Live at Forest Lawn! : Michelangelo Portrayals Pack the Mausoleum

You don’t have to be dead to see actor Pablo Marz’s one-man show, but it does help you get a good seat.

Twice a year, Marz, 41, portrays the artist Michelangelo before crowds packed into the main room of the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale.

He has already heard all the jokes.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, ‘Must be a dead crowd out there,’ ” Marz said Thursday morning as he pulled on a pair of gray, green and red tights that are part of his rented Renaissance costume. He was dressing in a small rotunda outside the Hall of Commemoration, one of the many crypt-filled hallways in the imposing mausoleum.

Nearby and out of sight, about 250 schoolchildren were taking their seats in the Memorial Court of Honor where Marz would perform his “A Visit with Michelangelo” show.

“I also get ‘Knock ‘em dead’ a lot,” Marz continued, shaking his head. He was fitting breeches over the tights. “But when they hear what this is all about, they are impressed.

“For an actor, this is a good gig.”

And it draws a good crowd. The Michelangelo show, presented just four days a year, is free to school groups but has to be booked far in advance. Reservations have already been made for the next presentation of the show in October.

The purpose of the program, which began in 1988 at the park (Forest Lawn officials never say cemetery ), is to teach the students a bit about Michelangelo’s sculptures, several copies of which sit in the Memorial Court. The program is also supposed to instill in the students some appreciation for the artwork.

Marz had his work cut out for him.

Out in the audience sat Michael Player, 10, who was part of the group bused in for the show from Ventura Missionary school in Ventura. Michael had heard of Michelangelo.

“Sure,” he said, “he’s one of the Teenage Ninja Turtles.”

Backstage in the marble-lined rotunda, Marz put on a leather doublet, then a gold cape. Park soundman Milan Ubovich, who had filled the court with Italian Renaissance choral music for the incoming crowd, came backstage to hook up a wireless microphone on the actor.

“Darling, you look good in a cape,” Ubovich told Marz with a laugh.

Marz, a veteran of numerous local theater shows, checked his makeup--which included a broken nose like the one Michelangelo got in a childhood fight--in a restroom off the rotunda. He ran water into his only prop, a metal wine goblet.

“I have to get dressed in the men’s room, my wine goblet is filled with tap water and no one brings me coffee,” he said with a smile. “It’s the life of an actor.”

It was show time. From the front of the court, Education Affairs Director J. Carol Winn gave him an enthusiastic introduction.

“Let’s give a big hand and welcome to Michelangelo!” she told the kids. They clapped politely and Marz entered the court, his cape trailing.

“ Bonjourno !” he called out in an Italian accent, took a drink from the goblet and asked the students how many were artists. About 20 hands shot up.

“An artist does not just paint,” Marz proclaimed. “If you dance, make music, act, then you are also an artist. Everyone has a gift, inside, to create.”

He told them of Michelangelo’s early years in Florence and of the boy’s father objecting to art as a profession. From the many biographies and reference books Marz had studied, he told them of Michelangelo’s financial struggles at a time when only the church and the rich could afford to commission art.

Marz’s performance never delved into the cutesy asides and condensation too often present in children’s shows. He instead held the attention of the room with his acting ability and passion for his subject.

As Marz came to each statue in the room, he explained why it was a great work. “In my time, this scene was portrayed always as very sad, very painful and mournful,” he said, pointing out “La Pieta,” the famous scene of Mary holding Christ’s body after the Crucifixion.

“I wanted to change that; I wanted to show how Christ is finally at peace,” he said, pointing out Mary’s serene expression.

Marz never imagined when he took up acting as a student at Los Angeles City College, then with a variety of coaches, including Nina Foch, that he would end up doing a show for students in a cemetery.

He recently acted in a couple of action films for a small production company, but those movies are headed straight for video. And he has not appeared on any of the major stages of Los Angeles.

His name will probably never be so well-known as that of Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow and others at rest in this very mausoleum.

But the Michelangelo program and the other small productions he does for children keep him going while he strives for higher-level acting jobs.

He told youngsters of the three months the artist spent in a 33-by-9-foot room where he hid during a time of political oppression and of the drawings he made on the walls during that time. “All I could do to maintain my sanity is to draw,” he said. “I found out that it is not enough to create art just to sell, it makes me a human being.”

The youngest students were starting to stir, but Marz was nearing the end of his presentation. Outside the hall, the next group of students was gathering. Marz will do three shows this day and three more the next.

“You all can make art and create. You cannot let anyone take that from you,” he told them. “You must nurture that, feed it, let it blossom like a flower.”

The applause was rousing.