When Pageants Were THE Thing: A Brief Look at Historical Pageantry & Tableaux in Upstate NY
Do you remember the scene in the Broadway musical & film "The Music Man" when the mayor's wife, Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn, and the ladies dance committee perform "One Grecian urn"? That small, humorous scene was actually part of a much larger late 19th and early 20th century trend that included elocution & recitation, tableaux, pageantry, the Chautauqua, and exercise for girls and women. Pageants and tableaux viviants (French for living pictures) were very popular forms of ent