JoAnne Kurtz and Peter Kurtz found love backstage at the Pageant of the Masters.
On April 23, the couple married in what is likely the first-ever wedding on the Festival of Arts of Laguna Beach campus.
JoAnne, 52, and Peter, 48, were celebrated by family, friends, fellow volunteers, as well as Festival and Pageant staffers. The couple met while volunteering at the Pageant in 2016 as Sacagawea and William Clark. That was JoAnne’s first-time volunteering at the Pageant, Peter was a veteran volunteer.
Backstage at the Irvine Bowl, there is a row of numbered red chairs for actors waiting to take their places. Peter sat in chair four and Joanne was in chair five for the entire season.
“We ended up sitting in the same chairs night after night. That’s where we were forced to be together and got to know each other,” Peter said.
Their love story blossomed from those pair of seats and shared their first kiss at the Sandpiper Lounge. In July 2021, Peter privately proposed to JoAnne in the same red chairs where they first met.
The prospect of enjoying the festival grounds as their wedding venue was more of a whim than a long-term goal.
“We were just kind of joking around that wouldn’t it be amazing here and people said, ‘you should ask,’” JoAnne said.
They spoke up and were happy to get the green light from festival management. April 23 was the only available date due to previously scheduled operations.
“We thought why not closed the loop and get married here,” JoAnne said.
It was a wonderful coincidence that the theme of the 2016 Pageant of the Master was “Partners,” Pageant Director Diane Challis Davy said in a press release.
“Isn’t it fitting that they should meet backstage, be cast in the same picture, and now here we are at their wedding in the same place they met and fell in love? I wish them all the happiness in the world, and I hope they have many more years in the Pageant together,” Davy said.
Peter is a sales executive in the oil and energy industry. JoAnne works as a counselor at Hewes Middle School in Tustin. Despite the long hours, they say volunteering at the Pageant is energizing after a day at the office.
JoAnne’s decision to start dating Peter after being single for 18 years was partly influenced by the July 2016 death of her best friend, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer at a relatively young age.
“That made me appreciate life and open my heart to love,” she said. “When you’re older you don’t know that that’s going to happen.”
JoAnne’s daughter Samantha Motter served as her Maid of Honor.
Many Pageant of the Masters volunteers describe fellow cast and crew members as their pageant family. Joanne and Peter feel the same way. Over 30 people they’ve met through the Pageant were the largest contingent of wedding guests.
Particularly among the cast of living portraits and statues, waiting for hours to get makeup applied and their performance provides time to really get to know people and appreciate relationships in a way they wouldn’t normally, JoAnne said.
The couple have not shared a piece together since Lewis and Clark at the Three Forks in 2016. Peter has been selected to play Jesus in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper this summer.
“It’s not even a question of whether we’re going to try out this year or next year. It’s just part of who we are now,” Peter said.
The 2022 Pageant of the Masters production of “Wonderful World” runs from July 7 to Sept. 2.
