly addresses the audience. As spectacular and climactic as the Savior’s appearance was, the Savior never spoke directly to the audience but rather spoke always to the Nephites. Moroni needs to extend the invitation, and he needs to extend it directly and personally. Because Moroni represents a bridge between past and modern events, both burying the plates in the past and appearing in the modern era to deliver them to his successor, the text uses Moroni dramaturgically to bridge the text not just to the modern era but also to the performance present. By addressing the audience directly, Moroni bridges the distance between performer and audience to make an overt, personal connection. The text justifies this style change by attributing it to Christ’s power. Moroni states, “I speak unto you as if you were present even though ye are not. But Jesus Christ hath shone you unto me, and I know your doing” (Track 75). The text signifies that Moroni simply performs as the instrument to the unseen Christ’s hand, which position designates Moroni as a ritual performer, an ordinary man acting in place of the divine, and keeps Christ central. Moroni begins by indicting the audience, stating, “I know that ye waste yourselves with envy, strife, malice, persecution, and all kinds of evil. Ye love money and wealth more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted. Why are you ashamed to take upon you

134 the name of Christ?” (Track 75). The text associates the audience with the fallen Nephites who have been destroyed for these same deficiencies. By doing so, the text also positions the audience outside of Christ’s community, needing to change and follow Christ. Then, Moroni extends the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Although spoken by Moroni, the fulfillment of the promise depends upon Christ, on praying “in the name of Christ if these things are not true” and asking with real intent “having faith in Christ” (Track 75). Moroni declares that by receiving the book and praying about it with faith in Christ, God “will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost” (Track 75); the individual will receive spiritual manifestations that confirm the Book of Mormon’s truthfulness. Unlike missionaries, Moroni does not follow the promise with an explicit commitment invitation; he never asks, “Will you read and pray?” However, by indicting the audience before explaining the promise, Moroni strongly implies that the audience members need to do so. But this approach is risky because audience members can become defensive and resist the characterization and implication. Still, having Moroni indirectly invite the audience with this approach is better rhetorically than having him further invade the audience with a personal invitation that solicits some kind of response. Following Moroni’s promise, the pageant text resumes the quick denouement pace. The narrator summarizes Moroni burying the plates, while a new Moroni appears on the hill and buries the plates. The narrator transitions to the present, stating, “There the Lord preserved the plates until another nation owned this land and another prophet was ready to hear his voice” (Track 76). Story ten presents the Church origination narrative in a quick, abbreviated fashion that is clearly part of the dramatic resolution. Instead of having God and Christ descend to young Joseph praying with the splendor of the Savior’s earlier descent, a simple lighting effect illuminates the kneeling boy as the narrator describes the event briefly. Multiple actors perform Joseph, each Joseph standing at a different location so that with lighting transitions the story can quickly move from scene to scene. The text presents the First Vision, Moroni’s appearance to Smith and the transference of the plates, the restoration of the priesthood, the publication of the Book of Mormon, and the organization of the Church in sixty-three seconds. The text presents the events with a very matter-of-fact manner. Actors perform three specific miraculous events, but none of the three receive the special effects or textual emphasis earlier miracles receive. These major ritual moments barely grace the stage, but this performance makes the point clearly

135 enough without giving the events undue attention that would detract from the Christ-centered themes. The pageant could stop there. All seems to have been said, and all the various purposes have been served to some degree. The final story would only be about one minute long, but the performance has shown the stories and proclaimed its messages. Nevertheless, the pageant text continues through a final, extended resolution that tries to tie everything back together and make the point again in a more dramatic, spectacular fashion. The final track lasts three minutes and four seconds, thus dominating three-fourths of the final story. The final finale or last resolution begins with Joseph Smith speaking directly to the audience. While Moroni directly and yet indirectly spoke to the audience with the idea that he was seeing an audience in vision, Smith speaks directly to the pageant audience as if he were the narrator (he is not; the voices are clearly different). He reminds the audience that for centuries these prophets’ voices have been silent, but “now the Lord will allow the modern world to hear their words” (Track 79). Mormon and Moroni already made this point pretty clear. Following this statement, the text presents a montage of the various prophets, given chronologically by name from Lehi through Moroni. Lights illuminate each prophet in tableau while Smith names them. The Savior does not appear in the montage and seems noticeably absent. The text immediately refocuses the entire montage back on Christ. The text unites the prophets in purpose as Joseph Smith declares, “And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of Jesus Christ, this is the testimony last of all which we give of him, that he lives” (Track 79). This quote comes from the Doctrine and Covenants (76:22) and represents Smith’s testimony of Christ to the world. While the text appropriately attributes the quote to Smith, the text also takes the quote out of context to suggest that the words represent the words of all the prophets onstage, and that the “this” represents the Book of Mormon. But the “we” that implies the prophets also extends beyond the prophets to suggest the whole Church. Rodger Sorenson explains that the reference “includes all of the prophets” but that “then the lights come down to Joseph Smith, and we have added a group of Restoration people with Joseph to whom he speaks” (“Re:.” Email 11 June 2004). What is onstage represents the LDS Church, even if it is just the fledgling church. Bringing the Book of Mormon prophets back onstage with Smith for this declaration reinforces the power of the book to declare Christ and physically reinforces the association between the Book of Mormon and the LDS Church. By then dimming the lights to a

136 circle just around Smith and the Restoration people, or the Church, the text gives the final power to declare Christ directly to the Church. The pageant is still not over. Smith opens the Book of Mormon and quotes Moroni for more parting words about the Book of Mormon and Christ. Instead of the strong but inviting promise, Moroni’s words spoken by Smith are almost threatening: “Remember what you have seen and heard, for the time is quickly coming when ye shall know that what I am telling you is true. For ye shall see me at the throne of God, and the Lord will say to you, ‘Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man?’” (Track 79). The text raises the stakes for conversion: accept this book or be damned. While this passage comes from Moroni in the Book of Mormon, the text subtly changes the words. Mostly, the text modernizes the vocabulary and phrasing as it does throughout, but the text also changes Moroni’s “Remember these things” (Moroni 10:27) to “Remember what you have seen and heard” so that the words speak directly and specifically to the pageant audience. Underscoring the end of the passage, the choir sings, “Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confessing before him” (Track 79). Picking up on the word “confessing,” with the underscoring continuing, Smith declares, “The Savior will return. Soon, he will be here” (Track 79). The choir music crescendos to fortissimo, as it repeats the refrain. This prophecy allows the pageant to restage its climactic spectacle. The Savior who has been absent again appears suspended in midair and illuminated to reflective brilliance. This time he is not all in white but instead wears a red robe. This is the Savior of the Second Coming, the one who wears the red robe of judgment (the red robe represents having tread the wine press, thus staining his robe with wine representing further his blood shed for all’s sins). While this is a spectacular moment, the tone is markedly different. Where the music was restrained and reverent before, the music for the second coming is dramatic and loud with a fanfare of horns and kettledrums booming. The second coming parallels the first; the pageant text connects the two appearances. But the reappearance also amplifies Moroni’s threat as Smith emphasizes the word “soon.” Christ’s return will be the great and terrible day of the Lord, the judgment day when every knee bows and tongue confesses. When Christ returns, and according to the text the return will be soon, the time to voluntarily follow Christ will have passed. While Moroni’s promise included accusing the audience of being ashamed to follow Christ, Moroni followed that accusation with a beautiful promise, the two messages together creating the implicit invitation.

137 Christ’s appearance, rather than offsetting Moroni’s threat, raises the stakes. The pageant concludes with a stern warning to accept and follow now. Sorensen explains that the pageant directors have softened the last image. The Savior no longer reappears in the sky. Sorensen says, “What we do now, rather than have a return of the Savior in a red robe, we recreate a picture of the Savior surrounded by children, as seen in the Christ in America scene” (“Re:.” Email 11 June 2004). This image significantly lightens the stern final warning. Instead of a Christ suspended in the air waiting to pass judgment, the pageant ends with an image showing instead the Savior’s great love. This last image emphasizes the greatness of the day of the Lord and de-emphasizes the terrible. The image also recreates a stage picture that correlates to the souvenir picture available free to the audience. Even with the softened threat, I do not fully understand why the pageant ends as it does. I think the extended denouement, or climactic grand finale (see fig. 3.18), potentially hurts the production more than it helps. The text already satisfies the various purposes. The extended denouement does not better serve the ritual purposes or missionary purposes. Instead, the last moments try to interject an overly didactic and dramatic theatre spectacle to create some visually dramatic unifying ending. Such a spectacle draws from the American historical pageantry tradition where the spectacular finale drove the message home. Considering the pageant’s ending from Moroni’s promise through to the image of the second coming, I believe the text demonstrates the pageant’s uniqueness. The text blends ritual and missionary purposes with traditional theatre and pageantry performance forms, ritual performance elements, and missionary methodology. These various elements and processes both lend to the performance and detract from the performance. At times, the pageant cannot effectively serve all the purposes. Certainly, the different parts overlap, but the results do not necessarily serve the individual parts. Just as with the recorded text, using the recording both adds to and takes away from the pageant, so also combining theatrical, ritual, and missionary elements both adds to and takes away from the theatre, the ritual, and the missionary elements. For example, theatrical elements such as spectacle may work against the ritual’s effectiveness, against the idea of keeping the stories human. Seeing Abinadi burning to death with a great special effect while he prophesies about Christ and the pending destruction for the wicked society makes for great drama, but the scene does not necessarily make for great ritual because the effect detracts from the important reflexive human quality. What Abinadi says and does gets

138 lost behind the spectacular effect (see fig. 3.7). Similarly, the ritual elements affect the theatrical performance’s effectiveness by convoluting the plot and structure with expectations and inexperienced production qualities, all too human elements. If the Church really wanted to make the pageant a great theatrical piece, then the pageant would not cast six hundred volunteer, amateur actors. As for the missionary purposes, the pageant from the start has tried to justify using theatre to ritually celebrate the Mormon culture and sites by painting it as a missionary event. The pageant has always tried to serve the three masters, and while all get served, none feast. In some ways, the pageant parallels theatre. Theatre includes other art forms such as music, dance, literature, and visual arts, and yet theatre is unique from these varied parts. Additionally, theatre subjugates the other art forms to serve its own end. The other forms cannot dominate on their own but must combine to create the theatrical performance. As such, the other art forms lend of their nature to the performance, but the performance becomes an entity that is more than just the sum of its parts. In the previous chapter, I introduced Victor Turner’s concept of sensory codes, that each medium has unique elements or sensory codes that change the message when the same message transmits through different media. This concept applies to this discussion and is worth repeating. Turner explains, “Rituals, dramas, and other performative genres are often orchestrations of media, not expressions of a single medium” and as such, “certain sensory codes are associated with each medium.” Thus, “the ‘same’ message in different media is really a set of subtly variant messages, each medium contributing its own generic message to the message conveyed through it. The result is something like a hall of mirrors— magic mirrors, each interpreting as well as reflecting the images beamed to it, and flashed from one to the others” (Anthropology 23-24). If changing the medium changes the message, then incorporating additional media also changes the message through the same process. Thus, the magic mirrors that are the Hill Cumorah Pageant performance reflect and interpret based on the unique synthesis of the various elements and purposes. So, while the pageant may not be as effective as a ritual or as theatre or even as a missionary device, the pageant is what it is because of these.

1

TP PT For this discussion, I am simply accepting the Church’s claim at face value. The actual truth of the Book of Mormon is not relevant to this discussion. The pageant creators adapted the Book of Mormon assuming that it is indeed a record written by ancient prophets. Since my discussion considers the pageant text, how it relates to the

139

Book of Mormon, and how it functions as a performance text, the pageant creators’ perspective is relevant rather than the validity of their beliefs. 2

TP PT The Book of Mormon groups its audience as the Lamanites, the Jews, and the Gentiles throughout the work. The Lamanites represent what remains of their people who will one day receive the book; the Gentiles represent those non-Lamanites and non-Jews through whom the Book of Mormon will be translated and taken to the world, including to the Lamanite descendants and the Jews; and the Jews represent those that Lehi and his family separated from and to whom Christ would be born and minister. The writers distinguish the Lamanites and Nephites from the Jews despite originating in Jerusalem because the work gives Lehi’s lineage as descending from the tribe of Joseph rather than the tribe of Judah. This lineage links Lehi and the subsequent Lamanites with the other tribes of Israel. Sometimes the record will link the Jews and Lamanites under the designation “remnant of the House of Israel.” 3

TP PT There are several Nephites named Nephi throughout the book. The first Nephi wrote the first two books in the Book of Mormon, and they are titled 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi. The other titles throughout the Book of Mormon also bear the name of the primary writer. 4

TP PT Hayden White in “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality” asserts “Narrative is a meta-code, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted” (1) and that as such a mode of transmitting meaning, “every historical narrative has at its latent or manifest purpose the desire to moralize the events it treats” (14). Thus the Book of Mormon’s dual purpose generated by its narrator is not unique but rather inherent to the historical narrative form. 5

TPSee PT Joel 2:31.

140 SECTION II INTRODUCTION

I remember coming home from work where I washed and detailed Porsches and Audis one late summer afternoon. My mother had set aside a business envelope stuffed so fat that it appeared ready to burst open with the slightest touch. The LDS Church Missionary Department sent me the letter, and I knew that letter held my fate. I sat on a deck chair near our swimming pool in the bright, Southern California early evening sunshine with my father and mother looking on as I opened the envelope, unfolded the letter, and began to read. Secretly and selfishly, I hoped to go to a European foreign speaking mission. I did not want to go to South America, where my oldest brother had gone, and I did not want to go to Asia, where my other brother had gone. Europe, although challenging, seemed more civilized to me in my young ignorance than South America, and I rather despise seafood, which I was sure was all that people ate in Asia. I wanted to go to a foreign speaking mission so that when I returned I could CLEP test out of language credits and even easily minor in a language when I returned to my studies at BYU after my mission. So, Europe foreign speaking, somewhere not too cold, like Spain, Italy, or France seemed ideal. I read the words Ireland Dublin Mission, and the impact of those words nearly knocked me off the deck chair. My eyes filled with tears, and my words choked in my mouth. I had never considered Ireland—what language do they speak? But as I read those words, I just knew, in a way I cannot explain, that Ireland was the right place for me to go; I felt like I was going home. I had received my mission call. In a few months, I left my home and traveled to Provo to the Missionary Training Center, and three weeks later, I arrived in Dublin as a designated, trained, and acting missionary. Ultimately, I did not learn a foreign language to gain an advantage at BYU, but I went where I could speak English (more or less) in a foreign country that although delights in seafood happily eats other cuisine as well. I changed more, personally, spiritually, and culturally, during those two years away from home performing missionary work than at any other concentrated period in my life. Mormon missionary work is transformational performance work that the Church culture values, expects, and rewards.

141 The Hill Cumorah Pageant purposefully simulates and incorporates missionary work into a process that also includes theatre and ritual performance to create a lasting transformational experience for those who participate. The amateur cast members who perform the Hill Cumorah Pageant change their cultural identity and their personal spirituality through the process of creating and performing the pageant. The pageant as both a theatrical and ritual performance transforms the cast participants according to the nature of both genres of cultural performance. In this section, covering the next three chapters, I will specifically address how the entire pageant experience affects those who perform in the pageant. I will examine the overlapping ritual and theatrical performance processes that transform performance roles and collective and individual identity. As part of these processes, I will also examine how missionary service intertwines with the pageant processes by using Mormon fulltime missionary service as a comparison to reveal the nature of pageant missionary service and identity. In these chapters, I will use Richard Schechner’s performance theories as a basis for much of my discussion, especially his theories in Between Theater and Anthropology. Schechner’s work examines various types of performances along the spectrum between theatre and ritual. He asserts, “Either permanently as in initiation rites or temporarily as in aesthetic theatre and trance dancing, performers—and sometimes spectators too—are changed by the activity of performing” (4). Schechner also adds, “In initiations people are transformed permanently whereas in most performances the transformations are temporary” (20). Later in this work, he asserts, “People are accustomed to calling transportation performances ‘theatre’ and transformation performances ‘ritual.’ But this neat separation doesn’t hold up. Mostly the two kinds of performances coexist in the same event” (130). In these statements, Schechner points out the difficulty of distinguishing between theatrical and ritual performance. He makes a distinction between performances where the performers or participants are temporarily transformed as in trance dancing and performances such as a wedding where the participants are permanently (or at least for a period of time) transformed into a new cultural entity, and yet he asserts that temporary and lasting transformation can occur within the same performance. The Hill Cumorah Pageant performance fits into this overlap area. As a hybrid of theatre and ritual cultural performance, the pageant creates both temporary and lasting identity transformations that together serve an overall transformational pageant performance process.

142 To examine the nature of the participants’ transformation, I will examine the nature of the transformational process. To do so, I will draw from Schechner’s discussions to form a basis for my own examinations of the pageant performance process. Schechner declares, “Generally, scholars have paid attention to the show, not to the whole seven-part sequence” of performance (16). I agree that more can be gained from examining the entire performance process and the performers. Such an emphasis focuses the examination onto the performers rather than onto the text or the spectators. Schechner asserts that theatrical performance involves a seven-part system that he calls the “whole performance sequence”; it consists of “training, workshops, rehearsals, warm-ups, performance, cool-down, and aftermath” (16). Schechner contends that in this performance sequence, there is “a pattern analogous to initiation rites. A performance involves separation, a transition, and an incorporation. Each of these phases is carefully marked . . . Like initiations, performances ‘make’ one person into another. Unlike initiations, performances usually see to it that the performer gets his own self back” (20). He is alluding to Van Gennep’s definition of rites of passage that he broke into the areas of separation, transition, and incorporation that I addressed in my first chapter. Schechner’s model shows that the performance process or sequence parallels the ritual process and fits Van Gennep’s categories, where “training, workshop, rehearsal, and warm-ups are preliminary, rites of separation. The performance itself is liminal, analogous to the rites of transition. Cool-down and aftermath are postliminal, rites of incorporation” (20-21). Thus Schechner’s performance model overlays into the ritual process as a transformational model. Victor Turner was also very interested in Van Gennep’s passage rites definitions, especially the transition or liminal phase. He clarifies the different ritual phases, stating, “Van Gennep has shown that all rites of passage or ‘transition’ are marked by three phases: separation, margin (or limen, signifying ‘threshhold’ in Latin), and aggregation” (Ritual Process 94). Turner explains, The first phase (of separation) comprises symbolic behavior signifying the detachment of the individual or group either from an earlier fixed point in the social structure, from a set of cultural conditions (a “state”), or from both. During the intervening “liminal” period, the characteristics of the ritual subject (“the passenger”) are ambiguous; he passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state.

143 In the third phase (reaggregation or reincorporation), the passage is consummated. (94- 95) Turner also explains this ritual process more simply in The Anthropology of Performance: “Rituals separated specified members of a group from everyday life, placed them in a limbo that was not any place they were in before and not yet any place they would be in, then returned them, changed in some way, to mundane life” (25). The ritual process separates the ritual participants or initiates from a community, changes the participants in some way, and then returns them to the community to complete the transformational process; through the performance of this process the participant transforms and assumes a different status within the community. In chapter 1, I included a figure I used to illustrate this process that I will repeat here and will use to demonstrate the like processes I will discuss throughout this section (see fig. II.1).

Fig. II.1. Ritual process.

In this section, I will examine the transformational theatrical and ritual process that those who participate in the Hill Cumorah Pageant undergo. I am calling this dual process the pageant

144 performance process. For the theatrical elements, I will use Schechner’s seven-part performance model as a guide and comparison. Schechner acknowledges that terminology for the seven-part sequence “varies from culture to culture,” and that it is possible for a part of the sequence to be absent: “The absence of one or more phases signals not ‘incompleteness’ but an adjustment in the performance process to meet specific needs” (99). As such, I believe the model serves not necessarily as a framework by which all performance can be defined but as a plastic model that generalizes about the performance process. Therefore, I find this model a useful means to examine the Hill Cumorah Pageant’s unique performance process. I have adapted Schechner’s model to demonstrate the specific pageant performance process areas. The pageant performance process areas are training, religious training, rehearsal, preshow, performance, post-show, and aftermath. Figure II.2 illustrates Schechner’s performance sequence and my pageant performance process defined in relationship to the ritual process.

Fig. II.2. Schechner’s performance sequence and my pageant performance process.

145 The pageant performance process does not just involve transporting actors into roles performed for an audience and then transporting the actors out of their roles back into themselves. Instead, the whole process develops a lasting cultural identity that incorporates different performance identities and experiences from throughout the process and performance. In chapter 4, I will address the training area, but I include casting as part of the training area. This chapter focuses on the separation that begins the pageant performance process. I will consider both the physical and ritual separation that begins the process of forming a lasting pageant identity, and I will consider casting as a theatrical separation between a performer’s ordinary life and a specific production. In chapter 5, I will examine religious training and rehearsal both separately and also together as a liminal sub-process that develops a unique performance identity ready to be realized in the pageant performance. In chapter 6, I will discuss the various public performances that transition and incorporate the participants between various performance identities. Specifically, I will examine the preshow and processional, the performance, the post-show, and the aftermath areas to consider the results and final transformations involved in the pageant performance process.

