The Mastery of Questions

Every year, I consider it my duty as a Laguna Beach citizen to get dressed up, drink lots of wine and review the Pageant of the Masters. This year, however, I came very close to doing more than that when my seven-year old daughter got off the school bus one day and announced, “I want to be in the Pageant of the Masters.” One of her best friends had been in it last year and was going to audition.

“This kind of decision calls for a family meeting,” I diplomatically replied.

And so the questions began. “Can I be in the Pageant of the Masters, Daddy?”

“What does that mean?”

“Seven days on, seven days off,” I explained. “In the evenings.”

“No,” my husband said, “No way.”

I shrugged my shoulders and gave my daughter the ‘final answer’ look.

The ‘but why’ whine began immediately. “But why? I will miss all the fun.”

“No, you will miss our vacation where we eat lots of candy and go swimming in the largest pool ever,” I explained, which basically ended the meeting.

Last week, my husband and I attended the pageant, a small cultural miracle since my husband has refused to go ever since we moved to Laguna. “I grew up in Brooklyn and never went to the Statue of Liberty, I don’t need to go the Pageant.” That is, not until the office goes.

As we sat down, the beautiful setting blew him away. When driving past it daily, you don’t realize the Festival of Arts Theater is a magical place where I envision fairies dancing and Willie Nelson singing. That is why it always seems so strange to watch a series of tableaux vivant, living pictures, where nothing moves, not even the actors’ eyes.

“How long can people not blink?” I asked the eye doctors sitting around me.

“If you sever the facial nerves, forever,” someone said. A bit of doctor humor, I suppose. In perfect taste considering the show opens with a tribute to Shakespeare. The tableaux vivants quickly moved on to Gilbert and Sullivan and some live Mikado entertainment to wake up all the tourists who sat out in the sun all day.

Art Deco figurines, always a Pageant favorite, appeared without the customary nudity, disappointing a few patrons with the high-end binoculars. My favorite piece came next-The Passing Leap by John Steuart Curry. An ode to the Brothers Karamazov, three men fly through the sky with one man practically hanging upside down. When it ended, my husband whispered, “That one was short because he couldn’t maintain that position very long.” Our friend sitting on the other side of me whispered, “After seeing the Pageant several times, it’s becomes not a question of how, but why,” which sent me into absolute hysterics.

The second act flew by in cultural leaps and bounds that I couldn’t connect together. This happens to me every year and I always contemplate if it is the script or that it is past my bedtime.  La Fontaine des Mers, the final number before The Last Supper, finally featured some bare breasted women. My question was not ‘how’ or ‘why,’ but whether the women had ever breastfed. After binocular examination, I decided ‘no,’ but then one should never underestimate the power of make-up and good lighting.

As The Last Supper appeared, I thought of Mary Magdalene, The DaVinici Code and how I really want to go to Italy next summer. As we headed home to pay the babysitter, I visualized a family meeting with a final answer of ‘yes to Italy.’ We will then have to answer many forms of ‘how,’ but never the question of why.