NATCHEZ — After many decades of working together to entertain and educate Spring Pilgrimage crowds, the Pilgrimage Garden Club and the Natchez Garden Club have decided to part ways.

The Pilgrimage Garden Club board recently voted to not participate in the 2018 Historic Natchez Tableaux.

“It is time to rethink things,” PGC President Regina Charboneau said. “The tableaux (in its current form) is not resonating with our visitors. It is obvious.”

From the beginning of Spring Pilgrimage in 1932, visitors to Natchez were entertained with historical pageants. The productions depicted the history of Natchez and included an old-fashioned ball.

For a brief period after the Pilgrimage Garden Club was formed, the Natchez Garden Club and Pilgrimage Garden Club hosted separate tours and separate evening entertainment. In the 1940s, the clubs worked together to produce a pageant of storytelling, song and dance for visitors and continued for more than six decades.

In recent years, the garden clubs have concentrated on changing the production to help tell a more inclusive story of Natchez and the pre-Civil War South. In 2015, the clubs hired local resident and best-selling author Greg Iles to rework the production adding scenes about the African-American experience. Later, local resident and Natchez Garden Club member Chesney Doyle continued to rework the production.

Even with the changes, Charboneau said the tableaux continues to lose money every year.

“Sadly we cannot seem to progress fast enough in this changing climate,” Charboneau recently wrote in a letter to Pilgrimage Garden Club members.

Charboneau said after plans to hire an artistic director for the 2018 production were rejected by the Natchez Garden Club, the PGC decided it was time to leave.

Natchez Garden Club President Jennifer Jones Smith said the tableaux has always been a volunteer-run production.

“We felt confident with using our tableaux chairman instead of working with an outside director,” Smith said. “We have a difference of opinion.”

Smith said the Natchez Garden Club still plans to host the Historic Natchez Tableaux without the Pilgrimage Garden for four nights in March at the Natchez City Auditorium.

“We have decided to go on with our commitment to tradition and to our club members and their children,” Smith said.

The production which will be similar to the current Historic Natchez Tableaux will be presented on March 16, 17, 23 and 24, Smith said.

Charboneau said PGC will create a new production at Longwood. The event will be called “A Royal Evening at Longwood,” and is currently under development. The evening will end with a Champagne reception for guests inside the historic house.

Both clubs selected their respective  kings, queens and their royal court for the 2018 Pilgrimage in May.

Smith said the fact that the court has already been chosen factored into the decision to go ahead with the traditional production at the auditorium.

The new event at Longwood will include the PGC royalty, Charboneau said.

The Pilgrimage Garden Club’s decision to leave the tableaux, she said, does not change its commitment to working with the Natchez Garden Club on other projects. PGC supports the NGC in whatever direction the club plans to go, Charboneau said.

But as far as the Tableaux is concerned, the PGC wants to move in a different direction.

“The move to leave the Tableaux is more of a reinvention than a separation,” Charboneau said. “But we can’t reinvent together.”