Call me Ishmael

A free bumper sticker to whomever can guess who this man is:

If you couldn’t tell, it’s me, dressed up in costume for the Hill Cumorah pageant put on in Palmyra, N.Y. by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The costume, called a kytoneth, was hot and the beard was extremely itchy, but I was told that it was as near to the real clothing of ancient Palestine as possible. The clothes and beards were all hand-made by devoted Mormon women, often with painstaking detail and a penchant for ingenuity. Curlicues in staffs were made of spare rubber and the hats of wise men were made of pillows, for example. And from afar, they looked as real as anything.

I was sort-of playing Ishmael, one of the patriarchs of the two families who left Jerusalem in 600 B.C. according to the Book of Mormon. By “sort-of,” I mean I was just following the man who was really playing him. The pageant starts tomorrow and runs through next week, so today was a long dress rehearsal and I basically stayed out of the way.

In the scene where I was shadowing, the families of Ishmael and Lehi board a boat that was built at prophet Nephi’s behest, as God told him that Jerusalem was to be destroyed. As they set sail for what would be America, the families celebrated by tossing a child in the air:

When they hit the open seas, however, some of the sons of Lehi revolted against Nephi, causing a divine storm which was only quelled by the supplications of Nephi. This set the stage for later events central to the Book of Mormon, where the followers of Nephi, the Nephites, are destroyed by the followers of the evil brothers, the Lamanites.

But I digress. I’m going to see the actual show tomorrow, and should have better pics and juicier details. Right now, I’m just happy to have a picture of me in weird garb to put on Facebook.