Manchester, USA - In antlered headdresses and apostles' robes, feathered masks and white shirts and ties, the cast of the Hill Cumorah Pageant gathered Tuesday evening for its artistic director's daily address.
The 632 amateur performers had learned their parts so quickly, the director, Brent Hanson, told them, that they were getting a little too eager. "You need to enter in character, so that you are rushing to see the Savior," he told them. "This morning on run-through, it looked like you were rushing to get to your mark on the stage."
But more important, Mr. Hanson said, was to focus on the performance just before the show. Soon they would wade into the crowd of nearly 11,000 assembling at the base of the hill, 25 miles southeast of Rochester, and invite those who were not already members to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons.
"This is your chance to go out there and be a witness," Mr. Hanson said. "I want you to move this encounter with your audience more toward bearing your testimony, to look that person in the face and tell them 'I believe that our father in heaven is real, and he cares about us.' "
Since the first pageant in 1935, the church says, more than five million people have flocked to Hill Cumorah to see the riotously colorful retelling of Mormon history, rife with divine wrath, burnings at the stake, DeMille-worthy sword battles and heavenly visitations. It is staged in the very spot where the church's founder, Joseph Smith, said he dug up golden scriptures buried 1,400 years before by a Christian prophet from Central America. This year is the 200th anniversary of Smith's birth, a very big deal on the hill. About 85,000 people are expected to attend the pageant by the time it completes its annual run Saturday, several thousand more than average, said Ahmad S. Corbitt, a spokesman for the church.
Pilgrims by the busload on national historic tours jam the sites in nearby Palmyra where they believe Smith received his visions. The Library of Congress presented a bicentenary symposium on Smith in May.
"It's finally being recognized that he wasn't just some kooky kid who started a cult someplace," said Dick Ahern, the pageant's publicity director.
Earlier in the afternoon, the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, where the 14-year-old Smith is said to have first met God and Jesus face to face, was as silent as the Hill Cumorah would soon be noisy, though it, too, was full of people. Paths that wound past fields of thistle and through deep woods were lined with benches where Mormons sat contemplating, reading scripture or writing in their journals. Beneath a tall maple sat Maureen and Don Porter.
When Mr. Porter, 66, a tool salesman from Orem, Utah, tried to explain the grove's significance, he could not stop himself from crying. "This is like Mecca to us, really," he said. "We revere Joseph Smith just as if we had lived at the time of Moses or any of the other great prophets, because he revealed all the precious truths that had been lost."
Chris Lanham, who plays the young Smith in the pageant, said he found in the grove a better understanding of both his character's motivation and his own.
"It's strengthened my testimony about my beliefs a ton, like, a ton," said Chris, a 15-year-old from Utah. "This whole experience has. I don't want people to think that I think that I'm Joseph Smith, but I feel much more secure when I'm talking to people now."
The chance to embody the central characters in Mormon history makes a part in the pageant a sought-after honor.
"We tried for five years before we got into the pageant," said Dr. Rex Thompson, a dentist from Idaho Falls, as he adjusted his apostle's tunic and fake beard in the dressing room mirror before the show.
Like the others, Dr. Thompson came to Cumorah having no idea what role he would play. The directors met the players for the first time on July 2 and cast the parts in three hours based mostly on physical appearance, which they can do because the speaking parts are all prerecorded. The show opened six nights later.
"That's the miracle," said Chris Lanham's mother, Kim Yandow, an associate pageant director.
An hour before sunset, the players plunged into the crowd, an ocean of clean faces and modest dress. They handed out programs and signed autographs by the score. James Jackson, who plays the adult Joseph Smith, was stopped every few feet by families begging to have their pictures taken with him.
Not all who came sought to reinforce their faith. A blanketful of skeptics from Ithaca, anthropologists and political scientists from Cornell University and their friends peppered Carla Salmon, a harvest dancer garbed in lavender kerchief and red peasant dress, with questions about her faith.
Ms. Salmon, 22, a schoolteacher from Edmonton, Alberta, stood her ground. "I know that what we portray here really did happen," she said with a big smile.
Some in the group from Ithaca said they were drawn to the pageant by the Mormons' unselfconscious display of faith. Others said they came for the spectacle. Mr. Hanson, the artistic director, agreed that the show played against the stereotype of Mormons as a colorless people. But the stereotype, he said, is wrong.
"Mormons in the 1800's, unlike other conservative sects, loved theater, dancing and music," he said. "There is a tradition in the church that's very open to the arts, and even though we are a very conservative people in terms of behavior and lifestyle patterns - maybe even dull - from our perspective, there's no contradiction between brilliant spectacle and the white shirt and no cup of coffee in front of me."
What is important to Mormons, Mr. Hanson said, is serving the Lord, something that is sometimes best accomplished in a white shirt and sometimes in a long wig and a robe studded with fake jade.
As night fell, trumpets blared and the players mounted the stage, a sprawling approximation of a pre-Mayan temple. The next 75 minutes flew by in a blur of flame, spurting water, battle moves and white-robed saviors descending from the sky on piano wire.
A tribe of Israel, the Nephites, flees Jerusalem for the New World. The Nephites prosper, and fight, and fall. Jesus comes and delivers the Gospel to them shortly after his crucifixion and resurrection. In 400 A.D., the Nephites are destroyed in an epic battle. In their final days, their prophet Mormon passes the golden plates to his son Moroni (pronounced muh-ROE-nigh), who flees north to upstate New York and buries them in Cumorah for safekeeping. Moroni gives the plates to Joseph Smith, who translates them into the Book of Mormon. The church is on its way.
Richard Vance, a retired school principal also from Orem, who had come to see four of his family members perform, said the show had improved enormously since he last saw it in 1970. "Before, they just used the hill as a stage," he said. "They didn't have the special effects."
Still, Mr. Vance said: "It's better to read the book. If you read the book sincerely, the spirit will tell you it's a true story."