The Pageant

I know that you thought I was done with the Nauvoo posts, but I hadn't posted this last one because I was having trouble getting the videos in the right format and I really wanted to include them.  I think I finally figured it out and learned something new in the process.  Here is the final Nauvoo post:

Here's a brief description of the pageant from http://www.nauvoopageant.org/:

"Narrated by Parley P. Pratt, the pageant emphasizes the prophetic mission of Joseph Smith and honors the sacrifice, faith and courage of the Saints who gave their all to build a city and a temple to their God.


The pageant is filled with authentic hymns and folksongs, lively dances and tender moments that share the joy these early Saints found in living Christ's gospel. Through words taken from journals, sermons and historic records of the period, the pageant invites all to feel the powerful testimonies of these faithful Saints."

I wasn't able to get many pictures of the pageant itself because of it being dark and we were not close enough to the stage any night except the first to get good pictures (which was the night I forgot my camera). The last night, however, I went closer up and captured some video of which I will try to share a few clips on here. 
This first clip is where Joseph Smith announces the temple and the celebration that follows.  My dad is one of the men carrying the guns with the full white hair.  My mom is with the dancing women (one of the shortest ones), and Alex and his cousin, Colton, are both carrying flags.  Alex has the yellow one, and Colton is one away from Alex with the purple flag.

Through most of the pageant, the saints were working on building the temple.  In this next clip, I show parts of them building the temple.  You can see Alex in the very beginning in the front right next to the one who plays Joseph Smith and then he shakes his hand after they get the section of the temple up.  Then later, it shows them putting the rest of the temple up.  It was pretty cool.

Each night before the Frontier Country Fair, we had a cast meeting which lasted about 45 minutes and was kind of a devotional.  This is Ashlyn during the meeting one night.  I stole this from my sister's blog because this was how most of the little kids looked during the devotional.  We were busy all day and up until 11pm each night after finishing the pageant.  It wore the kids out, so this was the quiet time for them to sneak in a nap.  I think Jarem slept during the cast meeting nearly every night (which was probably a good thing because then he was renewed with energy for the fair and pageant).

This is a view of everyone on stage during the pageant.  There were probably 140-150 cast members performing at any one performance.  20 of them were core cast which stayed the whole month of July and had the majority of the speaking and singing parts, and the rest were family cast which rotate for 2 week intervals overlapping one week with the incoming family cast.

Part of the story of the pageant was the building of the original Nauvoo temple.  This is the very end of the show where the Lairds are taking one last look at the completed temple that they built throughout the show before leaving.  The Lairds had migrated from Scotland in the beginning of the show.  Robert Laird says, "This temple is the highlands of heaven". 

This is my sister's family watching the pageant.  You can see Tessa sitting on the end.  We all sat together each night during the pageant.