The Summer Solstice Pageant on Saturday evening of the Wooden Boat Show is one of the highlights of the weekend. Top: Last year local kids were part of a beaver brigade in the spoof about our international border blocking the arrival of the Queen of the Siscowet. Left: Will the narrator return this year as the pageant lampoons the census bureau?
One of the highlights of the weekend festivities is the Summer Solstice Pageant featuring Good Harbor Hill Players and members of GAMEPALAJ.
According to Betsy Bowen, GAMEPALAJ
(an acronym for Gospel and Mother Earth and Peace and Love and Justice) is “a group of local musicians who play eclectic music on a wide variety of musical instruments for festivals and pageants like this one.”
Bowen is one of the leaders of the Good Harbor Hill Players, who are in their 13th year of performing in this Solstice puppet pageant.
“This year’s theme for the Solstice Pageant is inspired by the census,” said Bowen with more than a tinge of humor in her voice.
Good Harbor Hill Players was founded in 1999 and is dedicated to artistic expression, community involvement and large-scale pageantry infused by northern story telling and folklore. The all-volunteer, locally-based puppet company is inspired by the Heart of the Beast Puppet &
Mask Theatre
in Minneapolis & Peter Schumann’s Bread &
Puppet Theatre
begun in the 1950s, now based in Vermont.
Dressed in colorful costumes, many walking on stilts, performers re-create the wedding between the Sun King and the Queen of the Siscowet.
Scandinavian legend depicts the solstice as a time when cracks open between the upper world of light and goodness and lower world of darkness and mischief.
The sun king on stilts represents the upper world of the sun, while the Queen of the Siscowet represents the lower world of the fat herring we call ciscoes—pulled from the cold, black watery depths.
The “wedding” is goofy, fun, a wonderful way to—for a moment anyway—balance the universe.
The pageant will begin at 8 p.m. on the shore at North House Folk School.
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