Jean Parks

Look out Pageant of the Masters. J.H. McGaugh school might just steal your thunder. For the past eight months, the award-winning elementary school has been preparing Pageant of the Arts, a miniature version of Laguna Beach's famous summer pageant of "living pictures." And guess what? The kids' version includes 20th-Century art, modern dance and music composed by a former member of the rock group Berlin.

Look out Pageant of the Masters. J.H. McGaugh school might just steal your thunder. For the past eight months, the award-winning elementary school has been preparing Pageant of the Arts, a miniature version of Laguna Beach's famous summer pageant of "living pictures." And guess what? The kids' version includes 20th-Century art, modern dance and music composed by a former member of the rock group Berlin.

A trial was held in Thousand Oaks on Wednesday. There was testimony from a fingerprint expert. Lawyers cross-examined witnesses. The defendant presented an alibi. And defense strategy was debated quietly in the corner of the courtroom. With all the drama and tension of a classic whodunit, two dozen third- and fourth-graders acted out the case of the stolen chocolate recipe Wednesday in a summer class at the Conejo Valley Adult School.

On the playground, fourth-graders talk about Jackson Pollock, in the hallways first-graders discuss Winslow Homer, and in fifth grade, the hot topic is Georgia O'Keeffe. Art is important at McGaugh Elementary School in Seal Beach, where Pollock, Homer and O'Keeffe will come alive this spring, as they do every year during the school's unusual arts pageant.

"The abuse of greatness," Brutus is heard saying in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" at the Mark Taper Forum, "is when it disjoins remorse from power." The abuse of power, one might comment on the occasion of the opening of this production, is when it disjoins remorse from greatness. Translation: If you, the director in power, are going to update a text to make it more urgent and topical, use care to preserve its greatness or be sorry. All is admissible if it is made to work.