A curtain is pulled back and I descend a set of stairs to a tiled floor below. Huge masks and multi-hued skirts hang on racks lining a long, dim hallway. On the walls and on the floors sit a variety of props — drums on shelves, baskets filled with fruit, stacked headdresse. Every once in awhile a person with face paint walks by as if on a mission.

I am behind the scenes of Mexico Espectacular, a grandiose production with more than 300 performers covering hundreds of years of Mexican history in just over two hours. I’ve been invited to step backstage in the minutes leading up to the start of the night’s show, and even in the neat and clean staging area, it feels like I’ve stepped into an entirely different world.

Held in a giant arena, Mexico Espectacular is part variety show, part cultural experience, part sporting event. It’s also a massive operation involving not only a huge number of performers but also countless costume changes, animal management (there are a few scenes with horses) and complicated staging with actors arriving and leaving the arena from four different places on the floor (additional scenes place them high in the audience and even dangling from an acrobatic platform).

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