146 CHAPTER 4

BEGINNING THE PROCESS: SEPARATION, TRAINING, AND CASTING

Early in the film Tootsie, Michael Dorsey, played by Dustin Hoffman, unsuccessfully auditions for various roles. One such audition goes as follows: Casting Director: The reading was fine; the reading was fine. You're just the wrong height. Michael: Oh, I can be taller. Casting Director: No. You don’t understand. You don’t understand. We're looking for somebody shorter. Michael: Oh, well look. (He takes off his shoes and removes lift) I don't, I don’t have to be—I don’t have to be this tall. See, I'm, I’m wearing lifts. I can be shorter. Casting Director: I know, but, um, really, we're looking for somebody different. Michael: I can be different. Casting Director: We're looking for somebody else, okay? Dorsey has a reputation that turns off directors making it near impossible for Dorsey to find work. But this scene also shows the difficulties actors have giving the right audition and the difficulties directors have finding the right actors. The scene also shows that appearance alone does not dictate casting. In this chapter, I will address training, the work theatre artists perform to develop and perfect their art outside a particular production. Schechner lists training as the first of the seven parts in his performance sequence. He correlates training with ritual’s separation process. As the first phase, training marks the separation starting point. Because the Hill Cumorah Pageant uses amateur performers, theatrical training does not largely affect casting. The cast’s amateur status more relates to the production’s ritual nature wherein the spectators must recognize the cast as peers rather than trained professionals. The production staff, conversely, has experience and training that affects their pageant contribution. So, at Cumorah, 1 experienced and trained theatre artists cast amateur, untrained participantsTP PT for the missionary,

147 ritual, and theatrical pageant performance. These various elements and participants collide through casting; casting begins the pageant process and marks the start of the separation phase. Casting is a liminal process that provides a new temporary identity the participants will develop and perform; casting also separates the participants out from among the general Mormon culture and begins the process whereby the participants develop a new, lasting cultural identity. For this chapter, I will begin by defining separation as a ritual process that begins the transformational passage ritual process. I will then examine what type of training and experience the various participants and pageant production staff possess and how that training affects the pageant development and performance. As part of this segment, I will consider why cast members participate, what expectations they bring as a variable, especially to the ritual part of the pageant performance process equation. I will focus the remainder of the chapter on casting as a separation and transition that begins the pageant performance transformational process. Separation denotes both a dividing point and a process that leads to a division. In the ritual process, separation removes the participants from the community to the transitional phase, often physically removing them to a distinct location outside or apart from regular cultural activities. Separation also may involve removing or shifting participants’ cultural status or identity. In From Ritual to Theatre, Turner explains, “The first phase of separation clearly demarcates sacred space and time from profane or secular space and time” (24). Separation itself involves a transition in order to prepare the initiates or participants for a greater transition. Turner clarifies, “It is more than just a matter of entering a temple—there must be in addition a rite which changes the quality of time also, or constructs a cultural realm which is defined as ‘out of time,’ i.e., beyond or outside the time which measures secular processes and routines” (24). Ritual separation must mark a transition in order to prepare participants for the changes in the transitional phase. Consider a wedding, a ritual that continues to serve me as an illustration. The bride and groom facing the officiator stand apart or separate from those who watch the rite. In grander weddings, a processional that culminates in uniting the bride and groom before the officiator precedes the actual marriage performance. That processional may even include another separation ritual where the father or another kinsman gives away the bride, separates her from her family and cultural status as daughter so that she can be transformed into a wife. But before the bride and groom reach the officiator or even the wedding place, another separation ritual

148 begins the whole marriage ritual. Traditionally in modern Western weddings, the man proposes marriage to the woman often with a ritual that involves kneeling and presenting a ring, a token that marks the exchange. By proposing, the man initiates the separation process and the wedding ritual process. The separation process culminates with the bride and groom standing before the officiator for the transitional marriage rite. The wedding ritual culminates with a cultural status change from “single” to “married.” If the woman accepts the proposal, the two undergo a partial transformation, assume a new, temporary or initiatory identity. They are engaged, or betrothed. Regarding the state of separation, Turner states, “It includes symbolic behavior [getting down on one knee] especially symbols of reversal or inversion of things, relationships and processes secular—which represents the detachment of the ritual subjects (novices, candidates, neophytes or ‘initiands’) from their previous social statuses” (24). The engagement ring, which symbolizes separation, is not a wedding ring, which symbolizes the transformation. The engagement ring marks the transition rather than the culmination; it anticipates inclusion with the wedding band. Thus, betrothed does not yet mean married, but betrothed holds a distinctly different cultural status than single, or even than courting or dating. Betrothed really may be a step in a series of separations beginning with that first glance or smile two people share, but betrothal serves as a valid example of separation because it begins with a specific social ritual that leads to a transitional identity and social status, an identity designed not to be a destination but to prepare the participants for the transitional ritual. Turning to training, in its broadest application, training is a transitional, separating process that brings the trainees to the point where they are ready to adopt a new social identity. In a workplace, trainees share the workplace environment with other employees, but they do not yet possess full membership within that community. Trainees may receive less pay and often may be terminated without appeal during their transitional period. But at some point, training ends, and the trainees undergo some type of transformation that results in a status change. In theatre, actor and other theatre artist training prepares the artist to become a working artist. Schechner, regarding training in his performance sequence, indicates, “Most American actors look forward to the time when they are ‘finished’ training. Lip service is paid to lifelong training, but in fact only a small fraction of actors continue training after leaving acting school” (Between 20). Schechner also notes that in other theatrical disciplines, training involves a much longer process, such as with Noh, in which “the extensive training of the shite traditionally starts

149 when he is five years old” (Between 16). Regardless, theatrical artistic training prepares the artist to be an artist rather than preparing them to perform a specific role or work on a specific production. Schechner’s performance sequence designates training workshop and rehearsals as part of the separation phase for this reason because training relates to work outside a specific production whereas rehearsals involve work within a production. The workshop phase may be part of training if it happens outside preparation for a role or part of rehearsal if it occurs within specific production work. All of these involve separating a performer from her/himself to bring the actor to the transitional point of performance. But training is different from workshop and rehearsal. Training involves developing a transitional identity as an artist ready to work on a specific production. This raises an interesting question often asked by concerned family members (or by concerned prospective in-laws): is an actor without a role an actor (or a director, designer, producer, etc. without a production)? Artists need to create art to be an artist; transitional identities need culmination to become fixed identities. Trained artists need to create art to culminate their identity. Because theatre is a performance art, an ephemeral art, no lasting art remains after the performance ends. Designers can keep remnants of their work even display painting, costumes, sculptures, etc, but outside performance, those elements become something different. Actors can show recorded performances on film, television, or other recorded media, but these recordings are records of performance rather than performances. The actor does not retain performed identities outside the performance. Actors really only act during a performance; they are only actors when they are acting. Training prepares an actor, separates them to become an actor, or distinguishes them as a would-be actor, but training does not make one an actor; performing makes one an actor. Considering the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the more than six hundred performers do not come to the pageant production with theatrical training preparing them to perform. Mormon icon Donny Osmond, who performed in the 1997 pageant, is one of the few, perhaps the only, participant with extensive theatrical training and experience. Certainly some of the participants may have some performance training or experience, such as dance or gymnastics or even theatre experience, that benefits the performance, but the pageant directors do not require, rely on, or expect theatrical training to create the performance. While the pageant uses an all-amateur cast, the production includes professional theatre artists who comprise the artistic staff. Because theatre as a medium facilitates the pageant, the

150 Church looks to LDS theatre artists to facilitate the performance. When the Northern States Mission decided to perform the first America’s Witness for Christ, the administration turned to Harold I. Hansen, a new missionary who fortunately had a theatre background and who had recently completed his Bachelor’s in dramatic arts. When renovating the pageant, the Church turned to such LDS artists as director and BYU theatre professor Charles Metten, playwright and science fiction novelist Orson Scott Card, and composer Crawford Gates. Theatre professionals continue to fill the artistic positions. Rodger Sorensen, who was the artistic director in 2000, is a professor of directing and present chair of the Department of Theatre and Media Arts at BYU, and the current artistic director, Brent Hanson, is an associate theatre professor at Dixie State College. The other artistic staff members are likewise working theatre professionals. These theatre artists provide and enable the pageant’s theatrical elements. Theatre artists created the performance text and production elements, and theatre artists continue to oversee the theatrical production elements. However, the pageant involves more than just theatrical elements. The missionary purposes and ritual elements do not require theatre artists. In traditional theatre, the producer finds the financial resources needed to mount the production, and the producer represents the backers’ financial interests. At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the pageant administration represent the Church’s cultural and theological rather than financial interests. In 1987, the Church changed the pageant’s organizational structure creating a pageant presidency, 2

an administrative model based on the Church’s organizational structure.TP PT The pageant presidency consists of a president and two counselors. They are members from the local area rather than theatre professionals. President Wayne Lehman, who was the pageant president when I visited in 2000, had been the president for four years. He was “vice-president of manufacturing and supply chains from the digital equipment at Xerox.” In his profession, he supervised 3500 people, but the Church did not make him president because of his career experience. The pageant presidency members have training in Church service and administration. They oversee the religious organization, breaking the participants into groups with group leaders; coordinate the physical facilities; coordinate the religious training; and act as a liaison between the pageant and the local community. They have no duties related to anything theatrical. Instead, they coordinate the missionary and ritual elements, areas where they have training and experience. The artistic and administrative personnel’s training and experience factor into the overall pageant process equation. Both the artists and the administrators help create a specific

151 framework within which the pageant performance develops. The theatre artists take complete responsibility for the artistic elements, but both groups share responsibility for the missionary and ritual elements because the artistic staff members also have Mormon training and backgrounds in Church service and administration. The artistic staff serves in a dual capacity as both the artistic leaders and the spiritual leaders. The artistic staff brings theatrical experience that enables them to transform the ignorant amateur cast and crew into theatre performers and generate the theatrical performance. The artistic staff members as spiritual leaders also guide the participants through their spiritual quest and transform them into effective pageant missionaries, the ritual role that they perform. Both processes must work together because the same performance must theatrically tell the Nephite story, ritually recreate sacred history, and invite spectators to become members of the Church and faithful followers of Christ. In addition, while the cast participants do not have theatrical training that prepares them to perform a theatrical role, they do have Mormon cultural and theological training. This training distinguishes them as members and prepares them to act as missionaries and to represent the Mormon culture by performing the pageant rituals. Cast members’ Mormon background also makes them familiar with the Book of Mormon stories that form the basis of the text. This background impacts how they regard the characters they perform. In some sense, this idea of training correlates with character analysis and dramaturgical work that some actors use to inform their character development. The cast members may not know how to perform a role, but they have a personal affiliation with the stories and an understanding of Church service and missionary work that adds to the pageant equation. I want now to further consider the cast members and the elements they personally bring to the pageant by examining why the cast participants choose to be in the pageant and separate themselves physically from their everyday lives. I asked all those whom I interviewed why they were participating. Each participant or group of participants had individual stories about why they came, but there were also some common reasons. Table 4.1 depicts the general responses I received from my interviews. My sampling reflects that about 58% were first time participants, which is close to the two-thirds ratio that pageant leaders told me they try to maintain. I have grouped together the crossover areas for the reasons the respondents provided. Regarding proximity, members in the nearby areas provide other pageant-related activities besides performing, such as assisting with parking and security. These members generally feel uniquely

152 attached to the pageant and to the sites. These sites and activities have become part of the local member community rather than just part of the Mormon culture.

Table 4.1. Summary of pageant participants’ common reasons given for participating.

Total Included in Interview Percent of First Time Total Participants Participants 3

645 95TP PT or 15% 55 or 58% First Timers’ Reasons for Participating Proximity Previously Seen the Pageant Word of Mouth 4

6TP PT or 31% 6 or 31% 7 or 36% Returning Participants’ Reasons 6

Desire to Repeat Proximity Previously Seen the Word of MouthTP PT 5

Past Experience PageantTP PT 14 or 100% 2 or 14% 3 2

The pageant responses reveal the primacy of the ritual over the theatrical. None of all the participants sought any theatrical fame or recognition or anything related to a theatrical or artistic experience. I am surprised, however, that only two of the fourteen repeating participants live in close proximity. Originally, I thought that because of the local affiliation, proximity would be a bigger factor for repeating. Perhaps it has been and that those in close proximity are using up their eligibility. Additionally, the numbers may reflect how relatively few members reside in the area. Regardless, of the 95 included in my response, 34 or about 36% come from the surrounding area, including ten who had only recently moved to the area. These figures demonstrate that members willingly come from far and wide to participate in the pageant. Just as the sites and pageant draw spectators as pilgrims who venerate the Church narratives and religious figures at the sacred places where they occurred, the pageant also draws pilgrims desiring to take part in the cultural rituals performed at Cumorah. The responses demonstrate that distance does not deter the participants who willingly make the pilgrimage. Also surprisingly, only about one-third of the new participants previously had attended the pageant. Staff members distribute numerous 7 applications after the pageant.TP PT Additionally, considering word-of-mouth, the table shows that a little more than two-thirds come because of what they have either seen or heard about the

153 pageant. For those returning, all expressed a desire to repeat their previous pageant experience, which is of course no surprise—why else would they come back? The pageant has developed a momentum for member participants driven by those who have experienced the pageant and either seek to return themselves as participants or inspire others to participate. Pageant participation is an expression of communitas, which often relates to pilgrimage. Victor and Edith Turner in Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture explain that pilgrimage sites “tend to arise spontaneously, on the report tha t some miracle or apparition has oc curred at a particular place” as did the various activitie s that preceded the formalized pageant, which were performed in the Sacred Grove a nd at Cum orah. “Pilgrimages,” the Turners continue, “are an exp re ssion of the communitas dimension of any s ociety, the spontaneity of inte rrelatedn ess, the spirit wh ich bloweth where it listeth” (32). Participants come to be a part of the Cumorah sac re d celebrations, to join in with other lik e-mi nded people as pa rt of a cultural celebration, a religious cause w ith perceived benefits fo r those involved. My interviews show that while the pageant participants view participating in the pageant as a way to serve Christ and the Church, the participants also desire and expect to gain personal fulfillment and spiritual growth through the experience. For example, Harold Wilson, a middle- aged single man who was performing for his third year, says he first came to see the pageant with members of his congregation only five months after he had joined the church. He feels that seeing the pageant reinforced his conversion. “It really helped me to come to a great understanding that I did the right thing.” He notes that it was especially significant to “see the Book of Mormon come alive and be portrayed by members of the church.” After returning again to see the pageant the following year, Wilson says, “I was inspired to go ask the missionaries that were in charge here for an application.” Wilson wanted to continue to benefit from the pageant and recognized that he could do so as a participant. He believed that performing the Book of Mormon and Church stories himself could intensify his pageant experiences. Another participant, Alice Christensen, had come for the first time, along with her husband and two children. She says, “All of my life I’ve had a real interest in the Hill Cumorah and other specific Church sites.” She describes how she vividly remembers visiting Church sites in Nauvoo with her family when she was seven. She describes an especially memorable spiritual experience at Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith was killed. “I remember in Carthage Jail walking up the stairs and gaining a very strong testimony. Just right on the spot, I knew that

154 Joseph Smith had been a prophet there, and the things that I was learning there were true.” As a child, Christensen also learned about the Hill Cumorah Pageant from a Sunday school teacher and always wanted to see it. Eventually, as a married woman with her own children, she made another pilgrimage, this time to Palmyra to see the pageant with her family. She says that after the performance, “[her] daughter stood up and said ‘I want to be in that pageant someday,’ and so we picked up an application.” When her husband’s job transfer moved them to the Palmyra area just a year later, they submitted their application. Alice Christensen’s story shows her faith in the converting power of Mormon pilgrimage. Her pilgrimage to Nauvoo as a child parallels what the Turners describe in Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, which I discussed in Chapter 1: The pilgrim as he is increasingly hemmed in by such sacred symbols, may not consciously grasp more than a fraction of the message, but through the reiteration of its symbolic expressions, and sometimes through their very vividness, he becomes increasingly capable of entering in imagination and with sympathy into the culturally defined experiences of the founder. (10-11) Christensen remembers that experience because the combination of what she saw and experienced as a child on pilgrimage with her family transformed her faith so powerfully that as an adult she still recognizes that experience as a foundation to her faith. When she learned about the Hill Cumorah Pageant, she imagined a similar experience, and she retained that hope powerfully enough to want to bring her own family on a pilgrimage. I think she also recognized a parallel between her childhood experience at Carthage Jail and her daughter’s experience at the pageant. Both experiences stemmed from the viewers entering into a pilgrim’s close imagination with the stories and persons the sites represent. After seeing the pageant, the Christensen family, like Harold Wilson, wanted not just to see it again but also to be actual participants performing the sacred ceremonies. Pageant participants, like the member spectators, come to the pageant as pilgrims seeking what Sorensen calls, “their own Sacred Grove experience” (16 Nov. 2000). Performing the pageant creates a more direct relationship with the sacred events represented at the sites. Participants actually enter symbiotically into direct association with the events by performing a ritual recreation. If, to use the Turners’ ideas, spectators may not “consciously grasp more than a fraction of the message” as the symbolic messages play out at sacred sites, pageant participants,

155 who rehearse and perform such acts, certainly grasp more from repeated and closer contact. As I discussed in Chapter 2, Victor Turner also distinguishes two ways people learn about themselves through performance. First, “the actor may come to know himself better through acting or enactment” and second by “observing and/or participating in performances generated and presented by another set of human beings” (Anthropology 81). Pageant spectator pilgrims learn through observation; pageant participants learn through acting. Pageant participants as pilgrims come to put themselves into the stories, to more directly vicariously experience the Church origination narratives. Of the various responses I received, only one participant mentions anything about theatre. Bob Goodyear says, “We do have a little bit of experience in theatre just in general as a family.” He adds, qualifying the theatrical interest, “But most of all we wanted to participate in something that was missionary related and wanted to have an opportunity to participate and learn about missionary work at the same time as participating in other activities we enjoy.” Goodyear’s response reflects the other dimension associated with the pageant: missionary work. For members, missionary work represents a sacred and honorable obligation. Mormon scripture

commands members, “It becometh every man who hath been warned to warnH H his neighbor” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:81). The pageant provides participants clear, focused, and formalized opportunities for missionary work. While every member feels the obligation, they also find actually integrating missionary proselytizing into everyday life difficult. As I will discuss, pageant participation presents an analogue for fulltime missionary service. Missionary service becomes part of the pilgrimage performance, part of the way participants worship through pageant participation. Many of the respondents comment on the missionary aspect either as a reason to attend or as a significant part of what they experienced. One family, the Crockett family, lists that they wanted to attend while their son was a fulltime missionary. They view pageant service as a way to connect with their son’s mission. Like most others, the Crocketts came looking for a pageant miracle, for a way to develop a unique bond or relationship with their son. Whatever the similar or diverse motivations, participants make a pilgrimage to the pageant, to “where miracles once happened, still happen, and may happen again” (Image 6), to be a literal part of the pageant’s ritual experience. Just as pilgrims to Catholic miracle sites like Lourdes or Magegoria travel not only because of the original miracle or vision associated with the site but also because of ongoing miracles, including

156 visions and healings, so pageant participants join in the Hill Cumorah Pageant, expecting personal miracles or transformations through the pageant process. So, participants collectively separate themselves from their regular lives to enter the pageant process.

Casting

I recently attended an equity audition session in Chicago for the role of Berowne for Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. As the Festival Managing Director, I went with the director and a few students who had already been cast. We had clear parameters for what we wanted: an actor young enough to look contemporary with student actors playing the other roles and experienced enough to be a mentor to those students. The afternoon proved to be a learning experience for me as well as for the students and even for some of the actors. The actors came prepared with contrasting Shakespearean monologues. They also brought with them the customary headshot and resume. After performing the pieces, either the director or I gave the actor a spiel about the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival and what we wanted a guest actor to do. While I’ve been to various auditions before, I had not been to an audition with equity actors or to private auditions where the director and others interviewed the actor following the audition. The director and I gave the students some latitude to ask questions. A few of the students zeroed in on interesting bits and skills the actors listed on their resumes. The students asked one actor to burp on demand, two to sing, another to play the piano, another to walk on his hands, and another to tell a joke, all according to what the actors had listed. The supposed stand-up comic took offense and responded rather testily and patronizingly to the students. One singer wasn’t. Beyond the mini “gong show,” we had a few actors read with a few of the students to see if there was a good fit and chemistry. We also asked actors about their backgrounds, their experience, and their education, their training. For our purposes, we needed an actor with enough training to help train our students. We had one actor who was very skilled, who delivered two fine pieces and read very well with the students. He was very likable, but he was too recently removed from his own undergraduate training to really offer an experienced perspective to our students. A few actors were just too old. Interestingly to me, the actor we cast just simply had it. He was on the high edge in the age category, but his combination of experience and personality won him the role. He connected with each of us with an air of

157 sincerity and respect that convinced us. His specific qualities matched what we wanted such that he separated himself from the other applicants. We subsequently reached an agreement with the actor that physically separated him out from his home and life to bring him to our space so that he could develop a role and perform in our theatrical production. For me, this audition demonstrates unique facets about auditions and casting. Casting brings together a performance text, trained actors, directors and/or other casting agents, and the specific production needs and parameters. All of these factors define what happens at the auditions. In Chicago, most of the actors we saw had talent, training, and even good looks; yet, we only seriously considered two of the actors, one as our main choice and the other in case we could not reach an agreement with the first. In theatre, roles differ, and requirements change even for the same role because the performance needs change between different productions. While actors, directors, and performance needs change, matching an actor to a role still usually involves the director or whoever is casting finding the actor from the available pool that best suits a given criteria. Even still, actors sometimes surprise, even wow, such that a director reconsiders the given criteria. Still, casting comes down to production demands, a director’s expectations, the available actors, and what abilities and attributes the actor brings to the audition. Interestingly, even inexplicably, Schechner does not discuss auditions or casting in Between Theater and Anthropology in which he details the performance sequence. To me, casting is a production threshold. For the actor, casting separates the looking for a role from the developing a role; casting denotes a transition from the regular world to the production world where a new temporary community forms aimed at creating and performing a text to an audience. For the production staff, casting denotes the transition between the pre-rehearsal and rehearsal periods, when the production moves from the planning to the building. Since training involves general performance development that prepares actors to act, something must transition the would-be performer from the general training to the preparing for a specific role, from training to rehearsal. Schechner places workshop between training and rehearsal, but he does not address a transition between training and rehearsal. Casting serves as that transition and relates to separation. Casting also generally includes performance and can operate as a separation ritual, a liminal process that ultimately transitions performers to a new temporary community. With open auditions, casting acts as a selection process, incorporating some who audition into the cast with

158 a new performance role and reincorporating others back where they began without any transformation. Within a closed company, casting transitions the company to the start of the production work and provides them a new performance role. For each type of casting, the audition generally involves a designated place where the directors and would-be actors integrate. The actors perform some type of audition material, whether it is a prepared piece, a cold reading, an improvisation, or other type of performance. Directors may even call for multiple casting performance sessions, although not all of the actors may continue through all of the sessions. In either audition, the director or casting agent initiates and guides the performance ritual as a shaman or priest directs a separation ritual. The actors and directors together enter the liminal casting performance realm. When the director selects an actor, the actor is transformed and incorporated into the production cast by receiving his/her performance role, completing the separation. At the end of casting, the director heads a production community prepared to begin the rehearsal/performance development process. Thus casting transitions the production from the pre-rehearsal period into the rehearsal period, and it transitions the performers from trained prepared potential actors into cast members ready to continue the performance process. Figure 4.1 represents casting as a ritualistic, liminal separation process.

Fig. 4.1. Casting as a separation process.

159 For Hill Cumorah, casting is a massive undertaking with two specific periods. The first period is closer to open audition casting, and the second period is closer to closed audition casting. However, the pageant’s ritual elements effectively change the theatrical casting such that casting acts a separation process that initiates both a participant’s temporary theatrical identity as well as his/her lasting pageant identity. Like traditional theatre, given circumstances in the text demand certain casting requirements, and specific production purposes and given circumstances, such as the nature of the space and the scope of the production, shape casting. Ritual elements exist within the text such and within the production needs and parameters that affect casting considerations and practices. Foremost, the ritual nature requires that the cast come from among the Church general population so that the performers theatrically represent their roles and ritually represent the Mormon culture, appearing both as the roles and as themselves collectively to serve the two purposes. The nature of the available casting pool results in a theatrically naive and untrained cast as well as a dynamic group of LDS members ready to devote themselves to a sacred duty. When we cast for Berowne in Chicago, we had a similar production need. As an educational theatre, our mission serves both artistic and educational purposes. Because we have a divided mission, both missions affect all production choices, including casting. At general auditions, directors consider not only who best suits the role—how the actor will serve the production—and who the role best suits—how the role and the production will serve the actor. Because of our production’s dual purposes, we needed to cast an actor with artistic merit and with educational benefits. Considering first the artistic side, the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival has a standard of excellence that the audiences expect to see. We advertise that the production includes students and professionals. Having an equity actor needs to improve the artistic production quality. Thus, we needed to cast a skilled and talented actor. For this particular witty and commanding role, we needed a dynamic actor with good stage presence who would also artistically match the rest of the cast both in look and in stage chemistry. As part of an educational program, the Shakespeare Festival also needs to serve the university students, especially the theatre students. As part of the contract, the actor must agree to be available to visit university classes to help teach about the nature of acting and theatre; to conduct a workshop for theatre majors and minors on a specific acting area; and to be available to mentor the other actors in the cast both by setting a good example for professional conduct and by

160 directly interacting with the students. Thus, these dual purposes affected the nature of the casting session wherein we looked for certain physical qualities and abilities while the actor performed prepared pieces, interacted with the actor and addressed these educational concerns, and had the actor cold read with students all the while gauging how well the actor willingly interacted with the students we brought regardless of what we and they asked him about or to do. At the pageant’s first casting session in December, only the artistic director and administration meet. Casting begins as an application process. Would-be participants submit a written application for consideration. While the application serves like an actor’s headshot and resume or some other type of audition form, the pageant application asks for non-theatrical information. Thus, the application parallels other audition applications in purpose but not in form. The pageant application demonstrates the preliminary qualities that the pageant director and presidency consider when selecting the Cumorah company of performers (see fig. 4.2). These qualities include family details like number of children and ages. Not many other theatrical productions ask applicants what children they will bring. The applicants also list personal background details such as leadership positions and Church responsibilities. These qualities do not affect theatrical casting decisions but affect the cast dynamic that serves the ritual components. To show how casting at the Hill Cumorah Pageant differs from theatre, I chose to examine casting procedures for other large-scale outdoor dramas. The Institute of Outdoor Drama coordinates auditions for a number of outdoor dramas. The Institute also requires an application as part of their casting procedures (see figures 4.3 and 4.4). Like the professional headshot, this application includes a photo for identification and a listing of skills and experience. The application also includes some unique application features due to these theatrical productions’ particular needs. For instance, a director, teacher, or previous employer must sponsor all applicants. Such a requirement limits the number of applicants and helps to ensure a measure of performance talent. There are also other safeguards in the application, such as a time availability commitment. Still, the primary focus on the application is theatrical ability and experience. Largely, the two applications differ considerably because the combined ritual and theatre areas of the Hill Cumorah Pageant create different production needs.

