Catalina Island Easter Pageant

Easter Pageant

In the late 1920s, Catalina Island began a beloved Easter observance. Every Easter Sunday before dawn, worshippers made their way up Buena Vista Point beneath a star-filled sky, led by starlight and the solemn bells sounding from the Chimes Tower above Avalon.

As morning broke, Buena Vista Point—among the first island locations touched by sunrise—served as the setting for a reverent dramatization of the resurrection of Christ.

Residents of Avalon appeared in robes and period costumes, presenting the sacred story beside an aged stone arch, a modest dirt platform, and hillside terraces cut into the slope. Hundreds of Easter lilies, grown on Catalina Island, surrounded the scene and brought natural beauty to the devotional setting.

The pageant stopped during World War II and made a short return in the 1960s. Its memory remains part of Catalina’s most tender and scenic traditions.

Catalina Islander Newspaper

Source: http://cat.stparchive.com/Archive/CAT/CAT04211938P01.php

Thursday, April 21, 1938

Easter Morning Tableau at Buena Vista Park

Buena Vista Park hosted a large congregation for resurrection services

By Alma Overholt

At Buena Vista Park, above Avalon Bay, landscape gardeners had transformed the setting into a scene representing the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea. As mockingbirds sang from nearby trees, the Resurrection tableau was presented while sunrise spread across the blue Pacific toward the Easter Cross on Santa Catalina Island.

Organizers had prepared for a full congregation, but attendance exceeded expectations. People filled the hillsides and every available rocky outlook. Down on Avalon Bay and along the Island coast toward the Isthmus, many yachts lay at anchor while Easter sunrise services were watched from their decks.

The early sun illuminated the living scenes as the Easter story carried the quiet crowd back to the first Easter morning 2000 years ago. Earle Pollok led a responsive reading from St. Luke 24:1-9, followed by the Prophet's Vision, with Isaiah portrayed by Malcolm Renton. Dr. John Barron Toomay, pastor of the Avalon Community Congregational Church, narrated the sequence of tableaux.

Mrs. Toomay appeared as Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the second episode. Kay Marincovich portrayed Mary Magdalene as the women approached the Holy Sepulchre with spices to anoint the body of Christ. When they discovered the stone rolled away, Irene Biller, as the Angel of the Lord, announced that the Lord had Risen and told them not to weep.

Between tableaux, S.E. Carpenter and Ralph M. Heywood performed solos. At the conclusion, the Avalon Community Church choir led the congregation in singing Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

Peggy Wiseman directed the pageant, which was presented under the auspices of the Mary Williams Club. Plans called for the Easter Sunrise pageant at Santa Catalina Island to become an annual institution, with selection for the cast considered an honor among Avalon residents, in a manner compared to the Passion Play of Oberammergau.