THALIAN HALL'S DOWN RIVER RAMBLE PANORAMA
ALLUVIAL RIVER:
A Musical Voyage Down the Mississippi
Thalian Hall Special Event
In the 19th century, one of the most popular forms of entertainment was the panoramic painting: huge canvases — sometimes advertised to be three miles long (in reality, the largest were a few hundred feet) — that were slowly unscrolled before audiences, revealing distant landscapes, cities, and dramatic disasters in sequence. Thalian Hall has acquired a replica of one such panorama, depicting one of the most popular subjects of the old scrolling paintings: the Mississippi River.
This panorama was generously donated and restored by Dr. Wendy Waszut-Barrett, a global expert of panoramas and theatre history. Artists C. Lance Brockman and Janet Ryger based their sprawling, more-than-100-foot-long seamless imagery on mid-1800s landscape sketches and paintings.
The panorama was created by the University of Minnesota Theatre Arts Department for the 1988 production of Down River Ramble, a panorama show performed on the Centennial Showboat, docked in Minneapolis on the Mississippi River.
On October 16, 2026, Wilmington musician, writer, and composer Justin Lacy will accompany the panorama in song with the premiere of Alluvial River, an original musical voyage along the Mississippi, commissioned by Thalian Hall.
CREDITS:
Panorama generously donated by Dr. Wendy Waszut-Barrett
Panorama restored by Dr. Wendy Waszut-Barrett
Words & Music by Justin Lacy
Panoramic Apparatus constructed by Hannah Funderburke & Thalian Hall Technical Staff
Panoramic Apparatus fabricated by Terry Collins