161

8

Fig. 4.2. 2006 Hill Cumorah Pageant Cast Application Form.TP PT Used by permission from the Hill Cumorah Pageant President.

162

Fig. 4.3. 2007 National Outdoor Drama Combined Auditions application page 1. Used by permission from the director of the Institute of Outdoor Drama.

163

Fig. 4.4. 2007 National Outdoor Drama Combined Auditions application page 2. Used by permission from the director of the Institute of Outdoor Drama.

164 In December, the leaders first consider cast size, which consideration is largely a theatrical concern, but the nature of the cast and the process used to determine that cast incorporates both theatrical and ritual purposes. James Cecil, the first counselor in the 2000 pageant presidency, says that the director and presidency initially divide the applicants into three areas: those who are accepted, those who are rejected, and those who are standbys. Sorensen explains that at the December 1999 meeting, he and the presidency narrowed the number of applicants down to about 735 people, expecting that some from this number would not be able to come. Of these 735 people, they lost about eighty-five to ninety people, giving them a cast of about 645. Sorensen said that the group selected the original 735 according to a matrix that shows for instance how many men, women, and children they need to cast (8 July 2000), which breakdown reflects theatrical given circumstances from the text. But the textual given circumstances are not overly specific: 640, 650, or 660 in the cast will not make a tremendous difference. Thus, the pageant staff can be flexible with the dynamics to include different families. At this point, the pageant leaders want to ensure that they will have a group sufficient to meet the pageant’s scope without regard to specific roles. In traditional theatre, a cast size varying by twenty and changing in demographic makeup would have enormous impact, especially where cast members are paid. But even in amateur productions like community theatre or educational theatre, a cast increase such as this impacts costume and makeup budgets and impacts the director’s rehearsal time. Few productions are equipped to vary a cast size in such a way. Casting flexibility allows the staff to make choices guided by a consideration very different from theatrical concerns. The casting matrix ensures a balance not only theatrically onstage but also offstage for the ritual activities that build participants’ lasting pageant identity. While the pageant leaders do not pre-cast any theatrical roles during the December meeting, Cecil explains that the group does assign spiritual leadership roles to organize a pageant community structure with groupings and a hierarchy. The pageant leaders organize the cast into cast teams according to age—children are placed with children, youth with youth, and adults with adults—with cast team leaders and assistant leaders. Cast team leaders and assistants are husband and wife teams selected from among those accepted to the pageant. Applicants designate their willingness to serve as a cast team leader and indicate which ages they are willing to lead. That the pageant application states, “Acceptance Priority will be given to those willing to serve as CTLs [cast team leaders]” undoubtedly motivates applicants’ willingness to serve as

165 T CTLs.T These team leaders are not necessarily couples with previous pageant experience. Cecil adds that “most of the time we try to get people who are experienced and team them up with people that are not experienced” which fosters a communal interaction and unity. The cast team groupings have nothing to do with individual roles; cast team groupings have no bearing on role selection and assignment. The cast team groupings, therefore, do not affect rehearsal. Instead, they are a source of organization for times when the cast is not rehearsing, for when they are engaged primarily in the religious training areas. Cast teams are also an efficient way to disseminate information. Organizing the cast ahead of time into cast teams promotes a pageant community and makes the cast easier to manage, especially at the outset. From their first arrival, cast members belong to small, manageable groups, prepared to engage in the tremendous task awaiting them. In a way, this strategy demonstrates the proverbial way to eat an elephant—the presidency separates the 645-member ensemble into “bitesize” groups. The second casting period occurs at the hill once the participants arrive. This session focuses on role assignment and, as a process, demonstrates the unique theatrical and ritual elements. This session resembles both large “cattle-call” casting and closed auditions. The role assignment process that separates the participants by designating performance identities uses large-scale techniques not often needed for closed auditions and uses another non-theatrical guiding element. Sorensen explains, “We cast by type—physical type, by look, and by the spirit. We try and cast under the direction of the spirit” (8 July 2000). Sorensen means that the directors seek personal spiritual inspiration to guide them as they assign roles. By doing so, the directors try to ensure that the cast members suit the pageant ritual performance as well as the theatrical. Other production circumstances, especially time constraints, affect casting. The cast members all arrive on a Friday; in 2000, they arrived on Friday, June 30. Registration and orientation meetings fill the first day. Casting begins on Saturday at 9:30, and the six directors work cooperatively to cast all roles by noon. The directors assign an average of three individual roles to each of the 645 participants in a matter of two and one-half hours. Sorensen explains that 9

each of the directorsTP PT has responsibility over certain performance areas. The Artistic Director is responsible for the entire production, but, like the other directors, he has direct responsibility over particular scenes. In casting, each director has primary roles to cast, and because of character overlap, these roles must match with other primary roles in other scenes. A character such as Nephi appears in various scenes at different times in his life. He ages throughout the

166 scenes, and different actors portray the different ages. Different actors likewise portray the Savior, who appears in a montage of different settings around the stage. Thus, the directors must effectively match these performers. Sorensen details the casting process: We meet every year before we go out there [to cast on Saturday morning]. We meet for two days of pre-production meetings as directors, and one of the things that we do is we look at the casting, and we say, “Okay now let’s remember who’s casting what, and how do they relate to the other directors that also will be directing them, and how can we make sure there’s some checks and balances to get the right people?” And so we have developed a description of each of the major characters that we need to cast and then we have an overall casting summary of columns under each director’s name who’s going to cast, and we start on the first level and have like six levels of casting. And so the first level is to cast all of the Savior figures, and we all do that together. Then we go to the second level where we begin to work on casting the individual characters that we individually direct. And we have prioritized who are the most important characters on down to the least important characters, not for their importance in the show, but for their skills—what we have to have. We have to have in Battle Laman, Battle Lemuel, [and] Battle Nephi . . . someone who can really fight [who is] physically strong, and we can believe in that [physicality]. So those are the next three that we cast, and so we have this descending priority of who’s going to be cast in what order. And we go down in that order. (8 July 2000) Sorensen describes a very pragmatic and not very personal casting approach. Time does not allow for long deliberations. Also, other production realities such as the distance between the stage and the house and the broadcast text for the dialogue come into play. The directors do not have to worry about voices or appearance other than body types. Costumes, wigs, and beards easily link characters with similar body types at such a distance. Besides physical matches, directors match complex elements to try to create a cast that serves the roles as well as roles that serve the cast. The directors look for particular skills and a level of ability for particular roles, not necessarily for characterization, but the ability to respond to direction, to give in to the performance. Cast members with movement skills perform a movement audition from which the choreographers and battle master cast the major battle roles. These abilities also affect the prioritized casting procedure, as Sorensen explains:

167 For example, we cast Battle Nephi, and then we have him stay right there. And then the woman [ . . .] who works with Wilderness Nephi . . . goes and scouts out and finds half a dozen or so people and brings them and stands them there. And then the woman who is doing Vision Nephi, she goes out and scouts around and finds people, and we line them up there. And we say, “Okay, now, which ones look—physically, what are the types that are the most similar?” How can we believe the youth, the transformation from young Nephi to an older Nephi?” And so we look at those kinds of things; we have them do physical things. And then we say, “Okay, choose who you want them to be.” . . . And then we set up the families, and we get the wives and we get the children, and on like that. But we do it by keeping them around, and working with them all the way through the casting process. (8 July 2000) Casting proceeds in this fashion until all of the characters are assigned, with the primary characters in a group cast and then the subsequent priorities cast until the group is complete. Besides filling the needed roles, the directors consider the individual participants to ensure that all participants receive significant stage time. The entire cast participates in the opening processional and performs a role in the Savior’s appearance scene. Additionally, all perform in one or two other scenes. Sorensen explains that no roles are pre-cast and that those who are returning cast members will not be cast in the same roles they previously played. This is due to what Sorensen calls their commitment “to giving as many people the experience of this pageant as we possibly can.” Clarifying this commitment, he adds, “It is our policy, unless the Spirit directs otherwise” (8 July 2000). Despite all the physical and skill requirements, directors rely on spiritual guidance to validate or overturn any of their decisions. These casting practices are a microcosm for the process the artistic leaders follow. They recognize that in their position they serve as both artistic leaders and spiritual leaders. They are theatrical directors and ritual ministers. The artistic leaders trust their skills, their artistic abilities and judgment; they trust their previous pageant experience; they trust the policies that they have established; and they have faith in the Church teachings and pageant processes. The leaders do not disregard their art or their expertise; in fact, they believe their talents qualify them for their pageant contributions. However, they all believe that divine inspiration supersedes any decision. The artistic leaders all believe the pageant performance serves a higher purpose beyond the aesthetic. As such, they willingly make selections that do not mesh with their artistic sensibilities

168 but only when they feel strongly inspired, when they feel that “the Spirit directs otherwise” from their policies or their artistic judgment. Choices that inspiration does not contradict or that spiritual manifestations confirm, they regard as harmonious with the Spirit. Casting at the Hill Cumorah Pageant as with other theatrical casting operates as a liminal, separating process. When the participants arrive, already they are part of the pageant community, separated out from their everyday lives and from their homes in most cases. They arrive as pilgrims ready to experience all the pageant offers. But their identity as simply “cast members” is a transitional identity established by the first casting session that separated them from other applicants and gave them the opportunity to come to the pageant. Casting replaces the transitional identity with specific pageant performance roles the participants will subsequently develop in rehearsal and perform for the audience. Thus, casting transitions the participants and provides the temporary performance identity (see fig. 4.5).

Fig. 4.5. Pageant performance role casting process.

169 Cast members also participate in another separation ritual that, like casting, transitions their pageant identity. However, this ritual affects the lasting pageant identity, a transformational and transforming identity tied to the pageant ritual elements. When the participants accept the invitation to come to the pageant, they accept the responsibility as a Church calling. The Church has no paid clergy, and so members fill various positions collectively called “callings,” which means the assignment comes from God, represented by the particular ecclesiastical leader who extends the calling. When individual members accept a calling, they in effect consecrate themselves for the service they agree to perform by giving the necessary time, talent, and attention to effectively fulfill this responsibility. When members accept the callings, they then participate in a ritual appropriately called “setting apart.” Setting apart transforms individuals so that they can fulfill a calling’s responsibilities. The leader lays his hands on the member’s head and pronounces the calling. The leader then pronounces a spiritual blessing on the member that empowers him or her to fulfill the calling and, most importantly, validates him or her as designated or authorized by God to fill the position. For the pageant specifically, the day the participants arrive, the local mission president sets apart each participant as a fulltime missionary for the duration of the pageant. When the participants receive their pageant calling, they initially separate as pilgrims from their everyday lives to serve as performers at the pageant. The pilgrim identity represents the first phase of a transforming lasting pageant identity. Once the participants arrive, they join the pageant community, a group of fellow pilgrims, in which they enjoy a communion that the spectator pilgrims do not have the opportunity to establish in the brief time they join with other spectators to watch the pageant. Within the larger pageant community, the pageant participants also join the more intimate society of the cast team, which is the social structure the pageant leaders created during the December casting session. When the mission president sets them apart, the pilgrim identity transforms into the phase of the lasting pageant identity that I call the pageant missionary identity (I use this term to distinguish pageant missionaries from other fulltime Mormon missionaries). The setting apart ritual, like casting, designates the participants with a new identity that they will develop and perform as part of the pageant cultural performance, as I illustrate with figure 4.6.

170

Fig. 4.6. Pageant setting apart ritual.

Setting apart transitions the participants from pilgrims to pageant missionaries joined together in a pageant spiritual community with a common sacred duty that the ritual has both separated them to perform and empowered them to perform. The next step, as with the performance role the participants received, requires the participants to develop their role, to prepare to perform.

1

TP PT Although all who help create and perform the Hill Cumorah Pageant can be termed participants, I use this term specifically to refer to those who perform as cast members. 2

TP PT The Church is organized with the First Presidency, consisting of the Church President and his two counselors. The Church is geographically divided into areas governed by area presidencies, which are subdivided into stakes, which are governed by stake presidencies. Stakes are divided into individual congregations called wards or branches, if they are smaller. These are presided over by a bishop and two counselors or a branch presidency. Within the wards, the individual groups and areas, such as the children’s Primary organization are likewise run by a presidency with a president and two counselors. It is the principle manner the Church uses for organization. 3

TP PT Of the 645 participants in 2000, I interviewed personally or surveyed by letter only thirty-three participants. That is certainly a small minority, only five percent. However, when you consider the actual number of participants reflected in the responses of those I interviewed, the percentage increases because the majority of the cast members are young people—children brought with families. When you include the size of the families brought with those individuals I interviewed or received a response letter from, the representative number increases to ninety-five, which is roughly fifteen percent.

171

4

TP PT For the reasons cited, I am using the figures of those who actually answered the questions rather than including the projected numbers of their household. The children’s reasons may have been because they were brought along. 5

TP PT Some of the returning participants expressed their reasons for first participating, but as all did not, I don’t believe it gives an accurate reflection. Still, I thought it was worth noting. 6

TP PT See above note. 7

TP PT With the applications now available online, the pageant staff no longer distribute hardcopy applications. 8

TP PT This particular version of the cast application is based on the current online application. A member of the pageant staff emailed me the text from the online application, and I reassembled it based on textual appearance of the online application. It does not differ significantly from the application used in 2000 (Sorensen, Email “Re: Cumorah”). 9

TP PT This artistic group includes four associate directors, two choreographers, and a battle master. In 2000, one of the directors could not make it, and so his scenes were reassigned among the remaining directors.

172 CHAPTER 5

THE LIMINAL SUB-PROCESS: RELIGIOUS TRAINING AND REHEARSAL

For this chapter, I will focus on two middle areas of the pageant performance process, religious training and rehearsals, which are equivalent to the workshop and rehearsal phases of Schechner’s model. Although the religious training and the actual performance rehearsals are separate entities, they coexist as part of the overall performance preparation and Hill Cumorah experience. The two areas reflect the pageant’s theatrical and ritual qualities, with the religious training developing the lasting pageant missionary identity and rehearsal developing the temporary pageant performance identity. As the name implies, the Church’s missionary purposes also interrelate with the pageant missionary identity. Yet, while the pageant performance and process includes ritual and theatrical elements and missionary purposes, the pageant performance combines these distinct qualities into a unified production that uses theatre as a medium to facilitate both the ritual performance and the missionary purposes. The pageant performance process likewise operates interdependently with the various elements uniting and overlapping to create a complex experience. Specifically, I will first consider the religious training and examine how the specific religious activities develop the pageant missionary identity and how that lasting identity impacts the nature of the pageant cultural performance. I will next discuss the pageant performance rehearsals according to how the production’s unique theatrical and ritual demands change this traditional theatre process. In the last area, I will examine how the religious training and rehearsals work together as a process. Schechner similarly links his workshop and rehearsal areas in his performance sequence, calling them the “workshop-rehearsal process” (Between 113), which he defines as a “two-phase deconstruction-reconstruction process” (99). Schechner also asserts, “When workshops and rehearsals are used together, they constitute a model of the ritual process” (21). Workshop and rehearsal together form a separation-transition-incorporation

173 process, or sub-process. I will analyze these two areas together as a liminal sub-process operating within the separation phase.

Religious Trainin g

At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, participants spend their days divided between pageant rehearsals and various religious activities. I am calling these various non-rehearsal activities “religious training.” Within the pageant performance process, religious training activities occur between training/casting and the preshow performance and alongside the rehearsals. These activities correspond to workshop in Schechner’s performance sequence model. Schechner describes workshop as a “deconstruction process” (Between 99) within the separation phase of his model. Religious training, like workshop, operates as a separation process within the pageant performance process, but unlike workshop, religious training both deconstructs and reconstructs as participants develop their pageant missionary identity. Performers may attend workshops that are not associated with any particular production as part of their ongoing actor training, or directors may include workshops prior to rehearsals as part of an actual production process. For instance, the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival brought in a Shakespearean vocal and text specialist to work with student actors for two Festival productions in Fall 2006. The specialist conducted vocal and text preparation workshops with the actors. Both productions began formal rehearsals the following week. The vocal and text workshops occurred before and separate from the rehearsals, but they also occurred as part of specific production preparation. Actors not cast in either production could not attend the workshops, and the workshops included text preparations directed toward the text for each of the productions. Considering training area workshops, the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival hires professional actors each year to perform in the Mainstage production, and these actors conduct a workshop on a particular acting area in which they specialize. These workshops do not correlate with the current Festival production, and anyone at the university can participate in the workshop. Schechner primarily focuses on workshops within a production process, ones that work together with rehearsal to form a workshop-rehearsal process. Since the religious training activities occur at the pageant site as part of the pageant development, religious training correlates more with the within or production-preparation type of workshop.

174 Workshops separate the actor from him/herself or strip away the actor’s personal habits, behaviors, attitudes, etcetera so that the actor can take on the character. Workshops, according to Schechner, “deconstruct ordinary experience” (Between 21), or as he clarifies later, “Workshop is a deconstruction process, where the ready-mades of culture (accepted ways of using the body, accepted texts, accepted feelings) are broken down and prepared to be ‘inscribed’ upon” (99), which inscription occurs during rehearsal. Workshop activities correspond with separation rites within an initiation or passage ritual. Separation removes the initiate from the community and strips away their social status so that they are in a neutral state or nothingness state during the transition phase. Turner describes, “Neophytes in initiation or puberty rites, may be represented as possessing nothing. They may be disguised as monsters, wear only a strip of clothing, or even go naked, to demonstrate that as liminal beings they have no status, property, insignia, . . . —in short nothing that may distinguish them from their fellow neophytes or initiands” (Ritual Process 95). Separation removes these cultural markers and transitions the naked or neutral initiate to the liminal phase. Workshops theoretically similarly strip away the actor’s personal identity to a point of neutrality and transition the actor to the rehearsal phase. The Hill Cumorah Pageant’s religious training functions similarly to workshops. The religious training increases participants’ spirituality through stripping away behaviors and attitudes that are at odds with LDS theology and practices and even ordinary cultural practices that are mere distractions to spiritual matters. Participants physically separate themselves from their worldly lives, giving up things like television, contact with friends and neighbors, jobs, and recreational activities. For the period that they are participants, cast members immerse themselves in their pageant work, including the religious training activities. But the religious training does more than just strip away behaviors and attitudes leaving the participants as blank slates. The religious training actively replaces the activities that occupied participants’ pre- pageant lives and transforms them as the pageant missionary identity replaces their pre-pageant identity. Religious training at the Hill Cumorah Pageant includes a number of direct and indirect training activities. Daily devotionals, missionary training sessions, service projects, and outings to the Church sites provide both direct missionary training and practice as well as overall Church doctrinal instruction and ritual worship. Religious training also includes behavioral rules and guidelines that foster a pageant religious community lifestyle akin to monastic communities.

175 These different activities and lifestyles raise participants’ spirituality, which collectively benefits the missionary and ritual pageant purposes. Perhaps a metaphor will best serve to explain this concept. The Church believes that the Holy Spirit actually flows through humans, that people act as conduits for the Spirit. Consider the Spirit as electricity. Electrical current gives power to machines so that they can function. Within the machine, circuits conduct electricity to the necessary areas. Within the circuitry, certain devices can work to conduct the electricity, while others, resistors, restrict the flow of electricity, and still others can amplify the flow. Problems can occur when there are impurities or foreign substances that can impede the flow of the current or even break a circuit, completely shutting down the flow of current. Likewise, faulty circuitry or broken wires can cause circuit failure. The Church believes that the Holy Spirit, like electricity, flows through humans, enabling them to perform their religious functions effectively. Problems or distractions act as inhibitors or resistors to the spiritual flow, and sins cause failures to the spiritual circuitry. Thus, considering the pageant as one large circuit board, individuals who are not in harmony with the flow of the Spirit because of lack of faith, distractions from their spiritual service, or transgressions in their life, restrict the overall, collective spiritual flow and impact. An individual may not disrupt entirely the collective flow of the Spirit, but each individual affects the collective. Since the Church considers spiritual manifestations necessary for conversion, the Spirit must be able to flow collectively through the performers. Also, righteousness amplifies the flow of the Spirit. A person’s own faith and spirituality resonate with the spiritual flow and increase the spiritual output. Such an increase also reciprocally further boosts the individual’s faith in a cycle of spiritual development and increase. Thus, raising the individual’s spirituality amplifies the collective flow. During my religious training as a fulltime missionary, instructors taught me that regardless of my individual powers of persuasion, I could not be effective at proclaiming the gospel and converting others without the Spirit, without being a clean conduit through which the Spirit can flow. The way to improve one’s capacity to conduct and amplify the Spirit is through improving one’s own spirituality. The participants attend devotionals and engage in other religious training designed to raise their spirituality through religious instruction, ritual, practice, and through immersing the participants into a structured lifestyle and fostering a homogeneous religious community. Pageant religious training strips away worldly cultural “ready-mades” rather than deconstructing Mormon cultural “ready-mades.” In fact, although the pageant separates the

176 participants physically from worldly activities and distractions, largely the religious training strips away pre-pageant identity by reinforcing Mormon cultural beliefs and practices and especially by linking pageant activities with missionary practices. Thus, the religious training and practices cultivate or inscribe in the participants a new spiritual identity, the pageant missionary identity, to replace what was stripped away. The pageant missionary identity underlies all other performance identities. This identity, which began as a participant pilgrim identity and transitioned into the pageant missionary identity through the setting apart ritual, develops throughout the pageant performance process and reintegrates ultimately with the participant as a lasting transformation when they return home. Setting the participants apart as missionaries links the religious training and pageant performance with LDS missionary service in a purposeful way that layers the pageant identity with culturally held ideas regarding Church missionaries. Missionary service is rigorous and austere with very specific rules for behavior that reinforce a missionary’s status as one separated from the culture. Pageant missionaries, like the fulltime missionaries, set aside their other, worldly responsibilities for the designated time in order to serve God. The Pageant Presidency in the first page of the “Cast Notebook” reinforces this particular missionary commitment, stating, “We ask that you consecrate yourselves to the work of the Lord and consider your participation a ‘full-time calling’ which is both an honor and a responsibility” and, “As full-time missionaries during your Pageant experience, you are ambassadors of Jesus Christ and His Church to the world” (1). By accepting the calling as a missionary and being set apart, participants make a special or sacred agreement to obey all the special rules associated with the pageant, to participate fully in all the performance processes, and to devote all of their faculties to the welfare of the production. These acts elevate the pageant performances from recreational activities to religious service and worship and into “the work of the Lord.” These acts and perspective also develop the pageant missionary identity by inscribing the culturally recognized, missionary-service attributes and moreover by reinforcing that fulltime missionaries, pageant and otherwise, act as ambassadors of Jesus Christ. In order to explain the nature of the religious training and its association to fulltime missionary service, I will first examine the nature of Mormon fulltime missionary service, using my own such experience as an example, and then relate it specifically to the religious training at 1 the pageant. Missionary service is not limited to young 19-21 year old men,TP PT but these

177 missionaries still comprise the largest proportion of missionaries serving. For young single men, going on a mission is a rite of passage. While all returned missionaries are afforded a special cultural status among members, returned young men are afforded an especial status comparable to that once given to men who had completed military service. However, regardless of the nature of the missionary, all missionary service operates as a transformational ritual process similar to passage rituals (see fig. 5.1), which makes missionary service a very fitting paradigm for the pageant performance process.

