To the audiences attending the Perry Productions’ Ridvan pageant, the event is a magic carpet that transports them to the Baghdad garden where Baha’u’llah declared He was the Promised One of all earlier religions before leaving for Constantinople and further exile.

To artistic director Anne Perry, the pageant is a passion play.

“I’ve devoted my life to the pageant,” says Ms. Perry, a Dallas-Ft. Worth Baha'i who also writes the plays and performs in the pageant she has staged on a volunteer basis for the last 10 years in Texas. “It’s one of my passions. I feel that Ridvan,  the King of Festivals, the Most Great Festival, is often under-celebrated, and I have determined to do what I can to observe these holy days befittingly.”

“Befittingly,” according to Ms. Perry, who is a professor of literature at the University of Texas at Arlington, means capturing the essence of the Festival of Ridvan in her pageants, and thereby captivating her audience, which is both Baha'i and non-Baha'i.

“Ridvan means ‘paradise,’” she says, “and its ‘images’—roses, nightingales, chanting, poetry, a ferry boat, a red roan stallion—lend themselves to infinite creative responses, although we stick close to the original story. The artist must balance artistic interpretation and historical accuracy. This can be a challenge. But I have seen the light kindled in the eyes of those who are touched by our pageants, and this is worth every problem and sacrifice.”

This year, for the first time, Ms. Perry’s pageant will join a larger Ridvan celebration to be held on Saturday, April 29, in Richardson, Texas, just north of Dallas.

Ms. Perry says the pageant’s technical director—her husband, Tim—didn’t share her original passion, but he is now resigned to working the long, hard hours that precede the pageant, which can range from an intimate indoor event to a full-fledged outdoor spectacle.

The largest Perry Productions pageant, held in 1998 at Southern Methodist University, took about seven months’ preparation, involved more than 50 volunteers, featured musicians from four states and attracted 700 people. A live horse representing Bahá’u’lláh’s red roan stallion “performed” in one of Ms. Perry’s outdoor pageants.

At every pageant, each member of the audience receives a red rose, in honor of the roses Baha’u’llah gave to each of his guests in the garden to pass out to nearby villagers.

The participants—mainly Baha’is from Texas—enjoy the process of putting the pageant together, Ms. Perry says, because “it helps them connect with the sacred events of our Faith. We might travel to an area bringing three or four people with us, and then use the talents of 10 or more local Baha’is and non-Baha’is—musicians, singers, dancers, readers and technical assistants.”

Ms. Perry says she asks the audience not to clap until the end of the program, “because it is a seamless whole and not about recognizing individual performers. The result is more a sacred experience than a theatrical event.”

“The pageant brings together East and West, old and young, and people of different cultures,” Ms. Perry says. “The Persians who attend say it brings them closer to the Faith that originated in their country (Iran). We hope everyone gets a small glimpse of paradise.”