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“More Precious
than Gold”
The Sacramento California Temple Youth Cultural Celebration, Part
2
(continued from Part
1)
“I Wouldn’t Have
Believed it if I Hadn’t Seen It”
The show was “the most amazing
spectacle I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness. I’ve
been blessed to see remarkable musicals in London and on Broadway,
but nothing I have ever seen even comes close to the production
I saw open up before my eyes at the Arco Arena Saturday night. What
you all did, taking thousands of youth from hundreds of square miles,
and presenting such an amazing story with all of the inspiring music,
colorful costumes, and radiant smiles, is impossible. I would not
have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”
What was unbelievable was bringing
5,000 youth together who have only known the show from their own
dance number, who have practiced only in cultural halls or fields
or borrowed warehouse — not in the Arco Arena — and
expecting that somehow a show would come together in one day. That
meant that 5,000 youth had to be moved to come in at the right time
and the right place, that horses and handcarts and maypoles and
dragon heads and booths from a fair scene had to come in and out
on schedule and arrive at the right place on the floor.
It meant that lights had to dim on
cue and the sound swell on command. It meant that orchestration
had to be in place and new music created, that youth who had never
danced a step had to perform with long-time dancers — and
those who had never sung a note would suddenly sing out loud with
clarion voices.
This, with only one dress rehearsal
Saturday morning, two-thirds of a dress rehearsal Saturday afternoon,
and a performance and close Saturday night.
Before the first dress rehearsal Saturday
morning, buses poured into the parking lot of the Arco Arena. Girls,
dressed in pioneer prints, were in curlers to create the ringlets
of an earlier era.
Some boys had on high collars with
dark ties like Joseph Smith. Hangers of costumes representing Ireland,
China, and Tonga were being carried into the arena.
Trucks pulled up with loads of handcarts
and teens were trying to keep their horses at a walk in the asphalt
parking lot.
Large signs across the walkway to the
arena indicated where those should line up who would enter stage
right and those who would enter stage left. It was all new to the
cast members who would be performing that night.
According to Kieth Merrill, “Producer,
Scott Eckern is somebody who can keep 2,000 different items in the
right categories in his head to pull this kind of detail off.”
Scott Eckern
Undoubtedly. Because he heads the Sacramento
Music Circus and Broadway series, this is his eighth full dramatic
production of the summer — the seventh closed two days before
on Thursday.
Still, his experience would teach that
this kind of production is too much to take on. “Usually,”
he said, “with our professional shows at the theater in Sacramento,
we have dress rehearsal Friday night, another Monday night, and
then we open on Tuesday — after two weeks of practice,”
he laughs. “And this is with a cast of professionals, not
5,000 youth who have not practiced together until this day.”
President Treadway said, “I’m
confident in suggesting that your peers in show business must have
thought you mad [to undertake this project]. Yet as you promised
in our first [meeting] together, this was the Lord’s program
and it was part of His plan. And with Him, you proved once again
that you can not fail. For decades to come I will testify of the
miracle I witnessed in a sports arena in Sacramento, California.”
Click
here to go to Part 3 of “More Precious Than Gold”
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