Fig. 5.1. Missionary service ritual process.

My own missionary service began in 1987 when, like pageant participants, I submitted an application, except that I submitted an application to serve a mission, to begin my own passage

178 rite through proselytizing. Subsequently, I received a letter from the Church missionary office and the President of the Church calling me to serve as a fulltime missionary in the Ireland Dublin Mission for two years. My local ecclesiastical leader set me apart as a fulltime missionary. He explained to me that not only was I going to Ireland to teach people the Church doctrines, to convert them, but that I was also going to cement the foundation of my own faith in the Church. Mormons commonly believe that a missionary gains as much through service as those s/he teaches and converts through the very acts of teaching and bearing testimony. The Church culture considers proclaiming the gospel to be a transformational act for both the receiver and the proclaimer. Setting apart separates the member from the rest of the Mormon culture and transitions the member into the mission field, but performing missionary work, performing the missionary identity, completes the transformation and provides the spiritual growth. The spiritual and cultural transformations provide the “pay-off” so to speak for missionary service. The missionaries receive no financial benefits; in fact, they pay their own way. But when missionaries return, they return transformed and reintegrate into their Mormon communities where they receive a new status within the community. Because the LDS Church has an all-lay clergy, missionary service is like an apprenticeship in Church doctrine and practice. Serving prepares the missionary for a lifetime commitment of service and active Church membership. The Church likewise benefits by sending out young men and women commissioned as missionaries. Not only is there an increase in Church population through converts, but missionary service also solidifies the Church’s youth, its future leaders. Missionaries have very particular rules that govern their eighteen-month to two-year service. These rules provide discipline and formalization, designed to heighten spiritual awareness and supernatural communion. All missionaries carry a small white handbook often called the “Missionary Bible” that explicates these rules. While they serve, missionaries give up education, employment, dating, watching television and movies, and listening to secular music, activities which are staples for most young men and women. Missionaries set aside all worldly responsibilities, thoroughly separating themselves from their past identity by distance and practice, in order to serve God. A missionary’s general appearance also distinguishes the missionary. Missionaries wear specific attire that serves as a type of uniform denoting to others who they are and at the same time reflexively reminding each missionary who he or she is. Missionaries are usually easy to

179 spot because the men wear dark suits with white shirts and ties, sometimes without the suit coat in warmer climates, and the women wear modest dresses or skirts and blouses. Missionaries also sport black name tags bearing the name of the Church and the name of the missionary; these name tags distinguish Mormon missionaries from the business-dress citizens out walking the streets. Missionaries also serve in pairs, with single missionaries assigned together for a period of months and then reassigned into a different companionship. Fulltime missionaries must always remain with their companion for physical and spiritual safety. Having an around-the-clock companion makes it harder to transgress. Missionary attire together with the fact that missionaries most often travel in pairs makes missionaries stand out even in a crowd. Sadly, I recall one day in Dublin soon after I had arrived in Ireland when I could not get simple assistance because everyone recognized me as a missionary. My companion and I lived in a small village about thirty miles outside Dublin and needed to return to the village by bus. We had gotten confused walking around downtown and could not find the bus depot. I tried to stop many other pedestrians just to ask for directions, but I could not get anyone to stop long enough to say what I needed. As soon as they slowed long enough to recognize me, they sped back up not wanting to hear what they thought I had to say. Missionaries work long and steady without much “down time.” Their schedules include a preparation day once a week for shopping, laundry, and some sightseeing. But even that time off ends at dinner, after which the missionaries return to proselytizing. They fill the rest of their weekly schedule with proselytizing, community service, training and worship meetings, 2

personalTP PT and companion scripture study, prayer, eating, and sleep. For the most part, time spent away from proselytizing is spent either in service, worship/training (Church and missionary meetings contain both), or personal and companion study. Returning to the pageant missionaries, besides identifying the participants as missionaries, pageant practices also require the participants to adopt a missionary-like lifestyle, complete with rules for behavior and a rigorous schedule. By doing so, the religious training areas immerse the participants into their new, yet culturally recognizable, identity. Tying the religious training to missionary work and missionary identity locates the participants’ activities within cultural areas while also separating them from their own typical lifestyle. Pages five through eight of the “Cast Notebook” demonstrate how the religious training explicitly parallels missionary service. These pages include “The Pageant Code of Behavior” and “Spiritual

180 Preparation” sections, which, like missionaries’ white handbook, outlines proper behavior. The specific pageant missionary rules also explicitly correlate with fulltime missionary rules. One of the first bulleted rules in the “Code of Behavior” is “You should either be with your companion,

your cast team, or your family ATU ALL TIMESU” (5). There are certainly safety concerns, especially for teenagers, but this rule reinforces the missionary identity because missionaries, pageant or fulltime, must never be alone. The rules also state, “Unless you are in a rehearsal, please participate in your cast team

activities during scheduled Cast Team time,” and “Please attend allU U Devotionals and other

Pageant meetings and be onU time U for these and all other assignments” (5). Rehearsing for the pageant missionaries, like proselytizing for fulltime missionaries, dominates the pageant schedule. These two rules of behavior govern non-rehearsal time, which the pageant leaders devote to the religious training. When not rehearsing, participants spend their time in service projects with their cast team; in worship/training; or in personal, companion, or cast team study, which activities help cultivate spirituality. This very full schedule, like that for the missionary, keeps participants focused on their pageant performance and their missionary and spiritual responsibilities. The pageant missionaries engage in a complete immersion at the pageant that disciplines them to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually focused. But pageant life must be this rigorous both to accomplish the vast theatrical, ritual, and missionary work and for the pageant participants to fully conceive of themselves as fulltime missionaries. Such rigor and immersion, such austerity, culturally signifies the Mormon missionary. Anything less demanding or immersing would erode rather than develop the pageant missionary identity. Most of the other rules also markedly parallel the missionary conduct rules. For instance, the pageant requires a dress code. Pageant participants do not regularly dress in the iconic Mormon missionary uniform, but the dress code prohibits “cutoffs, bare midriff, or any immodest or inappropriate dress” (6). Once the rehearsal days have ended, the participants don “Pageant Sunday Dress,” which more fully parallels missionary dress. For the men, “white shirts, dress pants and ties are the uniform for the day.” For the women, “dresses or skirts and blouses are appropriate attire” (6). All participants also wear an identification badge at all times. Pageant missionary badges do not look like the iconic missionary badges; pageant ID badges help with security and resemble most business ID badges that hang around the neck. Nevertheless, pageant badges distinguish the participants from tourists at the hill just as the missionary badges

181 distinguish missionaries from the crowd. Finally, as with the missionary rules, the pageant has common sense rules about eating three meals, getting adequate rest and exercise, and 3 discouraging fastingTP PT that are designed to keep all missionaries physically functional. Besides the “Code of Behavior,” the “Pageant Missionary Bible” contains a “Spiritual Preparation” section that details pageant expectations for personal behavior. This section instructs participants to avoid “lightness and frivolity in [their] hearts” and instead, as missionaries, keep their minds “riveted on the cross of Christ” (8). This admonition comes from a famous quote by Brigham Young, the second LDS President, given to early missionaries. The missionary white handbook also quotes this passage, and it has been the standard for missionaries since it was first spoken. The “Spiritual Preparation” section also directs the participants to engage in personal scripture study that helps develop their spirituality, reinforces their missionary identity, and links their missionary identity and work back to the pageant performance. An accompanying scriptural citation from the Doctrine and Covenants reinforces this directive: “Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea the power of God unto the convincing of men” (11:21). This passage emphasizes the importance of personal study to missionary effectiveness, and like the Brigham Young quote, this scriptural passage is a missionary standard. The section lists other particular scriptural passages to study, which are also all popular missionary scriptures similar to what missionaries study at the Missionary Training Center before they enter the field. Finally, the section encourages the participants to read select passages from the Book of Mormon that correspond to the stories told in the pageant performance. Including the Book of Mormon passages along with the missionary quote and passages groups the Book of Mormon passages with the missionary passages. Certainly, from a performance perspective, having the performers read the passages that the performance text derives from can benefit the performance. But grouping the Book of Mormon and missionary passages together also subtly groups the pageant performance with missionary work. These areas all must interrelate with the pageant performance situated as the pivotal event and the other activities ultimately serving that function. As participants put such study and behavior into practice, trying to focus spiritually, the separation from their past identity gives way to a transition into their new identity as pageant missionaries. Besides the separation rite that empowered them, they have specific work or duties

182 to perform that establish and develop their new identity. They begin to become missionaries as they practice and prepare to do so. The religious training must not only separate and develop the pageant missionaries, but it must also prepare and transition that missionary identity so that the developed pageant missionary performs the pageant cultural performance. Missionaries at the Missionary Training Center are in a similar transitional state. I spent three weeks at the training center in Provo, Utah, learning to be a missionary before I traveled to Ireland. Together with other missionary fledglings in this sheltered environment, I was organized into a typical missionary structure with groups of companionships forming districts, and groups of districts forming zones. We lived according to the mission rules, rising early and studying. Our study included personal study and training sessions. During these training sessions, we learned new techniques and role-played missionary scenarios. Like my fellow missionaries, I fantasized situations in which I was amazingly effective, converting masses of people through my courage and spiritual power. While the new environment and activities stripped away my past identity, I began to develop a new performed yet not-fully-realized missionary identity. I was a missionary but not a missionary. I was separated out and identified as a missionary, but I was not performing as a missionary yet; I was not proselytizing. Instead, I improvised, role- played, and envisioned in sheltered scenarios. I rehearsed. I learned how to become this new role before actually putting it into real practice, before incorporating as a missionary into the world (or in my case into Ireland). I lacked that part of the missionary ritual. At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the participants likewise go through specific missionary training sessions that prepare them not for their pageant roles but for their missionary roles. Participants who are sixteen or older must attend three Missionary Training Workshops. Fulltime missionaries serving in the Palmyra area teach these workshops. They train the participants how to proselytize during the preshow when they will interact with audience members (I will address these activities more specifically during the preshow section). The “Cast Notebook” promises, “You will have the opportunity to share the message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the many non-members who attend the Pageant this summer” (8). The Missionary Training Workshops prepare the pageant missionaries to do so using the same training techniques I received at the Missionary Training Center. Participants learn missionary techniques that help them approach and talk to people, and they role-play scenarios. While the participants do not memorize a set script that they will use in their missionary activities, they learn more or

183 less a performance scenario that they will improvise based on their study and practice. These training activities transition the participants further into their missionary identity, preparing them to don the role in performance. Like me at the Missionary Training Center, the pageant missionaries at this point are not-fully-realized missionaries who live a missionary lifestyle, rehearse missionary work in sheltered scenarios, and envision themselves proselytizing, awaiting the time when they will actually become missionaries by incorporating with the pageant audience and performing that role. Finally, I want to consider one other pervasive religious training activity: daily devotionals, which are short religious services. These devotionals foster pageant unity centered on religious and cultural commonality. The first devotional occurs the evening that participants arrive, and another the next morning precedes casting. Devotionals convene all pageant personnel every morning, midday, and evening. The devotionals serve a practical (non-spiritual) purpose in that they gather all participants together for announcements and thus facilitate communication. The directors give rehearsal and performance notes at the devotionals, but such performance communication can and does exist outside of the devotionals. The devotionals primarily give the participants daily exposure to gospel instruction and foster communal spiritual experiences. I attended a few devotionals during my visit in 2000. Different participants had an opportunity to give sermons on gospel topics. Participants also had the opportunity to “give testimony,” a practice that occurs monthly in LDS worship services; members can stand, address the congregation, and share their personal thoughts about Christ and the Church doctrines and practices and about their personal spiritual growth experiences. These devotionals together with cast team spiritual study and personal study add to the immersion in religious work. The devotionals help bolster spirituality through the proliferation of exposure to Church doctrines and beliefs. These meetings also establish and nurture the pageant religious community. In many ways, the devotionals are an expression of communitas where members can worship at a place located both outside traditional Mormon culture—these take place within an outdoor shelter removed in most everyway from LDS meetinghouses—and within, at the very heart of Mormon culture on the Hill Cumorah. As with communitas, these devotionals can lead to a subculture, which is what the pageant religious community becomes. But the devotionals and the pageant community are not completely freely expressed communitas, because the pageant leaders convene and preside at the devotionals as a traditional Church presidency administration. Still,

184 participants perceive of themselves as part of a religious collective, as an individual part of a greater united work that the pageant presidency as official Church representatives not only governs but also validates and promotes as acceptable Mormon ritual. The various religious training activities develop the pageant missionary identity into a complex transitional identity. The codes of behavior and scriptural study guides emphasize individual spiritual development and personal responsibility. The missionary training and overt missionary practices and lifestyle prepare the pageant missionaries to perform missionary work and to perceive of themselves as a culturally defined missionary with all the responsibilities and benefits encoded into this cultural role. The cast team activities and devotionals create a pageant religious community through small, personal social structures and mass ritual activities that help unify the group around a collective greater good that will benefit not only the culture at large but also the pageant community within.

Rehearsal

Rehearsals at the Hill Cumorah Pageant resemble traditional theatre rehearsals in some important ways, but the unique production elements, including the large amateur cast, the recorded text, and the ritual elements within the play require certain modifications to the generally theatrical process. As I discussed in the last chapter regarding casting, the amateur cast of Church members serves the pageant’s ritual elements. Amateur performers traveling with their families cannot afford a prolonged stay at Cumorah. As such, the pageant performance process once the participants arrive occurs in just over three weeks. Two weeks of performance leaves only one week for rehearsals. As such, the actual rehearsal time for the pageant production dominates the participants’ time during the first week. After casting is finished on Saturday morning, the participants break for lunch and then gather for the afternoon devotional. First rehearsals begin about 2:00 that afternoon and continue daily up until the dress rehearsal the following Thursday. According to Sorensen, “Everyday we rehearse from 9:00 in the morning until 10:00 or 11:00 at night. And all eight individuals [the directors, choreographers and battle master] are involved throughout the day. . . . We probably end up with about nine hours of rehearsals when you remove lunch and devotionals and dinner and devotionals” (16 Nov. 2000).

185 Sorensen depicts an arduous rehearsal process that like the religious training accomplishes its purposes through immersion. During that compressed time, rehearsals actually correlate with what happens in traditional theatre. Rehearsals begin with directors familiarizing the cast about the play and their roles in the play. The directors give the cast their scripts, or in this case, CDs with only the relevant performance tracks and CD players to use in memorizing parts. Major characters also receive sides on which they can mark down their blocking (Sorensen, “Re: another question” Email 14 May 2002). Since rehearsals begin in earnest only two hours after directors finish casting, directors do not have time for reading rehearsals or text work. However, directors proceed through blocking, characterization and detail, run-throughs, and tech rehearsals. When cast members are not actively part of the rehearsal, they memorize their lines and develop their characters. According to Sorensen, pageant rehearsals accomplish in one day what other productions accomplish during a week of rehearsals. He explains, “We rehearse for six days: half a day on Saturday, all day on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and half a day on Friday. So it’s a six-day rehearsal process. And a show of this magnitude would take six weeks” (16 Nov. 2000) (see fig. 5.2).

Fig. 5.2. Director rehearses with cast.

186 The directors do not finish the rehearsal process only through long hours of rehearsal. Other productions rehearse fulltime for long hours, especially as the performance draws near. Instead, other distinctive production features enable the directors and the cast to effectively and efficiently complete the rehearsal process. First, none of the roles have lasting stage time. Usually in a play, major roles require significant rehearsal time and actor preparation. Prominent roles such as Nephi or the Savior appear for significant periods, but even these roles do not dominate the text. Nephi and the Savior take the stage for a few minutes at different times and do not have a lot of lines. Also, because multiple actors play different versions of these same roles, none of the roles individually are very demanding. For instance, while the character Nephi appears throughout the first four stories and again at the end, the text divides this character into multiple roles such as Battle Nephi and Vision Nephi with different actors portraying each Nephi. Only the narrator has significant lines, but no live actor portrays the narrator. Instead, a disembodied voice provides the narration by broadcast speech, which leads to the next point. All the lines are broadcast rather than spoken live, as I discussed previously. Sorensen says that he and the other directors still require the actors to memorize and speak their lines, but any missed or ill-delivered lines go unnoticed, covered up by the broadcast soundtrack (16 Nov. 2000). These differences make the rehearsals easier and possible for the cast. Rehearsals may be intensive, but they are only intensive for individual cast members for brief periods. The compressed rehearsal process instead makes the director’s role considerably more demanding. S/he must combine infinitely more roles into a cohesive whole. Such is why multiple directors work together each with sections of the play to direct. With multiple directors responsible for specific sections, multiple scenes can rehearse simultaneously. Directors ultimately combine these smaller sections during run-throughs, as in traditional theatre. But while the directors can rehearse at the same time, they cannot all share the stage at the same time. Coordinating rehearsals with the needed cast members at multiple rehearsal sites takes tremendous organization. The hill does not have multiple or even any rehearsal rooms with a nice floor plan taped down by a diligent stage manager. The directors have to be able to coordinate very effectively and creatively. Unlike the cast, the artistic staff must be well-trained and experienced enough to command and manipulate the theatrical elements. As for creating the individual scenes, directors do not need to provide vocal training since the text is broadcast. Instead, rehearsals focus on staging, on choreography (see fig. 5.3).

187 Directors, however, still want a performance that has immediacy; they want the performers to connect with the text because when they do, the choreographed movements and expressions will be more believable and justified. As such, rehearsals are not just blocking. Sorensen explains that as part of the rehearsal process they teach the cast an acting and movement workshop to instill some basic performance techniques and account for the cast’s lack of theatre training. Sorensen states that the directors “teach [the cast] the basic principles of how to create a character, the basic principles of how to retain good focus physically,” and they teach them “the principle of staggering themselves this way, of creating negative space this way, of grouping together, and of going up and down” (16 Nov. 2000). These workshops help cover large fundamental issues that help make the other rehearsals more productive and especially help with the large crowd scenes.

Fig. 5.3. Cast member rehearses a scene, while another group rehearses with a different director in the background.

I asked Sorensen if he felt at times that the cast became props rather than individual characters. He had likened the rehearsal process to that of crowd scenes in film. At times, crowd scenes also use amateur performers, and film directors provide basic instructions to help create a general desired result. Responding, Sorensen thoughtfully states, “We want individuals and not

188 just a whole bunch of sheep walking around” (16 Nov. 2000). While sheep have long been associated with ritual performances, the pageant ritual instead offers the participants an opportunity to recreate their own sacred cultural history. For such an experience to be transformational for the performers and for the spectators, the performers need to be more than props or sheep. Sorensen solves this by talking to cast members about the characters and the context, by conducting, in essence, dramaturgical text work. He says that at the beginning of rehearsals, the directors talk to the actors about “the history of the characters within the scenes and the stories that they are telling, so that they are making connections to characters that are essential for the performance but mutually essential for the actor themselves” (16 Nov. 2000). Yet these characters, scenes and stories, these histories and contexts come from the Book of Mormon. For the participants, such discussions provide not only a theatrical context but also familiar ground associated with the pageant’s ritual elements. Besides the text work, actors rehearse segments at times without the soundtrack so that they have to rely on their own voices and intentions, which helps them develop their individual characters that will blend with the existing characterizations on the soundtrack. Such individual attention would not seem particularly necessary because of the soundtrack and the distance between the audience and the stage: nuance is not an essential performance element for this production. But such details shape not only the individual performance but also the individual performer. According to Sorensen, “trying to help [the participants] capture individual choices about their characters” has “improved, vastly improved the quality of the performance in our minds” (16 Nov. 2000) and the quality of the rehearsal process and overall experience for the cast.

Workshop-Rehearsal or Religious Training-Rehearsal Process

Considering the two pageant areas of religious training and production rehearsal as a single preparation process works well as a model for the pageant. When combined, these areas constitute a sub-process of the pageant performance process that simulates the ritual process with its own separation, transition, and incorporation. This liminal sub-process brings the two developing identities, the pageant missionary identity and the performance role, together, uniting them into a symbiotic relationship with the pageant missionary identity becoming a foundation for the two identities that will remain constant throughout the liminal pageant performance.

189 A similar sub-process also occurs in Schechner’s performance sequence when workshop and rehearsal function together. Schechner explains that workshops “are like rites of separation and transition” which as such move the participant away from their cultural norms to a state of liminality where s/he is ready to begin the passage or transformation to their new identity. “While rehearsals,” Schechner continues, “which build up, or construct, new cultural items, are like rites of transition and incorporation” (Between 21). The workshop area separates actors increasingly from their own selves—their habits, mannerisms, vocal patterns, and even belief systems—toward a state of neutrality. Rehearsals likewise increasingly inscribe a new performance identity onto the neutral actor. The rehearsal process helps the actor to develop and refine this identity by developing strips of reproducible behavior that become more and more a fixed part of the performance identity. As the process nears completion, the actor’s performance identity becomes fixed to the point that the performer nears the liminal threshold leading to incorporation. Incorporation for the performance role ultimately occurs when the performance period begins. When the performance begins for the first time, the performance identity incorporates into the performance space shared with the audience to form an ephemeral community lasting through the performance. This sub-process occurs as part of the overall performance sequence’s separation phase (see fig. 5.4). The overall sequence relates to the separation, transition, and incorporation of the actor who performs a role during the liminal performance period ultimately to then reincorporate with the “real world” following the performance. This process denotes the actor transportation, as Schechner likes to call it, that occurs during the performance process. The need for such a sub-process in theatrical performance demonstrates a major difference between theatre and passage rituals. In ritual, the neophytes or initiates who undergo the passage ritual separate to a point of nothingness and enter the transitional realm where they undergo the transformations through ritual performance and then incorporate into society changed from before they were separated. But when they cross the threshold into the liminal realm, the initiates enter without identity, betwixt and between identities with potential to become something different. Turner’s work most concerns these possibilities within liminality. But theatrical performers, while they are betwixt and between identities during theatrical performance, do not enter the performance realm unarmed. The performance identity, or identities when actors play multiple roles, must be developed prior to the performance, and

190 developing these performance identities requires the rehearsal sub-process or workshop-rehearsal process as Schechner calls it, although a production that does not include workshops still develops performance roles through some type or degree of rehearsal sub-process.

