Nauvoo Pageant, night 4

Today began, as usual, with my waking up late in the morning. We did little until attending a vignette put on by some pageant cast members—"Letters of Joseph and Emma." It was somewhat underwhelming. I don't know how you can accurately portray the relationship between Joseph and Emma without mentioning the strain that polygamy caused. Thence we went to a talent show performed by the members of the Red Cast. We performed nothing, partly because we expected the other families to be a bit more serious about their talents than we were. This turned out not to be the case. It did remind me that I miss playing the piano, though.

Afterwards, my father and I attended another vignette, this one of excerpts from the King Follett Discourse. I liked it much better than the Joseph/Emma bit, although it too elided some of the more difficult doctrines taught in the sermon. I am impressed at Jeff Dickamore's ability to memorize such great swaths of the speech as he did. Then dinner and cast meeting. Referrals are good. But this time we're not telling you numbers. Because numbers are bad.

Preshow. This time, I partnered with my father to go talk with people. He's considerably better at that than I. I didn't say too much, and we got zero referrals, though not for lack of trying. (My dad is not particularly gung-ho about referrals, either, though.) And we had the pageant. Maybe I should describe it sometime, but not now. It's 1:30 here. After the pageant, we again got zero referrals. It's rather amazing how quickly the seating empties after the show ends.

But the night wasn't over yet. No, for we had the FAMILY DANCE. We headed over to the junior high school gym for an hour and a half of RAUCOUS PARTYING. And really not a whole lot of dancing, at least, not on everyone's part. We did a few of the basic line dances, a couple of slow dances, and a jitterbug, but most of the time was taken by THE DANCE OFF. Divided both by age and gender, contestants competed for the title of best dancer. All of the male contestants in the over 20 group happened to be core cast members. It was rather interesting to watch Brigham Young, Hyrum Smith, and Heber C. Kimball duke it out on the dance floor. (And MY DISTRICT LEADER won.) Brigham did the worm. One of the pageant work crew won the overall title; he was insanely good. Then we had NAUVOO IDOL, a karaoke competition. The winning team (out of four) ended up consisting of core cast members: Brigham, Heber, Hyrum, and whatever Brigham's wife's name was. THEN the night was over.

And now the night is really over; I'm going to another vignette at 8 AM and it's almost 2.