Performing Mormonism: The Hill Cumorah Pageant as Transformational Theatrical Ritual

• Other Authors: Bell, James A. (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Religion; Theater
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-1311

The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a large-scale Mormon cultural performance that has the power both to identify the primary Church doctrines and to transform those who witness and participate in its performance. The pageant performance uses traditional Western theatrical performance elements as a medium to recreate ritually the Church's founding narratives; the performance thus combines theatre's power to transform temporarily the spectators and performers with ritual's power to transform permanently all participants' cultural and personal identity. The pageant also uses the cultural designation of "missionary" to intertwine Church missionary practices and purposes to further define the culture and to use the pageant performance to proselytize for the Church. In this dissertation, I analyze how these different processes and purposes combine to create a performance that is one part theatre, one part ritual, and one part missionary proselytizing, and wholly not exactly any of its parts. By combining these purposes and processes, the pageant creates an amalgamation that possesses qualities from each but by combining them ultimately creates a performance medium and experience that is different and unique. My analysis considers multiple aspects of the pageant performance. One key aspect common to theatre, ritual, and missionary work is transformation. Rituals generally are defined as efficacious, which means that rituals can create lasting transformations for participants in the ritual and for those who observe a community ritual performance. Theatre is illusionary and imitates life. Theatre may profoundly affect spectators, but as far as the performers who play different characters, the performers resume their pre-performance identities following the performance. Thus, actor transformations in theatre are primarily temporary. Missionary proselytizing work involves trying to convert or transform non-members into members. Proselytizing practices certainly can include performance, can include missionaries performing texts in order to present ideas they wish investigators to accept, and missionaries performing behavior they wish investigators to believe or even learn and adopt. My work examines and demonstrates how the pageant performance transforms both the spectators and the participants through complex, multipurpose processes. === A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Theatre in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Fall Semester, 2006. === October 17, 2006. === Cultural Performance, Rodger Sorensen, James Bell, LDS, Latter-day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, Mormonism, Ritual, Theatrical, Missionary === Includes bibliographical references. === Carrie Sandahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joseph K. Torgesen, Outside Committee Member; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member.