Fig. 5.4. Schechner’s seven part performance sequence with workshop-rehearsal sub-process.

Cultural performances, whether they are theatrical or ritual, must have some type of role development before participants perform for the cultural audience. Ritual performance that includes performers representing gods, heroes, or other parts of cultural narratives must include some type of performance preparation that conceives or develops the role(s) to be performed, whether such a preparation rehearses actors or builds masks or costumes or puppets or any such

191 combination. Such character development may or may not resemble the theatrical rehearsal process and may not be as formalized or deconstructing-reconstructing as a theatrical workshop- rehearsal process, but regardless, performers in cultural performances do not enter the liminal performance realm bereft of any identity; instead, they enter at least displaying both their own identity and a performance identity. For the theatrical performer, the performance identity dominates, subjugating the actor’s identity to a state of denial. The audience and the actors enter a collective state of disbelief that enables the performance identity and demotes the actor identity. In ritual performance, both the performer’s cultural identity and the performance identity must remain apparent. For the ritual to be efficacious, rooted in reality, rather than collective disbelief, the performance must inspire collective belief. The performer must connect the performance both to the unseen realm and to the culture by representing both the characters being performed and the members of the culture at large. The performance identity embodies the cultural god, narratives, or whatever the performance contains, while the performer’s personal cultural identity designates the performer as human and, moreover, one from within the community. The pageant performance process incorporates the religious training and the pageant rehearsals as a liminal sub-process similar to the workshop-rehearsal process. For the pageant cast, the two halves of this process, the religious training and the production rehearsals, shape the complete pageant performance identity. The cast must have the religious training and ritual setting apart in order to form the missionary identity, while casting and the pageant rehearsals create and develop the performance roles. As a combined sub-process, the religious training and rehearsal develop a complete, united pageant performance identity so that the pageant performance involves participants dualistically performing as pageant missionaries and as their given and developed theatrical roles. But as with ritual, the pageant missionary identity, which is also a Mormon cultural status, remains apparent within the performance rather than being theatrically subjugated into collectively suspended disbelief. The pageant performance marks the incorporation phase of the sub-process transitioning the performers out of identity development and into the temporary community the pageant performance creates (see fig. 5.5).

192

Fig. 5.5. Pageant performance process with religious training-rehearsal sub-process.

I discussed what effects the religious training had on rehearsals with Rodger Sorensen. Directors could view the religious training as limiting or distracting to the rehearsal process, especially where rehearsal time is limited. Sorensen calls the religious training “invaluable.” He acknowledges the two are “part of the same process, so they’re not really separate. Their spiritual development is as important as their rehearsals” (16 Nov. 2000). Sorensen explains that both areas build a foundation for the cast that culminates in the performance: “One without the other will undermine the performance of the show. That’s how important it is. Yes, it’s crucial” (16 Nov. 2000). Besides developing the missionary identity, the religious training also serves the ritual elements by increasing the performers’ individual and collective spirituality and by more profoundly linking them with their cultural roots and faith. Sorensen adds, “It’s crucial that we look at it and say, this [the pageant performance] is a spiritual experience. Is it a theatrical

193 experience? Yes, if it’s a spiritual experience. And without it being a spiritual experience, the theatrical experience is compromised, is ineffective. It is not effectual to the Lord’s will without the spiritual experience” (16 Nov. 2000). Theatre serves as the medium to facilitate the cultural ritual and missionary purposes, which require the participants to develop their pageant missionary identities and their spirituality. Sorensen concludes his response by describing how the directors work together with the spiritual leaders towards this end: Jim [Cecil, a member of the pageant presidency] and I work very closely about what topics we’ll have in devotionals, when we’ll have those devotionals, and how they lead and help take the cast members through a particular process that culminates with the performance. And that’s what we do on the rehearsal side; that’s what he does on the spiritual side, and we merge together. (16 Nov. 2000) Thus, there is an ongoing symbiotic relationship between the two areas that form the sub- process. Neither area serves the pageant process without the other. The pageant missionaries become pageant missionaries not only through the religious training but also through developing performance roles through the pageant rehearsals and subsequently performing in the theatrical and ritual pageant cultural performance. This phase of the pageant process, combining both the religious training and the rehearsal, are liminal phases of the entire transformative process. The participants have been separated from their everyday lives, have been given a new distinction as missionaries, and have been given new performance identities. They go through personal and communal spiritual exercises and training to become effective missionaries, and they go through personal and communal rehearsal to become effective performers in their performance roles. Both of these identities are betwixt and between with a spectrum of possibilities before them, a spectrum that becomes increasingly limited as the threshold approaches. But until that threshold is crossed, until the missionary approaches the first spectator, and until the lights dim and the music sounds,beginning the performance, neither identity is realized.

1

TP PT Missionaries are generally of one of three categories: young single men generally nineteen to early twenties, single females of any age over twenty-one, although the majority serve in their twenties, and retired couples. 2

TP PT Even during personal study and prayer time, missionaries are still together with their companions but studying or praying on their own. 3

TP PT Like members of other religions, Mormons fast as a ritual to intensify communion with God by demonstrating sacrifice and devotion. While Church members formally fast on the first Sunday each month, members also often fast personally, especially when they have a specific concern or when they desire to jumpstart spiritual development. Pageant missionaries, like fulltime missionaries, are discouraged from fasting because they can easily physically

194 overexert or dehydrate due to their rigorous work schedule. Fulltime missionaries become more accustomed to the physical exertion over time, but pageant missionaries unaccustomed to extensive physical labor do not have time enough to really adapt. Additionally, the Palmyra area often gets humid in July, and many participants who come from dry western areas like Utah, Arizona, and California, get surprised and a bit dehydrated by the humidity, even without fasting.

195 CHAPTER 6

COMPLETING THE PROCESS: PERFORMING AND REINCORPORATING THE NEW IDENTITIES.

In traditional theatre, the entire performance process up through rehearsal prepares the actor for performance; the process is in reality all about the performance. Training prepares an actor or would-be actor for future performances; workshop can prepare for future or specific performances; and rehearsal develops specific roles for a specific performance or run of performances. When rehearsals end, theatrical performance happens when characters come to life through the actors’ performances in the seeing place viewed by an audience. The curtain opens or lights come up or music starts (or all of the above), and the performance begins. Such performance marks an actor’s temporary transformation into the character during which time the actor is between identities. Schechner bookends the actual performance in his model with two opposite transitional processes, warm-ups and cool-downs, that serve as the thresholds into and out of the liminal performance world; warm-ups provide the way in to the performance world, and cool-downs provide the way out (Between 126). He follows the cool-down with aftermath, which he calls, “The long-term consequences or follow-through of the performance” (Between 19). The aftermath serves to return the actor out of the production back into the regular world, serving as an incorporation phase. As a whole, the process serves to move the actor in and out of the liminal performance realm where the actor subsequently moves between identities, a realm, Schechner asserts, “of limitless potential” (Between 123). However, even with limitless potential, in traditional theatrical performance, ultimately the actor leaves the performance realm and is incorporated back to the “real” world without the lasting transformation associated with passage rituals. Theatrical performance, as another term implies, is play, is a representation or imitation of the real world; the performance unlike ritual lies outside the efficacy of the real world. Hill Cumorah Pageant performers undergo a more complex transformation that includes not only traditional theatre’s temporary character transformation but also multiple lasting

196 transformation processes because of the pageant’s ritual performance elements. My model for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, what I have termed the pageant performance process, likewise places performance within the main liminal phase with two threshold processes marking the way in and the way out. At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, preshow and post-show activities that involve the cast interacting with the audience preceding and succeeding the pageant performance serve as warm-up and cool-down areas. Pageant participants begin by performing their missionary identity by proselytizing among the spectators for the preshow; they add to that identity their temporary pageant character during the processional; and then they act out not only their multiple pageant roles, but they also literally recreate the Church’s primary narratives as the performers in a cultural ritual. The participants then rejoin the spectators as pageant missionaries for post-show and cool down activities. Following the pageant, participants return to their homes to reincorporate with their past lives and communities. Through such processes, the participants develop a new lasting identity that amalgamates their past life, their pageant missionary identity, and their roles and experiences as a performer in the cultural ritual. For this chapter, I will first discuss the preshow activities in terms of their function as a performance and as a transitional process into the main pageant performance world. In the next section, I will examine the pageant performance. Finally, I will examine the post-show activities and pageant aftermath with the resulting transformations.

Preshow

The preshow activities involve specific, non-theatrical missionary activities. These activities parallel traditional LDS fulltime missionary service. As such, the preshow activities represent active missionary work. These activities require the participants to perform the missionary work they have trained as pageant missionaries to perform. As such, the preshow acts for the missionary identity as the incorporation for the sub-process and initially as the liminal performance area. The preshow activities as a process akin to theatrical warm-ups also operate as a transition for the pageant performance process between the separation area and the liminal performance. Warm-ups in traditional theatre include individual and group preparations that precede the performance. Such may include an actor contemplating their character, going over lines,

197 performing exercises, or whatever individual rituals such a performer has developed for this purpose. Warm-ups also include cast exercises, notes, encouragement from the stage manager, etc. Actors also change into costume and apply make-up, accessories and prosthetics. Thus, “getting into character” also involves a physical transformation, “getting into costume,” that many actors use as a process that aids the move into character. I recall as a young playwright watching the two lead actors for my play Prisoner perform a warm-up ritual that I will use to illustrate this process. The actors, Kevin Rahm and Kekoa Kaluhiokalani, played the lead POW and the lead Vietnamese Guard, respectively. In costume and after their individual preparations but before the cast preparations, the two actors found a secluded portion of the stage. Rahm started sitting, and Kaluhiokalani began pacing around him becoming increasingly anxious and agitated—working himself up. Kaluhiokalani would begin barking orders and commands to Rahm who would react with some defiance. This proceeded to where Kaluhiokalani would actually physically strike Rahm, finally getting right into his face at his level. Kaluhiokalani would strike, and Rahm would glare back trying to restrain and channel his emotions. Admittedly, the warm-up ritual was troubling to watch, and it was certainly extreme, but the warm-up seemed effective for them. For these two actors, the physical action served as a type of transitional performance before the main production performance, a portal or access point to their performed roles. At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the cast members participate in some traditional warm-up activities and preparations. They get into costume and consider the nature of their roles. Some review their parts. All participants attend a devotional and director’s notes meeting from 6:30 p.m. until 7:00 p.m., still two hours and 15 minutes before the actual pageant performance begins (“Cast Notebook” 45). The devotional combines both the spiritual and performance preparations into a group warm-up that prepares the participants both for the main performance and the preshow activities, a unique performance that serves as a pre-pageant performance activity. The preshow is divided into two primary events: the welcoming and greeting of the audience, an interaction that involves active proselytizing; and the processional, a final display that unites the cast and launches the performance. I will first examine the welcoming and greeting activities. The welcoming and greeting preshow activities involve a form of performance where the participants proselytize directly with the audience (see fig. 6.1). These missionary activities serve as the initial and most direct and active performance for the casts’ pageant missionary identity

198 and mirror the efforts of the fulltime missionaries. The pageant participants act as either 1

“Welcomers” or “Greeters” for the preshowTP PT and interact with the audience members, performing the pageant missionary scenarios the participants have trained for with the fulltime missionaries. That training involved developing the pageant missionary identity and preparing the participant to perform as a missionary by proselytizing at the pageant. As such, the preshow proselytizing represents the realized expression of the pageant missionary identity; the participants perform the missionary work they have trained to perform.

Fig. 6.1. A Welcomer dressed in pageant costume (right center) interacts with arriving audience members during the preshow.

In a complex way, the preshow proselytizing serves both as a part of the incorporation phase for the pageant sub-process and as a part of the liminal phase for the entire pageant

199 performance process. Pageant missionary training operates similar to the fulltime missionary training center, which operates as a sub-process to the missionary experience when considered as a passage ritual paradigm. The missionary training center separates the missionaries from their past lives, yet it operates outside of general missionary activity as a “boot camp” for missions, where missionaries train to become missionaries. When missionaries leave the training center, they incorporate into the mission field and begin to actually perform missionary work—perform as missionaries incorporated into the society with a missionary cultural status. As such, the mission field serves as an incorporation for the missionary identity, and yet it serves as the liminal phase for the ultimate passage ritual, through which the member must pass in order to be incorporated back into his/her community as a returned missionary. The missionary identity is a transitional, performance identity, a phase of the lasting returned missionary cultural identity. Likewise, pageant missionaries incorporate into the pageant community that forms when the spectators arrive. This community becomes the pageant missionaries’ missionary field or proselytizing area. But performing the preshow is part of performing the pageant, which is the liminal or transitional phase for the entire pageant performance process. The participants must pass through the performance in order to incorporate back into their home communities transformed. The participants must become pageant missionaries, which they do through developing the identity in training and then performing as missionaries in the preshow, in order to perform as pageant missionaries, and the participants must perform as pageant missionaries in order to complete their ultimate transformation through the pageant performance process. Figure 6.2 demonstrates the parallels between the pageant performance process and fulltime missionary service as a passage ritual, illustrating the sub-process only in terms of the pageant missionary identity.

200

Fig. 6.2. Missionary passage ritual and pageant performance process with sub-processes.

Retaining a correlation to fulltime missionary service is essential for the pageant missionary identity. For the Welcomers, the youth sixteen and over and any single adults are 2 paired into same-sex companionships, following typical missionary protocols,TP PT while husbands and wives partner together along with any children they have who are too young to be paired with other youth. Both Welcomers and Greeters wear their pageant costumes for these duties. With their stations at the edges of the seating area, Greeters, “greet the audience as they arrive, offer to escort them to a seat, help carry lawn chairs, coolers, etc., and hand out the brochure, 3

‘An Apostle’s Testimony’” (25).TP PT While the Greeters do not engage in some of the proselytizing activities of the Welcomers, the Greeters do interact with the audience members on a personal level and can engage in more active discussion if audience members approach them. Their work while different is still proselytizing. The Welcomers move among the seating area in companionships speaking with the audience about the pageant and the Church. The Welcomers invade the house, the traditional space for the audience, armed to proselytize with programs,

201 member referral cards, non-member referral cards, and stickers. They approach all audience members using the stickers to identify who has and who has not been welcomed until the Welcomers talk with everyone (see fig. 6.3). Once Welcomers have spoken with an individual or family, they give each member of the family, including any children, a sticker. The Welcomers also distribute programs to adult audience members; in fact, the only way to get a program is from the Welcomers. Having Welcomers distribute the programs helps ensure that the audience members will have contact with the Welcomers. Like the Greeters, the Welcomers also have assigned areas to systematically cover the entire audience, just as with fulltime missionaries who have designated proselytizing areas. The recognizably close fulltime missionary parallels help the pageant participants identify their work with missionary work, and the parallels help the 4 audience recognize the missionary association in the preshow performance.TP PT

Fig. 6.3. Pageant cast member as a Welcomer speaks with an audience member.

202 Interaction between the actors and the audience is essential to the production’s “proclaiming the gospel” goals. The pageant missionaries as Welcomers identify non-Church members in order to proselytize; the Welcomers ask audience members whether they are Church members. If they are not, then the Welcomers interact with them differently than when the audience members are Church members. For instance, the Welcomers use the program, which includes a synopsis of each scene, to explain the plot to non-members. The production does not engage an audience through suspense of plot points. Instead, more like Greek Tragedy, or most religious drama, the production holds interest through the manner the production performs the known stories. The Church considers plot clarity essential, especially for the non-members. The Welcomers try to ensure that the non-members will be able to follow each episode, but they also try to communicate the spiritual significance of each episode. Finally, Welcomers invite non- members to have further contact with Church fulltime missionaries. If the audience members are already Church members, the Welcomers relax a bit and talk with the audience members about their experiences. They make sure the members are familiar with the episodes that are in the production. Welcomers speak with Church members according to how much interaction the member desires. Often, the members want to ask numerous questions. Many want pictures either of or with the participant. The Welcomers finish their discussion with either type of audience member by what is called “bearing their testimony,” or “testifying.” This means that they express their own beliefs in the Church doctrines and practices and specifically how the pageant has benefited and reinforced those beliefs. They may relate experiences that are especially spiritually significant to them. This practice of bearing testimony is common in the Church; in fact, the Church sets aside the first Sunday of each month for members to bear their testimonies during Church services. Fulltime missionaries worldwide also repeatedly bear testimony as a tool during discussions. The Church believes that when members share their beliefs and experiences in this manner, both the persons expressing their testimony and the persons hearing the testimony can experience spiritual manifestations that validate members’ testimonies. The Church believes these experiences contribute significantly to a non-member’s conversion process. The spiritual manifestations help convince the non-member that the testimony they hear is true and valid. The Church also believes that born testimonies reinforce members’ conviction. Bearing testimony causes members to articulate their spiritual experiences and how they feel about them, which also helps

203 them to identify and recognize the existence of such experiences. Experiencing spiritual manifestations while other members bear testimony also validates hearers’ beliefs. Members hearing such testimony similarly reflect upon their own beliefs, and the accompanying spiritual manifestations validate, strengthen, or enlarge their faith. After testifying, the Welcomers invite the audience members, both Church members and non-members, to use a referral card the Welcomers distribute. The Welcomers purposefully follow their testimony with the invitation to use the referral card as a missionary strategy. The Church believes that individuals who are experiencing spiritual manifestations from the Holy Ghost are likely to make potentially life-changing commitments. The referral cards may constitute such a commitment. Non-members can use the referral cards to request discussions from fulltime missionaries, which may lead to converting to the Church. Welcomers also offer non-members a free copy of the Book of Mormon. Welcomers challenge members to use the referral card to refer the missionaries to visit a family member or friend. Members can use the referral cards to send the missionaries to nearly anyone worldwide using the Church’s missionary network. Using the referral card allows the member spectator to participate in the pageant ritual in a more active way than simply experiencing it; submitting a missionary referral means joining with the pageant missionaries to help further the Church’s overall missionary efforts. Church member spectators often find it hard to resist using the referral card. Turning down the opportunity is almost a personal insult to the sincere and dedicated fellow-member pageant participant. Doing so smacks of a lack of faith and conviction on the part of the spectator. What the spiritual manifestations and power of the born testimony lack in motivation, guilt supplies. Fulltime missionaries follow the same pattern of inviting investigators to take steps that lead to and through conversion following testimony and (hopefully) spiritual manifestations. In my experience, actually extending such invitations is the most difficult part of missionary work. The “Cast Notebook” states, “Have faith in the Lord. Be confident, direct, and clear when you invite people to make a commitment” (23). Being that bold and direct and mustering the faith to do so is emotionally risky and challenging. But missionaries invite people to change their lives, and people accept such invitations and convert to the Church; that is proselytizing, and that is at the heart of missionary work. For the pageant missionaries, as with the fulltime missionaries,

204 inviting people to transform is what they are there to do, and the preshow allows the pageant missionaries to personally invite the spectators using their own voice. Considering the structure of the preshow, although the preshow is a performance, it is atypical to traditional theatre. Although the participants perform as pageant missionaries, they are consciously themselves, performing themselves as a pageant missionary. They answer as themselves, using their names, their cities of origin, and their general descriptors and narratives that people use to fashion their identity. In other words, they are not “answering in stage th character”; the Welcomers and Greeters do not respond as native-American villagers from the 5P P century BC when asked a question but as themselves albeit themselves within the constraints of their performed identity as a pageant missionary. What they perform as pageant missionaries is an identity that they have fused into their own. Generally, actors remain out of view during the time before the production, but occasionally productions include a preshow. Traditional productions that feature a preshow often use cast members acting in their roles. A production of Hair at Florida State University had cast members in costume interacting with the audience; however, they remained “in character.” The cast members spoke to random audience members, but they did so as their flower-children characters would interact. This preshow was part of the performance phase of the whole sequence. Cast members performed outside the written text, but the preshow was part of the performance and featured actors who had already transformed into their characters. The preshow for Hair created an atmosphere conducive to the production, to make it seem like a late sixties/early seventies happening. Spectators had no doubt that they interacted with characters rather than with the actors as themselves. In fact, as an audience member familiar with many in the cast in their student lives, I felt obligated to purposefully try not to break the theatrical illusion of their performance. Again, with this performance, the difference seems to be to “real” world versus imitative or representational world. Theatrical actors try to maintain an illusion of reality while ritual performance tries to dispel or obscure performance illusion. At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the preshow on the surface appears different, genuine and authentic. Certainly, it differs from the production of Hair, where the actors were not only costumed but were obviously playing their production roles. Their preshow performance invited the spectators into the theatrical illusion. The pageant preshow instead invites the spectators to perceive the larger cultural significance to the pageant, to see the ordinariness of the performers.

205 Nevertheless, the pageant participants perform in the preshow. They may be playing themselves; they may be interacting somewhat spontaneously, but they have prepared and practiced these performance roles. The preshow activities involve a unique, atheatrical, or perhaps hyper- theatrical, relationship with the spectators in which the division between the performance and real world is breeched. The resulting equilibrium is a hybrid of the two worlds disguised, perhaps, as a form of reality that masks the performance illusion. The preshow creates a different kind of theatrical illusion, one of authenticity rather than of willingly suspended disbelief. As with ritual, the member spectators must relate to the performers as “real,” as representatives of their own community. Yet, as pageant missionaries, the participants also stand apart from the community by their unique cultural distinction. As missionaries, the participants also bridge the space between the non-members and the Mormon culture. Missionaries represent the culture to outsiders and act as a liaison between the two societies. By viewing the participants as “real” missionary members of the Mormon culture, non-member spectators recognize the participants as spokespeople who can introduce and provide access into the culture to those outside it. During the preshow, the participants perform their missionary identities in a complicated way that imitates reality and includes reality. The performance involves rehearsed and restored behavior on the part of the pageant missionary. Within the interaction, the missionary seeks moments to perform the dialogue and scenarios s/he has prepared, but the outcome of the interaction is not predetermined. Exactly what happens in that interaction depends as much on the spectator as a participant in the event or performance as on the pageant missionary. As with ritual, when the pageant missionary performs the most important act and invites the audience member to accept what s/he is saying, to use the referral card, and/or to accept a Book of Mormon, the outcome of that performance affects reality. This invitation resembles the wedding officiator’s “Do you” question and the participant’s “I do” response that creates a transforming act initiated by the officiator but present in the participant. The preshow performance engages the spectators into active participation in a potentially transformational performance. The audience member like the bride or groom, in fact more freely than a bride or groom, may respond with a no and reject the transformation. But unlike the wedding officiator, the performance also transforms the pageant missionaries. Performing their role as missionaries in the preshow not only incorporates them into the larger community as missionaries but it fixes

206 that part of their identity. The pageant missionaries are no longer novices, missionaries to be. Instead they have crossed the threshold and become pageant missionaries. Processional Following the Welcoming and Greeting, the pageant participants perform a processional that transitions them out from the audience and up to the stage. The processional also transitions between the proselytizing and the theatrical and ritual performance. As a formal demonstration, the processional signifies the participants’ symbolic move out from the community into the designated performance space. The processional also as a process similar to theatrical warm-ups transitions the performers between identities into the liminal performance realm. The Welcoming and Greeting activities start to wrap up around 8:45 p.m. At this time, the work crew comes on stage to make production preparations. Regular announcements broadcast over the sound system as well to notify the audience when the pageant will begin. The audience during this time hardly sits patiently waiting. Many trek to and from restroom facilities at the sides of the house or to the information booths for photos. Some latecomers continue to make their way from the parking lot. Instructions to the Welcomers indicate, “A large number of non-members come in the back of the ‘House’ between 9:00 and 9:15 p.m. and sit near the back and on both sides—please remember to welcome them if you are assigned to that area” (“Cast Notebook” 26). By 9:00 p.m., the participants who carry processional banners take their place. This is a further signal for Welcomers and Greeters to wrap-up their discussions. At about 9:10 p.m., the ambient music broadcast throughout the preshow plays “The Spirit of God,” a popular LDS Hymn, which is the final signal to the Welcomers and Greeters to take their places in the processional; the pageant is ready to begin. Following “The Spirit of God” and before the processional, the pageant begins with a unifying public ritual. One of the pageant directors comes to the front of the stage and offers an invocation. The prayer separates the preshow missionary activities from the processional and pageant performance. The cast members who have been among the audience separate into processional lines when the hymn plays. The prayer marks both the end of the preshow Welcoming and Greeting and the start of the pageant processional. Thus, the pageant begins with a ritual that involves not only the cast but also the audience, but with the cast separated out into the processional lines. The prayer unites the groups in a common spiritual expression, and it consecrates the performance as a religious event.

