Pageant of the Masters 2011: Only Make Believe

I didn't know about this at the time but apparently this year's Pageant of the Masters theme, from the Festival of the Arts in Laguna Beach, CA was Fantasy. Specifically, "Only Make Believe."

[If you don't know what Pageant of the Masters is, it's essentially where they take live people and turn them into famous works of art, on stage for a sit down show/performance. Each actor is made up to blend into the painting - which is also reproduced person-sized, complete with prop pieces to help the actors blend in - and they must hold their pose for 90 seconds at a time while the story of the painting is told to the strains of a live orchestra. Neat stuff!]

This would have been wonderful to see in person. Apart from a simply awe-inspiring show and feat of art this year they apparently had Edmund Dulac's Cinderella With Fairy Godmother* AND Cinderella Sitting In The Ashes (please see note at end of post), along with Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Arabian Nights and many more (the videos show the most variety of pieces.)

 Here's a video with some of the behind-the-scenes work put into the Cinderella paintings/ performances, though this is from 2007. (I'm a little confused - did they duplicate this one for the 2011 show? See my additional note at the end of the post):

From fairies to superheros, here's another to give us a preview (now, a post-view!) of what people could expect to see:

Luckily there are a few photos from around the web to give us some closer and more specific glimpses, though why I can't find some decent ones of the Cinderella pieces is (frustratingly) beyond me.

And because I couldn't get enough glimpses myself (and thought perhaps you couldn't either) this news spot video shows some different works again:

There's so much work that goes into duplicating these paintings and making a 90 minute show. It's quite phenomenal. While I'm sad to have missed this year's works of Rackham, Dulac and many more, the Pageant of the Master's is definitely on my to-do list before I leave LA (whichever year that will be).

Pageant of the Masters happens every year in Laguna Beach, near Los Angeles. Next year's theme (2012) is "Genius".

 

*I've found a weird anomaly of a Dulac Pageant of the Masters photo from an earlier year, though the  program and promo videos and photos clearly showed Cinderella in the Ashes by Dulac happening in 2011. In one of the videos the two painting-performances are shown side by side so I'm a little confused by this one!