Pageant of the Masters 2016. Photo by NBC Los Angeles.
Los Angeles has a reputation for being fake, which is unsurprising since around 120,000 Angelenos are employed by the motion picture industry: an industry that consists solely of making fake things seem real. It's somewhat hypocritical, then, when the residents of Los Angeles County look down on those of Orange County for being artificial. Orange County has a reputation for ersatz housing developments, pristine shopping malls, and plastic surgery. It is also the home of Disneyland, the most unreal of the unreal. Maybe Orange County makes Los Angeles feel self-conscious because while both are equally make-believe, Orange County seems to actually embrace it.
Pageant of the Masters is an incredible example of this. Held in Laguna Beach for eight weeks every summer, it is a theatrical performance during which heavily costumed and makeup-ed actors depict works of art with a live orchestra providing the soundtrack. One after another, life-sized replicas of paintings and sculptures appear on the stage at the open-air Irvine Bowl as a narrator describes highlights from three centuries of art. The audience members, many wrapped in blankets or peering through binoculars, are rapt, unable to blink because they'll miss one of the few seconds each piece is displayed. That's what they have in common with the actors: they can't blink either, because they're pretending to be two-dimensional. It is, as KCET described, “beyond weird,” and it's definitely meta. Even more meta is watching an episode of a TV show of a theatrical performance of a painting. Pageant of the Masters has been portrayed on Gilmore Girls as the “Festival of Living Art” and on Arrested Development as the “Living Classics Pageant.” When I saw the Pageant for the first time recently, I was disappointed that none of the actors appeared to be wearing cutoff jean shorts.
Entrance to Pageant of the Masters. Photo by Ethan Prater via Flickr.
Remarkably, Pageant of the Masters has been a tradition since 1932. Laguna Beach was established as an artists' colony around 1900, and had enjoyed many years as a popular tourist destination due to its gorgeous coastline. But the Great Depression hit it hard and tourism dwindled. An art festival was put on to coincide with the tail end of the 1932 Olympics in neighboring Los Angeles, in the hopes that Olympics-goers would stop by Laguna Beach to see the festival before they left town. A focal point of the show was a display of locals dressed in costumes and sitting behind a massive picture frame. Pageant of the Masters was born.
Rehearsals and casting for the show begin in January of each year. Around 500 volunteers serve as actors, set designers, costumers, and make-up artists. (Read this 2014 New York Times article for a glimpse behind the scenes and some great photos.) Each year's Pageant has a theme; this year it was “Partners.” Most of the artwork shown represented partners of some sort, not all of them artistic. This included the Wright brothers, Lewis and Clark, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A long sequence dedicated to musical theater showed dance routines from Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, and several others.
At one point a pirate movie was mentioned (I forget which one – Treasure Island? Captain Blood?) and a pirate on a zipline appeared high above us, swashbuckling as he careened to the other side of the amphitheater. It was entertaining but it was random, which seemed to be an unfortunate motif of the show. One moment we were listening to a narrator attempting a cringe-worthy Mexican accent as he quoted lines from Don Quixote, the next moment we were plunged into a stuffy narrative about chemists Marie-Anne and Antoine Laviosier. No one seemed to bat an eye as the marriage of 13-year-old Marie-Anne to 28-year-old Antoine was glorified as a romance made in heaven. Social inappropriateness notwithstanding, the performances and the artwork were well-executed and often elicited “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd. My favorite segment, a tribute to David Hockney, was kind of vague as to how it incorporated the partners theme, but his “Portrait of Nick Wilder” and “The Collectors” were startlingly real. The final piece is the one thing that has stayed the same throughout the Pageant's near-80-year history: The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.
This “idiosyncratic Cuisinarting of the high, the low and the antiquated – all in a single serving of theater” should be seen at least once in everyone's lifetime, if anything because it's such a unique Southern California tradition.
The show begins right after Independence Day and runs until Labor Day, with tickets ranging from $25-$200. Parking can be expensive, so it's recommended to park in a remote lot and take the trolley, or arrive a couple hours early and park at a meter. For more sights to see in Laguna Beach, read this blog post about the city’s beaches and art galleries.