207 After the prayer, a spotlight hits herald angels on the hill dressed in bright reflective white costumes. Trumpet fanfare music begins, which marks the start of the processional. Cast members who have lined up in groups, each behind a banner bearer, march behind the banner bearers to positions on stage (see fig.6.4). The processional is a spectacular display of color and texture. The processional also demonstrates in an instant the enormity of the cast and the magnitude of the spectacle displayed throughout the pageant. The immense cast surrounds the audience for several minutes as they parade by and then completely fill the massive stage.

Fig. 6.4. Processional on stage. Hill Cumorah Pageant directed by Rodger Sorensen, 2000. Photo by Hoss Firooznia.

Processionals have a long history and affiliation with theatre. The “Cast Notebook” associates the processional with an “old Medieval custom” (14), alluding to a European pageant tradition in which actors on wagons paraded through towns. These processionals announced the upcoming performances and gave audiences a glimpse of what was to come. Processionals are

208 certainly not limited to medieval theatre. Even in medieval times, there were royal processionals, religious processionals, tournament processionals, and others. Processionals certainly have not 5 died out. Parades and processionalsTP PT continue to be a popular form of display. Numerous public and religious holidays and celebrations include these forms of public performance and ceremony. Processionals are a type of performed display. They often serve as a ritual that announces or marks some succeeding festivity, religious ceremony, or other type of cultural ritual. They act as a prelude or fanfare for what is to come. Numerous holiday processionals signal holiday celebrations, both cultural and religious. Graduates ready to receive their diplomas display themselves and signal the beginning of that cultural ritual with a procession. Similarly, military recruits who have completed basic training and are ready to receive official service assignments parade before their leaders. Many church services begin with a processional that displays the clergy and signals the commencement of the service. The national memorial service for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks began with such a processional that displayed a diversity of religions, including Islam, in a show of unity. Processionals may also function as vicarious public rituals. Those who watch the processional recognize the participants as performing in the ceremony or celebration in their behalf. Processionals often include displays, tableaux, and theatrical performances in order to celebrate or recognize persons, events, and/or groups that are significant to the particular event celebrated by the processional. As such, the participants are representatives or representations for the benefit of the spectators. In these processions, participants and spectators share an understanding similar to that in a theatrical performance—the participants act and the spectators receive. The participants perform for the spectators whether the participants are standing still in tableaux, acting as a character, waving to acknowledge the audience’s appreciation, or even interacting by tossing candy or other gifts to the crowd. The spectators recognize these performances as components of a larger communal celebration. Like a theatrical audience, the spectators take part in the cultural ritual by acknowledging and rewarding the performance and performers with appropriate responses such as clapping, cheering, or singing along. Consider a military parade, either to bid farewell to those going to engage in battle or to welcome those who have returned. The processional allows those who are going to battle or who have returned to be recognized by the spectators for what the soldiers will be or have been doing in the society’s behalf. The spectators present will not or have not been engaged in the battle, but

209 instead the military members will battle or have battled in behalf of the larger community. The processional honors the soldiers for the work they will do or have done for the community. Another example demonstrates the culturally reflexivity possible for those who watch the processional and for those who act in it. As children living in a small Southern Utah community, my sister and I dressed as Mormon Pioneers and pulled a wheelbarrow we had decorated to look like a handcart in a Mormon Pioneer Day parade. As we walked in the parade, we waved and drew cheers from the crowd. They recognized that our performance was part of a larger celebration of a common cultural heritage. Not all could march in the parade; like theatre, a parade needs both participants and spectators. The few who perform represent the community at large. We were the actors, and the spectators were the receivers in this public ritual celebration. By walking in the parade, my sister and I reflected upon those in our cultural heritage who traversed the plains in a paradigm of sacrifice that still stands as a heroic example for the Church; likewise those who watched also remembered those Pioneers we represented. For both those who performed and those who watched, the act both reminds of past deeds and inspires one to consider his/her own deeds in behalf of the culture and in comparison to the examples recreated. The pageant processional functions as both a spectacular display that proclaims the start of the pageant and as a vicarious public ritual. At one end, it acts as a prologue for the pageant proper. As such, the processional presents a spectacle of sight and sound as the six hundred plus cast members leave the audience and take the stage. The “Cast Notebook” states that the processional “enables the audience to see up close the beauty of the costumes and provides a more personal interaction with the audience as the Pageant begins” (14). Medieval pageant processionals that announced an upcoming performance may have given the audience a more personal interaction with the performers prior to the start of the performance, just as a religious processional also brings the clergy up through the congregation to begin performing the religious rituals and services. Yet, the Hill Cumorah Pageant audience does not require more personal interaction with a processional. Compared to the preshow, the processional is less interactive and even moves the performance away from personal interaction toward theatrical performance. Regarding seeing the beauty of the costumes close-up, compared with the preshow, the processional displays the costumes at a more removed distance. Instead, the processional displays the costumes en mass and in some context and harmony with each other much closer

210 than from the stage. Similarly, the processional provides the audience a chance to see the cast gathered together as a cast rather than as pageant missionaries before the cast moves to the distant stage. Regarding the vicarious public ritual, while the cast interacts with the audience during the preshow, the audience receives the performers as “common folk,” ordinary devoted Church members rather than trained performers. Cast members and audience members are more or less the same. In fact, the preshow incorporates the cast members into a community with the audience. As a result, when the participants leave to perform, they do so as representatives of that community. The cast members’ role in the event is to perform the pageant in behalf of the audience, or for the benefit of the audience. This communal aspect of the pageant performance also correlates with the medieval tradition. “Common folk” performed the Medieval cycle plays in behalf of the larger community and viewed it as their religious and civic duty to do so. The preshow interaction between the audience and participants bridges the conventional separation between theatre performer and spectator and unites the performers with the audience into a common community. Although the processional effectively removes the cast from the audience and places them in their traditional location on the stage, the preshow emphasizes and creates a relationship of community between the cast and audience. For the performers, the processional separates them from the audience; it calls them out from amongst the spectators and reestablishes them with the other participants. While the preshow incorporated them directly into the community, the processional separates them out as the ritual performers for the community. The processional acts as a transition, moving from the close personal interaction and display between the performers and the spectators in the preshow to the distanced performance and display of the pageant proper. At the start of the processional, the pageant missionaries have not yet assumed their pageant performance roles and need still to go through that transition. Schechner describes the performance, the taking on of a role as a “liminal, subjunctive time/space” (Between 112). In this state, the performer has transformed into the role without wholly abandoning themselves. In taking on a role, a “performer goes from the ‘ordinary world’ to the ‘performative world,’ from one time/space reference to another, from one personality to one or more others” (126). Schechner asserts that warm-up provides the threshold between the ordinary and the peformative worlds. For the pageant performers, this transformation from the

211 missionary/self to their pageant role occurs not through offstage warm-ups but through the onstage processional. When the participants line up in the processional, they begin to transform into their pageant roles. The participants shift from performing just the missionary identity to adding their pageant performance role. The pageant performance identity developed during the pageant sub- process intertwines the pageant missionary identity with the pageant performance roles. The processional transitions the actors not from the pageant missionary identity into the performance roles, but instead the processional adds the performance roles onto the pageant missionary identity, intertwining them for the pageant performance. The processional ultimately moves them physically from the house across the gulf that divides the house from the stage onto the stage itself. This movement, while both physical and symbolic, also takes the performers through the performance transformation from performing themselves as pageant missionaries to performing as pageant missionaries performing the pageant characters. Ultimately, the processional fulfills a number of functions. First, it solves logistical problems. Traditionally in theatre, house lights dim followed by a light cue on stage, and the performance begins. The cast waits to enter from offstage or in a green room. The cast does not need to assemble all together in order to begin the performance. With the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the cast has to gather together from the house. Even without a formal processional, the cast would cause a makeshift processional by their mass exodus from the house. As such, formalizing the exodus and assembly facilitates a necessary transition. Secondly, the actors need to have some sort of transitional process for them to get into their pageant characters. The processional serves such a purpose. The processional incorporates the cast members as pageant performers into the pageant community before separating them out onto the stage, thus completing the sub-process and completing the intertwining of the pageant missionary identities and the pageant performance roles. Likewise, the spectators need to have a transition. In traditional theatre, the spectators in the house await the performance ready to suspend their disbelief. The darkening of the house and light cues supply the only transition necessary for the spectators to begin their role in the performance. In such a setting, the spectators really have not even seen the actors. In the pageant, since the traditional gulf between performer and spectator has been breached, the spectators need to reestablish their separation. Just as the performers need a transitional process in order to enter the “performative world,” the

212 spectators also need a transitional process to establish their place as receivers of the performance. The processional then serves the actors by transitioning them into their pageant characters, and it serves the spectators by transitioning them from active interaction to the more passive role as receivers. At the end of the processional, the participants are ready to perform, and the spectators are ready for the performance.

Pageant Performance

The processional culminates with the entire cast onstage while fanfare concludes. A silent pause transitions between the processional and the start of the pageant proper. During the pause, cast members move from the processional to their places on or off stage. Following the pause, the faceless narrator’s lines begin the main performance. Somewhere within that sequence, between marching in the processional and hitting marks on or off stage, the cast crosses the threshold completely into the performance realm. Standing onstage as the processional display gives way to the pageant performance, the participants have intertwined a new layer into their complex performance identity. As the cultural performance proceeds, the actors will further undergo a reflexive transformation as enactors in the pageant ritual. Theatrical performance entails enacting the rehearsed behavioral sequences for the audience. Addressing performance in his seven-part sequence, Schechner asserts, “All performances—defined and undefined—share at least one underlying quality. Performance behavior isn’t free and easy.” Performances rather than evolving organically instead develop within the constraints of the performance in a systematic, prescribed, and practiced way. “Performance behavior,” he explains, “is known and/or practiced behavior—or ‘twice-behaved behavior,’ ‘restored behavior’—either rehearsed, previously known, learned by osmosis since early childhood, revealed during the performance by masters, guides, gurus, or elders, or generated by rules that govern outcomes, as in improvisatory theater or sports” (Between 118). This concept of “twice-behaved” or “restored behavior” strikes at the very nature of acting. Even the term acting suggests a performance, an actor and action or doer and deed, but that action or deed is outside the person behind the performance. Schechner concludes, “Because performance behavior isn’t free and easy, it never wholly ‘belongs to’ the performer” (118). The behavior belongs to the character rather than to the performer.

213 We may casually use the term acting or actor outside formal theatrical performance. We may, for instance, instruct children to “act” differently than they have been. A game my family enjoys includes a card that directs the player to “act” like a chicken. In both instances, those involved understand that the ensuing behavior exists somehow separated from the person behind the action or performance. The child’s behavior, rather than the child, is bad. Acting seems as if a person dons a mask over his/her “actual self” or layers a chicken persona onto his/her own identity or enacts a socially more appropriate behavior. We may even try to excuse inappropriate behavior by denying that what was observed was not our “actual self.” “That wasn’t me,” we may say, not literally suggesting that we did not do whatever was done but that such action does not reflect our typical behavior, our actual self. Who that actual self is, is, of course, a good question and suggests that such is somehow fixed, stable, and simple. For this section, I am not going to continue to pursue chickens or misbehaving children or adults. Instead, I will focus on the multiple layers and complexities of identity related to the pageant performance. One of Schechner’s most interesting concepts regarding performance is his assertion that “performing is a paradigm of liminality” (Between 123). He explains, “Performer training focuses its techniques not on making one person into another but on permitting the performer to act in between identities” (123). In theatre, actors perform in a state in which they are not themselves and not wholly another; hence, they are between identities. Within this liminal state, the actor “is transformed, enabled to do things ‘in performance’ he cannot do ordinarily” (126). This state of betweenness mirrors a ritual liminal state, and yet because the transformation into the other identity and separation from the past identity never fully occur, theatrical transformation, what Schechner terms “transportation,” does not last. Schechner states that actors perform “in the field between a negative and a double negative, a field of limitless potential, free as it is from both the person (not) and the person impersonated (not not). All effective performances,” he adds, “share this ‘not-not not’ quality” (Between 123). I find this “not-not not” language effective at conveying the “outside of oneself” nature of performance. Schechner explains, “Olivier is not Hamlet, but also he is not not Hamlet: his performance is between a denial of being another (= I am me) and a denial of not being another (= I am Hamlet)” (123). Olivier never ceases to be Olivier, and yet for the duration of the performance, Hamlet exists. The only life Hamlet the character has lives when an actor dons the role—becomes Hamlet.

214 The playwrights Luigi Pirandello and Tom Stoppard explored this concept of shared character/actor existence. In his brilliant play Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello blurs the line between actors and character roles. A family of characters from an unfinished play interrupts actors rehearsing an unnamed and not well-liked Pirandello play. These characters remain unrealized, in a type of limbo, because the playwright did not finish the play so that the play could be performed. The family’s existence depends on the performance of their stories. Similarly, the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead recognize that their fate, even their very lives are limited to the events of Hamlet: GUILDENSTERN (quietly). Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current . . . ROSENCRANTZ. They had it in for us, didn’t they? Right from the beginning. Who’d have thought that we were so important? GUILDENSTERN. But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? (In anguish to the PLAYER:) PLAYER. You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That’s enough. (1114) These characters ultimately die because they are indeed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As characters in a play, they have no life outside the constraints of the play and cannot avoid their prescribed fate. Their deeds, as those of characters of all plays, are as history, already fixed and completed, and are awaiting recreation through performance. Thus, returning to actors performing between identities and Schechner’s example of Hamlet and Olivier, the actor, Olivier, as an actor, is not really Hamlet; the actor has (or in Olivier’s case, had) an identity and a life outside Hamlet, but the actor is also not not Hamlet. For the three plus hour period during which Hamlet is in performance, Hamlet lives through the actor’s performance—the character lives in that performance realm to which the actor has been transported. Actors in a traditional play transform from the person they are outside the production into the role they are playing for the duration of the performance. Thus, in considering Olivier, he transforms from Olivier into Hamlet through whatever warm-ups and processes he uses and performs Hamlet in a simple not Hamlet, not not Hamlet relationship. Conversely, and I think importantly, Oliver is also not Olivier; he proceeds through Hamlet’s

215 activities as Hamlet and allows Hamlet rather than himself to bear the brunt of the consequences of events Hamlet encounters. Thus, Hamlet and not Olivier dies. But, Olivier is also not-not Olivier. With an actor, and especially with a prominent actor like Olivier, the audience does not completely willingly suspend disbelief; the audience is aware they are watching an actor perform Hamlet. If, for instance, Olivier were to fall or bump into a chair and get injured, such an accident affects Hamlet, who must react onstage to the misdeed and cover it within the performance. However, Olivier the actor would also feel the effects of the misdeed, especially if there were an injury. Onstage, there is a dual life shared between the actor and the character. An unplanned event such as an accident cuts across the performance and affects both sides of the performer’s identity. Hill Cumorah Pageant participants at first glance seem to engage in a similar not-not not relationship with their characters. For instance, Rusty Terry, who in the 2000 pageant played the resurrected Christ role, was certainly not the resurrected Christ. When performing that role and depicting the particular scenes and events, he was also not not the resurrected Christ. In performance he was, as Olivier in Hamlet, in the liminal performance. However, closer examination reveals more than just a simple not-not not relationship. At the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the actors do not just transform from their ordinary selves into their pageant performance roles. Their ordinary selves are pre-pageant identities. Immediately preceding the performance, the participants have been proselytizing, performing their roles and duties as pageant missionaries. The transformation during the processional as a warm-up adds the pageant performance role to the pageant missionary identity. The participants are not pageant performance role, not not pageant performance role, but the converse is not so simple. The participants’ not me, not not me relationship is more complex than what Schechner outlines. The preshow proselytizing performance features the cast performing the missionary identity, as I have discussed earlier in this chapter, but the pageant missionary role is not a simple not-not not relationship. The proselytizing activities serve as the incorporating phase of a participant’s transformation into the pageant missionary identity. Instead of being not the pageant missionary, not not the pageant missionary, the participant is a pageant missionary incorporating into the larger community. The participant is involved in a process of acceptance and transformation, rather than being in Schechner’s “field between a negative and a double

216 negative.” In this case, there is no denial of the pageant missionary identity. This state is also not one of “limitless potential” (Between 123). Participants as missionaries in an incorporation phase are not liminally between identities but instead are on the changed side of the transformation. Schechner calls “performances where performers are changed ‘transformations’ and those where performers are returned to their starting places ‘transportations’” (125). Transportations are temporary transformations, and “when the performance is over,” the actor “returns to where he started.” Actors, following a performance “reenter ordinary life just about where they went in” (126). Olivier after Hamlet, both following an individual performance and following the production’s close, returned to whatever being Laurence Olivier entailed. Olivier shed Hamlet as a mask while the Olivier inside continued his existence. At the end of the preshow, moving into the processional, the participants do not return to where they were before the preshow. Where they were before the preshow is pageant missionaries awaiting an opportunity to proselytize, awaiting incorporation. After the preshow, the participants are realized pageant missionaries coming out from the audience ready to take on their pageant roles. The pageant performance roles are a type of transportive role; participants transform only temporarily into Book of Mormon and Church History characters. Nevertheless, when they enter the performance realm, pageant participants do not leave their pre-pageant performance identity behind. Instead, the participants perform their pageant roles as pageant missionaries as a part of the transformational pageant performance process. The performers function still or perform as pageant missionaries. The pageant presidency and artistic staff make this point clear in the “Cast Notebook”: “Our primary objective at Pageant is to bring others to a knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is done through both the performance of the Pageant and the proselytizing activity (called Welcoming) prior to and after each performance” (17). Performing the pageant is just as much a missionary activity as the proselytizing activities. The first page of the “Cast Notebook” expounds on the pageant missionary’s duty and responsibility to the performance: The Hill Cumorah Pageant testifies to the world of the reality and divinity of the Savior, Jesus Christ. It also presents the message of the Restoration and testifies of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. As a dramatic presentation, it stirs emotions and inspires the testimony of both members and non-members alike. . . . As full-time missionaries during your Pageant experience, you are ambassadors of Jesus Christ and

217 His Church to the world. Spectators will judge the Church on the basis of your actions and demeanor. The success of the Hill Cumorah Pageant depends upon you. If you will strive to always be in harmony with the Spirit of the Lord and do your part, the work which the Lord has called the Pageant to fulfill will be accomplished. (1) This description applies equally to the performance and proselytizing activities. As pageant missionaries, the participants proselytize like fulltime missionaries when interacting with spectators; they will be judged by their actions and demeanor. But while performing the pageant, spectators will also judge them, as theatre spectators always judge actors, by their actions and demeanor. Participants must as missionaries make the performance successful by performing their roles well. The success of both types of activities depends on each participant. While the participants transport into their pageant performance roles, they must bring their missionary role along for the ride, intertwining the two, as they developed during the pageant sub-process. While the performance is theatrical and has a temporary nature, the performance also operates as part of the process or progression transforming pageant participants by developing a lasting pageant identity. Linking the performance’s converting power to participants’ spirituality displays the duality developed in the pageant performance process: spirituality and aesthetic quality. The training and rehearsal in both the theatrical and religious areas culminate with the pageant performance, which is why Sorensen calls the religious training and spiritual development and the rehearsals “part of the same process” and “not really separate” (16 Nov. 2000). The participants’ performance identity involves more than just the pageant missionary identity combined with the temporary pageant performance roles. The pageant’s ritual elements also shape the participants’ transformation. While the performance roles are on one level transportive because they are theatrical roles, the roles also represent the primary Church narratives. Performing these roles means recreating these primary narratives, which recreation becomes a cultural ritual performance. In the first chapters, I discussed the pageant as a pilgrimage for the spectators. I also discussed with casting how the participants are themselves experiencing the pageant as pilgrims with that role transitioning into the role of pageant missionary. The pageant participants, as I detailed in the casting area, have self-interests served through their participation. These self-interests include an increased spirituality akin to what a pilgrim seeks. But the pageant participants as pilgrims differ from the spectators as pilgrims. The

218 participants have come to the Hill Cumorah to perform, to enact the reflexive cultural ritual; the spectators as pilgrims have come to watch the participants do so. The pageant participants, as performing pilgrims, transform by performing the ritual. Their role at the religious site transcends that of the spectator pilgrims. Rather than just watching the Church narratives come to life, the participants take this life upon themselves; they assume the characters as vicarious performers in the community ritual. Victor and Edith Turner in Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture talk about “the ‘transformative’ effect” (11) pilgrims experience when they reach their destination site. The Turners state that at this climactic fulfillment of the pilgrimage, for the pilgrims “the founder becomes a savior, one who saves them from themselves, ‘themselves’ both as socially defined and as personally experienced” (11). In other words, the pilgrim experiences a changed or especial relationship with the founder or holy person associated with the pilgrimage site. The Turners continue, “The pilgrim ‘puts on Christ Jesus’ as a paradigmatic mask or persona, and thus for a while becomes the redemptive tradition, no longer a biophysical unit with a specific history—as in tribal initiations, where the individual who dons the ceremonial mask becomes for a while the god or power signified by the mask and the costume linked to it” (11). In Chapter 1, I discussed how the intensity of the pilgrims’ experience at a pilgrimage site depends on how well they identify themselves with the religious person or persons associated with the site. In the Sacred Grove, those who enact Joseph Smith for their own benefit develop a close personal affinity through donning Joseph Smith as a paradigmatic mask. For the pageant participants, the mask at this site is not paradigmatic. This is not walking the Stations of the Cross or praying in the Sacred Grove. The pageant performance is literally, “as in tribal initiations, where the individual who dons the ceremonial mask becomes for a while the god or power signified by the mask and the costume linked to it.” In this case as in such tribal rites, an audience watches community representatives perform the stories and personas inherent to the community. The pageant participants are the members of the Mormon community at the pageant who literally don the mask; they are the cultural ritual performers who recreate and perform the sacred stories. Performing the sacred stories also empowers the stories and the performer. Sorensen explains that performing the cultural narratives gives them renewed significance. He asserts, “We speak our stories. We tell our stories in performative forms, thereby giving them new life, a different kind of life, a similar life. We speak the Book of Mormon stories, and those become a

