RURAL DRAMA 247 



rehearsal and away from it, lo ! one day he thought of lines far 

 more characterizing than those he had originally been given. 

 Moreover the pageant that does not reveal unexpected powers in 

 more than one youth, and perhaps determine a later career, is 

 unusual. A pageant is to the artistic youth of the community 

 a great opportunity for self-revelation. 



The most essential matters in preparing for a pageant are text 

 and trainer. To handle a mixed crowd of several hundred men, 

 women and children so as to discover and reveal to them any ar- 

 tistic power they may possess, so as to keep them contented and 

 even happy when working hard, and so as to get ultimate order 

 out of original chaos, may require the trained hand. It is prob- 

 ably safer, therefore, to call on somebody experienced in this 

 work, and to pay him or her well. If, however, there is any 

 man or woman in the community who feels competent to pro- 

 vide the text don't put that person aside until an outline of 

 what he or she wishes to do has been considered by the commit- 

 tee, or, better still, passed on by some person experienced in 

 pageantry. If several people prepare the text, rather than have 

 it ineffective let the pageant master decide whether the scenes 

 may stand as written or should be simply the basis of a rework- 

 ing by him or some other skilled hand. 



Indeed writing pageants is not so easy as many seem to think. 

 Given outdoors or in large halls the pageant cannot depend to 

 the extent the play can on the spoken word. Pantomime of a 

 large, free sort, choral effects and processioning must in many 

 instances replace the spoken word. 



A pageant should as far as possible have some unity of idea, 

 to bind part with part and to give it meaning as a whole. Audi- 

 ences do not like evenings of one-act plays. Nor, in a pageant, 

 do they like a dozen one-act episodes of singing, dancing or act- 

 ing. Let the early parts of the pageant create interest for later 

 parts, arouse query. Carry some characters over from episode 

 to episode or division to division ; contrast similar conditions in 

 different periods. In brief, bind the parts together all you can. 

 But it is meaning as a whole that a pageant most needs, for one 

 of the great dangers of American pageantry to-day is commer- 

 cialism. Commercialism means that instead of writing a pag- 

 eant for each place growing out of its peculiar history, interests 