219 part of now, us as speakers, and the audience, we as receivers of those stories” (16 Nov. 2000). Performing or speaking the stories brings the stories back into the present where they can reflect back onto the culture. Performing the stories makes the participants both the creators of life as the ones who resurrect the stories and the living creations as the representations of the stories’ main characters. The participants reside at the center of the myths’ recreation, and the spectators of the community grant them this sacred position. The participants’ performance becomes a sacred duty in which the performers serve as the intermediary between the spectators and the myth. They quite literally and profoundly re-member the stories and characters of the community’s most sacred texts: Jesus Christ is quite literally resurrected onstage; Joseph Smith prays in the Sacred Grove, and God and Christ appear to him; Moroni buries the plates and subsequently presents them to Joseph Smith; and prophets of the Book of Mormon live their stories. To summarize, pageant participants experience an emerging and transforming missionary identity that develops throughout the process and is realized through incorporation in the preshow and performance; they take on their performance roles on one level as a superficial, transportive theatrical experience; they also don the masks and identities of sacred characters and perform sacred texts as performing pilgrims for a community ritual; and they also experience these same founding myths in a very personal and profoundly transforming way. For actors, performing a role and bringing life to a character make that character a part of the performer. When that role also holds cultural significance, then the actor experiences the union with the role in a more profound way. Sorensen explains, “The individual performers will have moments of awareness or sometime epiphanies but not usually that strong. They are moments that the lens turns, and there is a focus, and they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s another dimension I hadn’t thought of.’” For Sorensen, such moments “are the things that are the most significant to me, and they come every year” (16 Nov. 2000). Sorensen wants the cast members to make personal connections to the Book of Mormon texts. He relishes it when “the cast members say, ‘I now see the scriptures differently’; ‘I see this character differently’; ‘I see the possibilities of what all of this means so differently’” (16 Nov. 2000). Such transformations are those that come to the participants through performing their roles and experiencing the Church’s founding myths in such a profound way. Sorensen adds that as a director he finds it necessary to step back and give the cast members the freedom to see and visualize moments in these stories differently than they

220 initially see and visualize them. From my own limited perspective as an audience member who viewed four pageant performances in two different years, I find that viewing the performances has changed my perception of such myths. There are moments of insight and visualization that affect how I now remember and view these stories. For the performers, the repetition of these stories, their personal recreation, and their performance forever alters their own relationship to these myths, and as Sorensen states, grounds them in a profound way to the Church’s cultural foundations. As an example of these various levels of identity and transformations, I will use one particular cast member, Rusty Terry, to illustrate these points. I met Rusty for the first time in the costume shop/men’s dressing room on opening night. A young man from Port Orchard, Washington, Rusty played the role of the resurrected Savior in the 2000 Hill Cumorah Pageant. I spoke at length with Rusty about his experience portraying the resurrected Christ. He was a humble, unassuming young man who was a bit reluctant and self-conscious about talking about his role. He continually stressed his unimportance as the actor playing the role and the importance of the production, the directors, and the rest of the cast. At the time, he was just three months removed from his two-year missionary service in North Carolina. He had participated in the pageant twice before his mission. His mother had applied for him as a surprise as a way for him to spend some time with his younger brother who joined him at the pageant and who was preparing to serve his own mission shortly. For Rusty, performing in the pageant meant reviving his past pageant missionary identity now also affected by his own fulltime missionary service that such an identity parallels. Rusty, like the other cast members, was not cast in this role based on theatrical prowess but on his physical appearance, stature, and ability to follow physical directions. One of the questions the directors asked him was whether being up in the harness bothered him. Rusty answered, “I said ‘it didn’t,’ and I was like, [to himself] ‘I hope it doesn’t,’ but I was like, [to the directors] ‘No, [heights] don’t bother me at all.’” Part of his role is to fly in on a modern-day Deus ex machina as the resurrected Savior (see fig. 6.5). At only twenty-one, he would seem too young to play Jesus who was in his early thirties at his death. However, the audience is not close enough to the stage to make such distinctions. Instead, someone who casts a commanding physical presence and who is able and willing to be hoisted in a harness and flown in and out for his onstage appearances must play the role.

221

Fig. 6.5. Rusty Terry rehearses for the Savior’s descent. The black cloak he wears masks the vibrant white costume he wears as the resurrected Savior while riding the harness until he unveils to create the spectacle.

Rusty tried to approach this role as he did his former pageant roles, concentrating on delivering the right gesture and movement to the broadcast dialogue at the proper cue. He says, “I don’t think my experience with it has been the way that most people would assume it would be. A lot of people assume, well, that it’s an enormously spiritual experience, which it is. But, a lot of it, the majority of it is just trying to remember my cues and remember the staging, just like everybody else.” He acknowledges, however, that this role has been somewhat different, a bit more daunting: But then, also, [I’m] trying to become the character, just like everybody else. Whereas, King Noah is trying to become this wicked wine bibber and ruler; I’m trying to become someone who cares so deeply about everybody else out there, realizing that they’ve all come to the Savior to be healed of their diseases, or their spiritual diseases or whatever else. So, trying to fit that role can be tough, especially when you have to deal with the whole—okay, this is when I raise up my arms, and this is when I walk over here, and this is when I say this. And so, it’s kind of a new experience onstage with that.

222 Performing the resurrected Christ, Rusty was at odds with the different layers of performance identity. The traditional stage demands of blocking and characterization, especially for untrained performers, are juxtaposed alongside the gravity of not only wearing the persona of the Christ but also participating in the communal recreation of one of the culture’s most sacred of all stories. Rusty again quickly adds that his experience with this role does not significantly differ from what he went through before or what others undergo. “I feel my experience has been probably pretty similar to everybody else’s experience here,” he declares but then appends, “In some ways. In some ways it hasn’t.” I would agree with him on both counts. Much of his experience is similar to what all participants experience, developing their pageant missionary role and rehearsing their pageant roles. The other participants also experience the confusion of multi-layered performance identities: pageant missionary transformation, traditional theatre transportation, and the experience of witnessing and participating in the recreation of Book of Mormon and Church stories as a ritual. And yet, of all the roles, none are weightier in cultural significance. “When I . . . I look in the mirror,” Rusty explains, “and there’s the Savior, standing in front of me, in the mirror . . . it’s, tough shoes to fill.” He acknowledges the responsibility that comes with his role of representing such a character effectively, and he explains that as he descends and looks out in the sea of alternating darkness and blinding flash bulbs: I just hope that they [the audience] catch the Spirit of it. That’s the main thing. It’s such a beautiful scene. All the people there. And the whole cast is what makes it, I think. It’s completely different when everybody else, when the whole cast is there on the stage. To feel what it would be like to have the Savior actually come, and what they would actually do. It’s truly amazing. Although Rusty does not use the word “reflexivity,” this process is what he tries to explain. Rusty struggles to differentiate between himself as the theatre performer, as the cultural ritual performer, and as the role. Each of these areas contributes to his overall perception and layer into the overall effect. Rusty gains these insights only by performing this complex role. Rusty was at times at a loss for words and fighting his emotions while relating these experiences. “The best part” of all the experiences, he says, “is all the little kids in the primary.” Following the descent and after healing the sick, the Savior character calls for the children. Creating this scene required Rusty to rehearse a lot with the children. “They just, I’m not sure if

223 they really understand that I’m really not Jesus,” he explains. “I’m sure they do to some degree, but I think there’s a bit of them that believes it. And, just all of them just always come up to me and give me hugs, and I love kids. And that’s, I think that’s the neatest thing.” He thought for a moment and then continued: There’s a lot of—onstage, when I’m interacting with the children onstage . . . I don’t think much of that is acting for the children. I think they, I think that’s truly how they would have . . . There’s one of the little boys; his name’s Barrett. He, I ask for the crowd to send me their children, and Barrett runs up to me, and, um, he grabs my cheecks, and he just gives me a hug, and just, he just looks at me just like, as if, I were the Savior, just, the way he looks at me. And, I mean that’s, that’s really amazing I think. An article in the LDS Church News about the pageant performance describes this same scene between Rusty and the boy: The scene where the Savior—dressed in white—descends to the Nephite crowds was so moving during one performance that a little boy in the Nephite group was so overcome with emotion and instead of merely standing and looking into the face of the actor portraying the Savior [Rusty], he reached up his hands to the Savior. (Stahle, “Pageant Benefits” 10) Pageant President Wayne Lehman explains in the same article that the particular moment “wasn’t part of the production” but that “it was so moving to see a little boy reach up to the Savior that I asked him to continue the gesture each evening” (Stahle, “Pageant Benefits”10). Rusty further notes, “They [the children in that scene] all come up afterwards and give me hugs as I’m trying to race up to my next scene, and they’re all giving me hugs, and it’s just . . . just a nice part.” In those brief moments, behind the mask of Jesus, Rusty parted the heavens and glimpsed the divine. The liminal performance merged theatre and ritual with Rusty’s missionary identity to create a reflexive moment that transformed Rusty on a personal level in a significant way. Only within the performance can the multiple layers of identity coexist and combine to create such an experience. While those watching the performance can recognize the moment as significant and gain insight into the nature of the Jesus through the reflexivity of the performance, as the reporter and President Lehman demonstrate by their reactions, only Rusty can appreciate what it is to live that moment. Only Rusty can appreciate what it is to be Christ. Similarly, only that little boy

224 knows the feelings that motivated him to reach out and live that moment, to touch the Savior in a real and profound way.

Post-show and Aftermath

When the pageant concludes, the participants return once again to the audience. No formal processional transports the actors back to just the pageant missionary identity or even from the stage to the house. The participants officially return to their Welcoming and Greeting duties, although in an abbreviated fashion. The participants do not remove their costumes yet, but they set aside the layers of performance identity to return to only the pageant missionary identity. During the performance nights, the participants continue a pattern of proselytizing, performing the pageant, and engaging the audience in the post-show, each time incorporating with a new pageant production community. Ultimately, the pageant concludes, and the participants return to their homes and ordinary lives. The participants are released from their callings as missionaries, but the pageant missionary identity transitions through the aftermath phase to incorporate as a new lasting cultural identity. In traditional theatre, the curtain call is a longstanding tradition that serves such a purpose or at least begins the process. The actors come forward to receive applause, as the audience performs their prescribed part by providing the applause. The curtain call shatters the theatrical illusion, and the characters become the actors once again. Dead characters slide away as actors rise to join their fellows receiving the audience’s recognition. This performance is the first step in the cool-down process, the phase that returns actors from the performance realm and, together with warm-ups, bookends the performance phase. Schechner adds, “In theaters around the world, performers after a show eat, drink, talk, and celebrate” (Between 19). Such cool-down activities, of course, occur after actors have removed their costumes and make-up, the last vestiges of their characters, thus physically transforming themselves back into themselves. Schechner also declares, “Truly these activities don’t come ‘after’ but are ‘part of’ the performance and should be studied as such” (19). As a transitional process that moves the actor out of the performance and into incorporation, the cool-down strips away the performance role until the actor returns to again play the part.

225 In many theatres, cast members interact with audience members, especially family members or close associates, after the show. Often, theatres hold a reception for patrons and other special guests where these audience members can mingle with the performers. These post- show interactions provide time for the actor to show their graciousness to those who have come to see the performance and also to receive feedback about the performance. In some ways, the post-show activities that occur at the Hill Cumorah Pageant resemble traditional theatre post- show interactions. Pageant participants mingle with the audience less formally than in the preshow, and cast members may mingle with family and friends, if any are in attendance. Participants may also resume proselytizing efforts as they mingle, which is why they return to the audience. In these instances, the participants wait more for the audience to engage them rather than initiating the contact. The participants, in these instances, seek to solidify what has already been said and experienced. Sorensen calls these engagements a finalization. He says, “We go out and we visit with the audience before, and then we go perform, and then we re-enter their space and we finalize things” (16 Nov. 2000). He explains that the entire pageant performance involves “reaching out to invite people to not only hear the stories but enter into a community whose stories these are. Come and join us as a community and make these stories your stories” (16 Nov. 2000). The post-show provides another opportunity for the participants to “finalize things” with the audience, to add final testimony to what has happened and bring the experience back from the theatrical to the personal. Now, it is not that the entire audience hangs around for these finalizations or for any mingling with the actors. Many start to move immediately to their cars as the “event parking lot” mentality takes over. Participants also start to move toward the dressing rooms to begin their physical transformation. At 11:00, however, the participants gather for a pageant ritual that is part of the cool-down process: a short, closing prayer meeting. In traditional theatre, actors and production staff often receive brief performance notes given before the cast and crew disperse to their preferred cool-down activities. The pageant prayer meetings accomplish similar theatrical purposes, but they also serve the spiritual pageant purposes. The prayer meeting closes the pageant activities with a community ritual and bookends the performance activities with the preshow devotional that includes a prayer and the post-show prayer meeting that concludes with a prayer. Thus, the pageant performance, as a whole, proceeds as a community ritual for the pageant community. The ritual preshow devotional and post-show prayer meeting help solidify

226 the pageant community as a unified community and designate the pageant performance as a community ritual event. Following the prayer meeting, participants rejoin their families and friends and disperse to their sleeping quarters. During these moments, participants interact in similar fashion to their theatrical counterparts, reviewing the day’s performance activities and sharing anecdotes and experiences. The difference is that the pageant participants discuss their missionary and cultural ritual activities as pageant missionaries. The various performance activities interweave so that the cool-down process serves not only as a threshold, transitioning process but also as a reflexive process where the performers synthesize the events into their own experience in lasting ways that will remain significant parts of their experience. Aftermath Aftermath is, in a sense, the ultimate cool-down. Aftermath occurs at the end of the performance process when the production itself concludes. Schechner says, “Aftermath includes the changes in status or being that result from an initiatory performance; or the slow merging of performer with a role he plays for decades; or the reviews and criticism that so deeply influence some performances and performers” (Between 19). Thus, for theatre, aftermath represents the ways in which the actor incorporates the production performances into his/her ordinary life, and how the community incorporates the actor following the production back into the community. If the production was the actor’s first or was a role that qualified the actor for Actors’ Equity Membership, then the actor undergoes a status change within the community. The actor’s community status may also change if the actor received certain accolades, awards, or even disparaging reviews for their performance. However, not all or even most theatrical performances lead to an actor’s change in cultural status. Instead, largely actors move from role to role, transporting through the production process and returning to their ordinary lives in search of the next role. The Hill Cumorah Pageant aftermath occurs when the pageant ends and the participants return home from their experience, when they return back to their lives, and when they reincorporate with their individual communities. Unlike traditional theatre actors, pageant participants are not really affected by any performance reviews, and no one gives awards for pageant acting. Likely the Church publication the Church News will run only a brief article, which certainly does not really offer objective theatrical criticism. But like their theatrical

227 counterparts, aftermath for pageant participants involves the way in which the participants incorporate the performance experiences into their lives and the way in which the culture and especially each participant’s individual community incorporates him/her back into the community. The aftermath does also involve a change in status, a final phase in the development of the transformational lasting pageant identity. When the participants begin the pageant performance process, they do so as pilgrims, traveling to the historic Palmyra area sites to perform at the sacred Hill Cumorah. When the production ends, the participants return from such a pilgrimage to the lives they had suspended for a time. The Turners, concerning returning pilgrims, explain, “It is true that the pilgrim returns to his former mundane existence, but it is commonly believed that he has made a spiritual step forward” (Image 15). Pageant participants measure their success and transformation in similar spiritual currency. The participants reflect back on their experiences and measure their own personal spiritual growth by the specific connections they formed between what they were doing in relation to the Church cultural and theological beliefs. For example, Tom Crockett expresses, Our experience was truly outstanding. To this date [September 22, two months after returning home] we are still on a high from the many experiences we had. The people we met, the opportunities to provide service, to hear from so many people who had been touched by the spirit [sic] as cast and staff, to share the gospel with others and even to try to reach down and find some acting talent to perform. Every aspect provided some part of implanting in our own souls a love for Pageant. (1) Gary Weiss similarly explains, “The experience was phenomenal! It is one huge service project! Being a part of this was a great blessing. The highlight was the proselyting before and feeling the power of the spirit of missionary work. We had other wonderful experiences at the Sacred Grove and Church Historical sites” (1-2). In answer to my question specifically about the preshow welcoming, Weiss adds, “That for me was the highlight. My wife and I prayed before going out in our section. This year we got 4-5 referrals and felt elated. It brought me closer to the Savior and gave me a desire to serve Him even more” (2). Another participant, Leslie Nigh, writes, “I really appreciated the feeling that we were all working together toward a common goal, and that we were truly a community. I loved knowing that I could be free to talk about my feelings about the gospel without ever feeling as though I was ‘casting my pearls before swine.’ I also loved the 6

experience of being on the stage as a member of a community” (1).TP PT Rel Ahern, who is the wife

228 of the 2000 pageant Public Relations Director, but who participated in the 2000 pageant for the first time, similarly notes, “Being in the pageant was one of the best experiences in my life. It is hard and tiring work but worth all the effort. It is a blessing to be with so many wonderful people for such a long period of time. The cast teams became ‘family’ in a short time. . . . Although I have seen Pageant for the past 22 years I had no idea the impact of being a cast member would be so great” (“Pageant”). Finally, perhaps most fitting, Steven Petersen, who was “barely 18” in 2000, writes: I really enjoyed the experience that I had at Hill Cumorah and in the Palmyra area during the two and a half weeks that I spent there. For a time after the Pageant I went through a transition period as I returned back to my real life. During that transition I realized how incredibly blessed I was to be able to participate in an event that was much larger than myself. . . . Needless to say I will cherish my Pageant experience for all of eternity. I hope that I will be able to do it again. (1) The participants synthesize the various cultural activities into an overall spiritually rewarding and transformational experience. These activities include viewing the sites; forging relationships with other participants; becoming part of the pageant community; developing and performing the pageant missionary identity; performing the combined pageant performance identity; and connecting ritually with the audience, the narratives, the sacred site, and the characters they portrayed within the narratives. All of these experiences together not only affect the participants’ personal relationship to the culture and their faith in the Church doctrines and practices, but they also arm the participants with experiences to share with their own communities as they incorporate, or reincorporate. The participants when they return undergo a complex change in status that involves both expressions of communitas and official church status. During the pageant process, the participants both nurture their pageant missionary identity and operate under such a designation. Participants begin to become pageant missionaries through the separation ritual appropriately called setting apart. From that time until the pageant concludes, the participants serve as fulltime pageant missionaries. In Chapter 5, I described how the participants develop and rehearse these roles, and in the preshow section of this chapter, I discussed how the pageant missionaries incorporate into the community of spectators in which they actively proselytize as missionaries. Throughout the chapters of this section, I have described the pageant missionary role as

229 transformative, as a phase of a lasting pageant identity, one developed through a process parallel to that of initiation rites and especially parallel to Mormon missionary service as a passage ritual. Yet, when participants return to their community, they do not return as pageant missionaries, because they have been released and no longer function as pageant missionaries. The resulting identity that the pageant missionary identity transitions into requires reconsidering the nature of the process. Aftermath, in the pageant performance process, as with Schechner’s performance sequence, correlates with rites of incorporation within passage rites. Incorporation in the ritual process introduces transformed initiates back into the community where the transformed initiates assume a new, elevated place within the community. Although the initiates enter the liminal phase of the ritual devoid of cultural status and even perhaps symbolically naked, personal elements of their past identity remains, such as family and other social relationships. At incorporation, the initiates blend remaining elements from their past selves with their present transformed selves to form a unique and changed identity. The incorporation merges the initiates back into the community in a unique way, unique because the transformations they have undergone require accommodation on the personal level as well as incorporation on the community level. The initiates cannot go back to the status quo; instead the transformation requires establishing a new status quo in which initiates hold a different and elevated place within the community. While the social relationships from before may remain, the initiates and the community must adjust these relationships also due to the initiates overall status change. Initiates who have undergone a coming-of-age ritual assume a different place within the home as well as the community. When the initiates separate from the community, they lay aside their past identity as they cross the threshold into the ritual’s transitional phase. During the course of the transition, the initiates transform according to the nature of the passage ritual and prepare for their incorporation. During that transitional time, or that liminal time, the initiates’ identities are not fixed; they are between identities as they perform whatever deeds are required within that transitional time. The initiates’ new identities stabilize when the initiates cross back over the threshold and are incorporated into the community, incorporated in that their new identity has never existed within the community and also reincorporated in that the new identity is still a hybrid bearing many traits from the old self regained when the initiates return.

230 The lasting pageant performance identity also transitions at incorporation, merging the complex identity with the participants’ past selves. After each performance, the participants stop performing the pageant performance role, and when the pageant is over, the participants cease to be fulltime pageant missionaries. Ultimately, when the production ends, the participants cease to perform their pageant performance roles, their pageant missionary identity and the pageant ritual that identify them with the pageant performance community and with the Church narratives. But these complex combined identities transition into a lasting new identity that combines with the past self as the participants incorporate or reincorporate into their own communities. The new identity is most related to the pageant missionary identity, a spiritual persona that represents the participant’s increasing faith and spirituality in action. As the participant leaves, they cease performing their various pageant roles, but their new identity includes the sum total of their experiences, the spiritual development they have undergone, and the insights and connections they have made. Performing the complex layers of identity in the preshow and pageant performance ultimately combines the layers into a new and lasting identity that the participants blend with their past selves when they incorporate/reincorporate. As I stated, returning participants undergo a complex change in status when they arrive back home and continue their regular lives. While they are at the Hill Cumorah, participants not only identify themselves as pageant missionaries, the Church also recognizes them as fulltime pageant missionaries. That designation is an official Church status and calling. When the pageant finishes, the participants are released from this calling and relinquish this status. This release and status loss process again parallels the process for fulltime missionaries completing their missions. When I returned from my mission to Ireland, I was officially released and was no longer a fulltime missionary. The ritual process that had transformed me into a fulltime missionary by separating me from my community, setting me apart as a missionary, and then incorporating me as a missionary into Ireland, separated me again and transformed me out from my missionary status and reincorporated me into my home community. But, I was not transported back to my old self. The whole process transformed me. My official Church status, and the identity with which I was reincorporated, was “returned missionary”—RM for short. Even now, on my official Church records, I am designated as a returned missionary; I am a veteran, per se. As a returned missionary, I not only hold a special official status, I also receive rewards in communitas areas. Such a status is one of influence and regard. When I first returned,

231 my RM designation opened social doors. Many Mormon women will not seriously date and especially not marry a man who is not a returned missionary. Other members regard returned missionaries as more spiritual, more faithful, and more knowledgeable within the community. Even now that I am so many years removed from my mission and so much more shaped by other experiences, my status as a returned missionary remains highly regarded within my immediate Mormon community. My peers esteem my opinions and expressions as more worthy of respect because I am an RM. When the participants return, the Church no longer officially recognizes them as pageant missionaries, nor does the Church officially designate the participants as returned missionaries or even returned pageant missionaries. The Church has no official designation for one who has performed this type of service. For want of a better term for participants’ identity amalgamation, I will term it returned pageant missionary identity or RPM identity. Although the Church does not afford the participants a new, official Church status, when the participants return, members of their home community grant them a special status within the community. The community members value and respect the service the participants rendered. These close associates also recognize the personal and spiritual growth and transformations the participants have undergone. This type of community status change is an expression of communitas rather than official Church cultural change. Local friends and community members elevate the participants’ status based on their pageant participation and the resulting transformations the community members perceive. These community members respond to the stories and experiences the participants relate that correlate with their spiritual growth. Local congregations may invite past participants to share their experiences at Church services, further expanding their influence. The resulting RPM identity is a dynamic performance identity. As the participants share their experiences, they perform the RPM identity. They relive their experiences by storytelling them to new spectators. Returned participants validate their experience by relating it to others and getting community approval. As they relate these experiences, they also process them and further incorporate them into their own belief system. Leslie Nigh, in response to my letter of inquiry, writes, “I had completely forgotten that I had agreed to do this, and the questions, and the answers that they awoke brought that ‘pageant feeling’ back to me, and I am very grateful for that” (1). That “pageant feeling” correlates with the RPM persona. Nigh explains, “I also really

232 appreciate the feelings that were created by the ‘Decension [sic] Scene.’ Even when Rusty was lowered wearing jeans and a T-shirt, I felt the spirit [sic] that must have been there when the Savior visited the new world. I found myself sobbing with joy that He cared enough to visit those other sheep” (1). Here she is relating a particularly meaningful experience she connected to reflexively during the pageant ritual. But then her experience shifts out of the past and into the present demonstrating the conflating between the pageant identities and her present self: “It reminds me that I am not forgotten. Ever” (1). Her perception of the experience and her pageant missionary identity continue to develop through these aftermath performance experiences. Aftermath RPM performances are also, in a real sense, new proselytizing activities wherein the participants perform their RPM identity for the community. What they seek is agreement and acknowledgment from the community. Such an influential process not only reinforces the community members’ faith and allegiance to the Church doctrines and practices but also to the Hill Cumorah Pageant and historic sites. Such exchanges have enormous potential for the development of a subculture, as communitas can create. This is why the Church took steps to institutionalize the Hill Cumorah Pageant and the pageant performance process, not to squelch the communitas but to ensure that such activities and subsequent beliefs and practices were still in line with the mainstream Church doctrines and practices. As the returned pageant missionaries relate their stories to their community, they also seek the ultimate community validation, conversion, when another member of the community so accepts the Hill Cumorah Pageant experience that s/he chooses to become a participant. And thus, the pageant performance process starts anew.

1

TP PT All of the details listed are taken from the “Cast Notebook,” pages 18-29. 2

TP PT Fifteen year-olds who want to be paired with a companion as a Welcomer rather than participate with their family are able to do so provided they fulfill the missionary training workshops and are given permission from the Pageant President. 3

TP PT “An Apostle’s Testimony” is a Church published pamphlet derived from an address by Apostle Russell M. Nelson that covers a wide spectrum of Church beliefs in a simple, yet systematic, way. 4

TP PT See also Richard Bauman and Patricia Sawin’s article “The Politics of Participation in Folklife Festivals” for another examination of interactive cultural performances that are similarly designed to “promulgate a symbolically constructed image of the popular foundations” of a culture. In this case, the folklife festivals represent the foundations of “American national culture drawn from the diverse ethnic, regional, and occupational groups that are seen to make up American Society” (289). 5

TP PT For this discussion I will not attempt to distinguish parade as a type of processional. For a more detailed definition of parade, especially as a uniquely American form of community celebration and performance, I recommend Mary Ryan’s “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order” in The New Cultural History: Studies on the History of Society and Culture. 6

TP PT In my letter soliciting responses from willing participants, I did not prompt for responses about community or the relationship with other members. I have included a copy of my letter in the appendix for further reference.

233 CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

When I teach Introduction to Theatre, I instruct my students at the start of the term that theatre should be evaluated as a unique art form rather than as the sum of its parts. Theatre should be appreciated by the harmony of its parts, by how the various elements come together to form a particular production. I then, of course, proceed to spend the rest of the term teaching them about the individual artists and elements involved in theatre. The only way I can rationalize this contradictory methodology is by bringing the various elements back into harmony at the end of the term. I reestablish that theatre works collectively and collaboratively as its own unique art form, different from the music, dance, literary, and visual elements used to create the performance. I also assert that for the students, understanding how the individual elements operate within the collective gives them ultimately an understanding and appreciation for the collective. In this dissertation, I have picked the Hill Cumorah Pageant apart to examine its very elements and processes. Now, I need to reassemble the parts in order to reestablish the production’s uniqueness as a collective. Rodger Sorensen’s words still haunt me, and I think serve as an access point to the very heart of the production. He states, “The fact is, we could do this anywhere” (16 Nov. 2000). If “this” involves only performing the pageant text, then Sorensen is correct. In fact, when Metten was first testing the text, he held readings at various locations in Salt Lake City (Metten, Personal interview). Theoretically, all of the pageant performance process could occur, perhaps not just anywhere, but at least outside the Hill Cumorah. Cast members could be assembled, a stage designated, costumes gathered, lights erected, and a sound system installed to perform America’s Witness for Christ. The production could even be called the Hill Cumorah Pageant, but that production would simply not be the same; it would not be the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The location is the one constant among all the areas I considered in the six chapters. The Hill Cumorah would be a sacred Mormon pilgrimage site with or without the pageant. In fact,

234 without the pageant, the Church might erect some other exhibit to coincide with the Moroni monument on top of the hill. Regardless, Mormons would visit Cumorah and reconstruct the historic events either formally as with the pageant or individually as so many do when they visit the Sacred Grove. But staging a performance on the hill d esignates that performance as a sacred and culturally significant event. By having a cultural performance, the production gathers members of the culture together to celebrate the culture communally. Creating the cultural performance in accordance with the sacred site creates a reflexive performance where those involved, spectator and participant, consider the fundamental cultural ideals and values. In this case, the performance literally recreates the most fundamental, cultural origination myths, causing the members of the culture to reconsider these beliefs as a collective and as individuals within the collective. In that liminal space, the culture and the individuals can transform. Staging the production at and in relation to Cumorah also brings members together to participate in and observe the pageant as pilgrims coming to worship at the holy site. Because pilgrimage as a process involves separation, transition, and incorporation, pilgrims at the liminal or transition stage when they reach the site are disposed to transformation. At some level, pilgrims travel to holy sites to be transformed spiritually by changing the nature of their worship practices and by entering into close proximity and imagination with sacred images, texts, narratives, and locations. The Hill Cumorah Pageant brings together two groups of Mormon pilgrims who use the pageant performance as a way to revive and invigorate the cultural narratives at the holy site: those who want to perform the ritual resurrection and those who empower them as representatives of the culture to vicariously do so. Besides the direct connection to Cumorah as a pilgrimage site, the Cumorah location also adds years of cultural performance tradition and practices to the modern performance. Cumorah has a long tradition as a site for Mormon cultural celebration, and those celebrations have traditionally included theatrical performance. That tradition of cultural celebration also adds to the present recognition the site receives. For instance, Catholic pilgrims travel to a site such as the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France for two important reasons. The Turners state that pilgrimage sites “are believed to be places where miracles once happened, still happen, and may happen again” (6). Lourdes is a site where many believe a miracle occurred. It is also a site where many believe miracles continue to occur. Pilgrims travel to Lourdes with faith both in the primary miracle and in recent miracles that demonstrate the sites ongoing viability. The two

235 elements feed each other; as ongoing miracles continue to manifest, believers’ faith in the original miracle also increases. Because the Hill Cumorah Pageant has an established tradition of cultural performance, the tradition feeds the site’s viability; it is a place of past and present miracles. The original Hill Cumorah Pageant incorporated missionary work into the performance. Missionaries performed the pageant and filled all the production areas. The missionaries established the performance as a missionary activity. When the Church replaced the missionaries with ordinary members, the missionary purposes continued. The participants are set apart and designated as missionaries while they perform the pageant. The missionary tradition that infused with the desire for cultural celebration as an impetus for creating the pageant continues as a purpose or even justification for the theatrical and ritual performance. But beyond the missionary purposes, the pageant exists at Cumorah as a way for members to perform and witness Mormonism. The missionary purpose actually enhances the cultural significance by creating an elevated cultural status for those who perform because of how the culture values missionary service. Performing Mormonism is an expression of communitas. The pageant traditions are grounded in communitas rather than official celebration. This tradition also feeds the site’s and production’s viability. Sub-cultural elements emerge from the communitas activities. What Charles Metten colorfully termed, “a self-religious kind of ‘hoodoo voodoo,’” describes the sub-cultural traditions and practices associated with the pageant. Despite the Church’s official institutionalization, communitas expression continues at the Hill Cumorah Pageant based in part on the pageant traditions. While I was there in 2000, I had cast members relate various miraculous, “faith promoting” stories such as that the pageant performance never gets rained out. Some even went further to tell me about specific years when the rain miraculously stopped just long enough for the performance, or when a leader prayed and commanded the rain to cease, which it apparently did more or less only over the pageant area. Actually, in the two years I was there, it never rained during any of the performances I saw despite several rainy afternoons. Ironically, rain poured during the initial performances of the revised pageant in 1988, and rain and flood conditions severely hampered the installation and operation of many of the major production pieces. What results is that all of these areas intertwine. Members come to the pageant either to perform or watch because of both the traditional cultural significance of the site and the modern

236 cultural significance of the pageant performance. Members come expecting to transform through observing or participating in the pageant. For those who perform, the transformation is more lasting and significant due to the extra time, sacrifice, and effort invested into the experience. But it’s more than just Cumorah or the pageant. The experience also distills the individual’s unique perception and beliefs, the Book of Mormon stories, the Joseph Smith narratives, the community of pageant participants, the sacred sites, the missionary service, the performing of sacred stories and personas, and the actual Hill Cumorah all into a combined experience. Discussing his own pageant experiences and transformations, Sorensen relates: I am unable, in the tapestry of my own existence, to separate my life from the experiences of Pageant. I cannot, could not ever do so. There will come a time when I will be released and will no longer be actively involved in participating in Pageant, but I will still be who I am because of my participation in Pageant. It is there that I first heard the Book of Mormon. It is there that I gained my testimony of what the Book of Mormon is. And, the telling of the stories of the Book of Mormon simply reinforces it year after year. And my commitment to the pageant causes me to again every year read the Book of Mormon again and again. And it’s because of that that I have such a firm solid testimony of the Book of Mormon. And then going back to those places year after year and standing in the grove, and standing in the cabins, and standing where the Restoration took place. They are true. They happened. They cannot be denied, or I would deny myself. And so, it cannot be separated and never will. (16 Nov. 2000) Sorensen describes how all the various pageant activities and influences, especially related to the pageant’s location, interrelate and infuse into his own faith and experience. Sorensen has been transformed not only through the pageant performance processes he has been involved in over the many years and in the several capacities he has held but also by the cultural significance of what he was doing and where he was doing it. Ultimately, for those involved both as spectators and as participants, the pageant transformations reflexively involve individuals’ personal beliefs and faith in the cultural narratives. The individuals reconsider their own faith in relation to what the pageant presents. Additionally, the pageant generates cultural unity as masses of members witness and perform Mormonism. Non-members as well, based on their own perspective, may be open to

237 transformation on the personal level and find they desire to join with the culture being performed. As for any lasting changes to cultural status, the pageant does not create such status changes on the official organizational level. Instead cultural status or better community status changes occur in unofficial communitas designations as local members esteem those who attend and especially perform in the pageant. The Turners describe similar scenarios for other returning pilgrims: “Again, in antithesis with the status climbing implicit in both tribal initiation and affliction ritual, the Christian pilgrim experiences no rise in status. His moral standing in the community may be increased, but often at the expense of his economic standing.” For example, the Turners describe that “in medieval Christian countries, the returned pilgrim, though perhaps outwardly acclaimed for his deepened piety, may have actually set back his chances of preferment to positions of higher office or trust, through his long absence” (15). When pilgrims return, the reincorporation actually involves reintegrating with two communities, the secular community and the religious community. For medieval pilgrims, the secular community was generally more connected to the religious community than is the case for modern pilgrims. The Turners state, “Yet there has undoubtedly accrued to the pilgrim a heightened respect and moral standing among the pious in the local community, as well as a raising of his own morale. These rewards,” they explain, “tend to fall within the orbit of communitas rather than social structure and make the pilgrim a primus inter pares, not a person of higher rank” (15). What the Turners describe is the dichotomy of communities in that the religious community acknowledges and even acclaims spiritual growth, but often the secular community offers no such accolades or even regard. More often, consequences ensue in the secular community that come with any absence, such as a waiting work pile, an inbox full of emails, and at times even the resentment of others. Respect and status change come from within the religious community. Pageant spectators who travel extended distances to view the pageant meet with such acknowledgement from their individual congregations and circle of member friends. When my family and I returned from visiting many Church sites and seeing the pageant, we received no formal recognition from the Church, but the individual members wanted to hear about our experiences. Those who had visited these places reminisced about their own experiences, and there was a shared bond. Those who had not been to the pageant expressed their own desire to see it for themselves. Whenever we discussed our trip and the pageant, it was understood that we

238 were also expected to express how this experience increased our faith. As the Turners describe, this incorporation into the religious community involves communitas activities rather than a formalized elevation in status. For Mormon pilgrims who are mere spectators, however, even communitas accolades are rather limited. Such a pilgrimage does not require significant sacrifice and is, therefore, not especially remarkable. Pageant participants’ sacrifice is significantly greater in time, resources, and effort; therefore, the community values this experience significantly more. The pageant participants as RPMs may wield significant influence among members of their own religious communities. Because these status elevations relate to communitas rather than official cultural recognition, again the possibility of sub-culture exists. As members participate in the pageant transformations and share their experiences, the pageant generates a growing influence. Sorensen describes such a process with a hopeful eye toward such a sub-culture: They come there, they experience it, and they go back to their homes. And because they are never the same, and never will be the same again, they begin to influence, like threads in a tapestry, the entire makeup of the Church. And they go back out, and that’s where the important things are happening. Yes, it’s important what happens here [Hill Cumorah]. But what happens is that this community then enlarges and distributes and becomes seeds for other communities, for wards and stakes. They become planted and they grow and, so to mix the two metaphors together, they become threads that . . . they take themselves back, and they add to the tapestries that are now all other wards and stakes that are tied directly back into the Hill Cumorah and to the Sacred Grove. And, then they, to use the other metaphor, they are seeds that go out and get planted. And they enlarge and grow, and they become plants within their communities, which texture the communities themselves. (16 Nov. 2000) The returned pageant spectators and especially the RPMs use their community influence as threads or seeds—either metaphor conveys the sense of exerting an influence among the community. RPMs often speak formally in church services about their experiences and speak often informally to attentive audiences. Ultimately, these communitas exchanges reinforce returned participants’ status and furthers a sub-culture committed not just to the Church but also to the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Sorensen does not perceive a threat from such a sub-culture; because, like the Church, the pageant proclaims the gospel and perfects the saints, the sub-

239 culture reinforces the dominant culture. By formalizing the pageant performance and processes, the Church tries to govern the Hill Cumorah Pageant sub-culture, keep it from the “hoodoo voodoo”; however, any sub-culture ultimately may present alternatives and diversions from the dominant culture and may cause the dominant culture to adjust accordingly.

Beyond the Hill Cumorah Pageant

As I have analyzed the Hill Cumorah Pageant and discussed the particulars of its uniqueness, I have personally considered several other productions I have seen, studied, or been a part of. I realize that any production has unique elements. I believe that the methodology I have used to examine the Hill Cumorah Pageant presents a useful means to consider other types of theatre and cultural performance. Any production has a unique context that affects the nature of the performance. Audience dynamics and demographics affect productions as well as area cultural traditions and the perspectives, values, and vested interests of the various of those involved in the production. As a theatre historian, I try to consider a play’s cultural context and relevance. I recognize how political power, dominant religion, and social institutions and mores affect the nature of the performances that emerge or even whether they do. And yet, I find from this study that more can be taken into consideration, including the specific relationship to performance location, the spectator’s relationship to the location, to the text, and to the 1

performers.TP PT I also believe, as Schechner contends, that more scholars can more fully consider the nature of the performance process. Schechner tries to expand his process as an umbrella to encompass all types of performance. While inclusion has useful benefits, I think more can be gained by then considering not just how a production functions as a type of performance but how a production particularly and unique ly functions as a specific performance. In other words, by modifying Schechner’s model so that it pertained specifically to the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the process revealed elements specific and unique to that cultural performance. I also believe as a dramaturg that such examinations do not need to be retrospective. Upcoming productions can more particularly consider and analyze such particulars as well as the production goals and director’s concept to create a production where the performance becomes more effective at communicating its stories and themes for the particular audience in the particular space at a particular cultural moment.

240 Because my study also overlaps into Mormon Studies areas, I believe my study presents other Mormon scholars areas to consider further investigation. Turner’s theories on liminality, ritual, reflexivity, cultural performance, and social dramas present theoretical lenses that can reveal Mormon cultural processes and functions. Understanding how these processes operate should not present a threat to the culture’s beliefs. Demystifying does not always entail attaching judgment and value assessment nor need it destroy faith. Understand ing, for instance, how missionary service operates as a passage ritual for young members and how that passage ritual requires particular methods of cultural performance and identity transformation can also improve the efficiency and efficacy of that ritual process. I also believe that within the specific area of performance studies there is certainly opportunity to further investigate Mormon cultural performance and representation. Regarding how this could apply to Mormon performance, I reconsider the Hill Cumorah Pageant. I like the pageant and what it does. And yet, now that I better understand how it operates I see how the pageant at times fails to be effective theatre, ritual, or missionary proselytizing. Understanding the diverse pageant functions can help to create a better performance. Sorensen even with the limits created by the recorded text continually reconsidered how the pageant could improve. Circumspection should be productive; criticism need not be censure.

1

TP PT Stephen Eddy Snow provides an interesting examination of Plimouth Plantation that similarly applies Turner’s and Schechner’s theories to define and detail the various cultural performances and exhibits in relationship to American culture, mythology, and ideology.

241 APPENDIX A

Copyright Permission

242

243

244

245 246

247

248 APPENDIX B

Human Subjects Research Approval and Sample Forms

249

250

251

252

253

254 APPENDIX C

Letter Sent To Hill Cumorah Pageant Cast Members in 2000 Who Signed a Contact List

November 6, 2006 Dear «First_Name», Thank you for adding your name to the list of people willing to have me contact them about the Hill Cumorah Pageant. I am very impressed with the pageant, and thoroughly enjoyed the week I spent in Palmyra observing the pageant and interviewing the Presidency, production staff, and participants. As a reminder, I am a doctoral student in Theatre at Florida State University. I am writing my dissertation on the Hill Cumorah and City of Joseph Pageants and also their connection to the local Church Historic Sites. I am interested in getting some particular information from you about your experience in the pageant. I have included a self-addressed, stamped envelope to aid you in your response. If you prefer, you may also email your response. I know some of you I spoke with in person, or had you speak to my tape recorder, and so some of what I’m asking for may seem redundant; however, now that the pageant is over, you may have a somewhat different perspective on things. At any rate, please respond back to me with the following information: 1. Your name and the number and names of those in your family that participated in the pageant. 2. The ages of children who participated from your family. 3. The roles or staff positions each of you played or fulfilled (i.e. Lemuel, Work Crew, etc.). 4. Tell me if this is your first time participating with the pageant, or how many other times you have participated. 5. Tell me why you chose to participate, and how you got the information on the pageant. 6. Tell me about your experience in the pageant. Please feel free to share any particular experiences you especially will remember—good or bad. 7. Tell me about any previous theatrical experience you have had prior to the pageant. 8. If you were a cast member, please tell me about your experience portraying a character from the Book of Mormon; please comment on character, costume, and the situations of the scenes. 9. Finally, please tell me about your experiences with audience members in the preshow. Feel free to share any particular experiences you found notable. Thank you again for sharing your experiences with me. They are of great worth to me with my research work. I chose this topic because I have always had a great love for the Gospel and a

255 love of theatre. This topic allows me to investigate a unique relationship between theatre and the Gospel. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my topic or what I am looking for. Sincerely,

256

REFERENCES

Ahern, Rel. Personal interview. 8 July 2000.

---. “Pageant.” Email to the author. 17 Sep. 2000.

Anderson, Paul L. “Heroic Nostalgia: Enshrining the Mormon Past.” Sunstone. July-Aug. 1980: 47-55.

Argetsinger, Gerald S. “History of the Hill Cumorah Pageant.” “Cast Notebook: 2000 Hill Cumorah Pageant.” Comps. Wayne A. Lehman, James C. Cecil, II, Raymond J. Crystal, and Rodger Sorensen. Unpublished notebook, 2000.

Arnold, Douglas. Personal interview. 8 July 2000.

Arnold, Chirley. Personal interview. 8 July 2000.

Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge, 1999.

Bauman, Richard and Patricia Sawin. “The Politics of Participation in Folklife Festivals.” Exhibiting Cultures. Eds. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine. Washington DC: Smithsonian, 1991. 288-313.

Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. London: Routledge, 1997.

Bitton, Davis. The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1994.

The Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989.

“Book of Mormon Historic Publication Site/Grandin Printing Shop.” HillCumorah.org. Visitors Centers and Historic Sites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Palmyra, New York and Vicinity. 16 Jan. 2006 < http://www.hillcumorah.org/grandin.asp>.

Boyden, Walter E. Jr. “The Road to the Hill Cumorah.” Diss. Brigham Young U, 1982.

Burnham, Paul. Personal interview. 8 July 2000.

Carlson, Marvin. Performance: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 1996.

257 “Cast Notebook: 2000 Hill Cumorah Pageant.” Comps. Wayne A. Lehman, James C. Cecil, II, Raymond J. Crystal, and Rodger Sorensen. Unpublished notebook, 2000.

Cecil, James. Personal interview. 4 July 2000.

Christensen, Alice. Personal interview. 8 July 2000.

Christensen, Marvin. Personal interview. 8 July 2000.

nd

Church Educational System. Church History in the Fulness of Times: Student Manual. 2P P ed. Salt Lake City, Utah: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989. 16 Jan. 2006 .

Crockett, Thomas. Letter to the author. 23 Sep. 2000.

“Conversation: Church Historical Sites.” “News of the Church.” Ensign. July 1996: 79. 16 Jan. 2006 .

Diamond, Elin. Introduction. Performance and Cultural Politics. Ed. Diamond. London: Routledge, 1996. 1-12.

The Doctrine and Covenants. Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989.

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263 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

James A. Bell was born in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, where he spent the majority of his early life. He graduated Salutatorian from San Dimas High School in 1986. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre in 1994. He served a two year voluntary mission to the Ireland Dublin Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1987 to 1989. During his graduate studies at Florida State University, Bell worked as the Director of Academic Services for the Florida State University School of Theatre from 1996 through 1998. In 1999, he served as the Academic Coordinator for the School of Theatre in lieu of an Academic Dean. From 2001 through 2004, Bell taught at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida, first as an adjunct, and then as a part-time and full-time visiting assistant professor. In 2004, he relocated to Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, where he is presently a visiting assistant professor. During his years of teaching, he has taught introductory theatre courses, play production, play analysis, theatre history, playwriting, and dramaturgy. Since 2005, he has also served as the Managing Director for the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival. Bell is also a dramaturg and playwright. As a dramaturg, he has worked on numerous productions everywhere he has been since starting graduate school and has provided resident dramaturgy support to the theatre programs. As a playwright, his first play Prisoner was produced in 1993 at Brigham Young University. He was named the 1994 Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival National Student Playwriting Award Winner for Prisoner, which was subsequently performed at the Kennedy Center and has been published by Samuel French, Inc. His play Good Riddance was given a staged reading in 1995 as part of the Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His most recent play, Autumn in the Valley (co-written with his brother, Dr. John Bell), was developed and performed as a staged reading in 1999 at the Utah Shakespearean Festival Plays in Progress series. Autumn in the Valley will receive its premiere production in November 2006 at Grand Valley State University. James Bell has been happily married to Nancy Stephens Bell since 1990, and they are the parents of four children.

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