Every July in Palmyra, New York, an outdoor seven-tier stage attracts about 30,000 guests.
On this platform, roughly 740 volunteers perform the Hill Cumorah Pageant- the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' 81-year-old musical telling of their scripture's story.
Syracuse Stage General Manager Michael McCurdy
This weekend, the Hill Cumorah Pageant returns with Syracuse Stage's new general manager, Michael McCurdy, reprising his position as general manager of the pageant. The show will run at 9 p.m. on July 13-14 and 17-21.
After attending Brigham Young University - the school owned by the LDS - McCurdy worked at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., where he later become company manager. He co-founded an off-off-Broadway theatre company and then moved to Arkansas and served as managing director at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock.
Now at Syracuse Stage, McCurdy's first show will be "Noises Off," which debuts in September. He said he's excited about his first season.
"I love the relationship that the theatre has with (Syracuse University)," he said. "There's only four of five theaters like that in the country. That's exciting that undergrads want to come to Syracuse to study theater, so to be able to provide an outlet for those students as well as for the community is incredibly exciting."
McCurdy, who joined Syracuse Stage in June, has filled this role at Hill Cumorah for three years. Two weeks out of the year, McCurdy works not with trained actors, but with fellow LDS Church members. The all-ages cast is comprised of volunteers who apply to travel to Hill Comorah from all across the U.S. Though the dialogue and music (performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) is prerecorded, the rest of the show comes together in the week before the show opens.
"They're not actors, this isn't their dream to be on stage," McCurdy said. "Their dream is to share their faith - their talents as well as what they believe.
"They do a darn good job of doing this in a week and learning dances and learning choreography."
The current version of the show has been produced every year for about the past 30 years, said McCurdy. This nature of the pageant challenges its directors and managers to make the story fresh each year for returning guests.
"Whenever we have a new director they're going to put their own spin on what they're hearing, they may stage it a little differently, and then every year, the actors are all different," said McCurdy. "It's like making Shakespeare. How do you make Shakespeare new?"
This year, the finale scene has been revamped with added characters.
For McCurdy, managing the annual pageant combines his profession and passion- his faith. He sees the Hill Cumorah as not only grand and exciting show, but also as a witnessing tool.
"It has to be believable just like anything else in the theatre world," said McCurdy. "We know that those cast members believe what they're doing and have a firm faith in what they're doing and that really comes across to the audience as they watch it. It's that same relationship between audience and performer that you get anywhere. That's what's fun- that melding of it."
Where better to tell this story than where it began?
Mormons believe that in 1823, Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, first found the golden plates at Hill Cumorah. Four years later, Smith retrieved thes golden plates and translated the reformed-Egyptian writing engraved on the plates into English, resulting in the holy scriptures called The Book of Mormon. The pageant includes 10 scenes from The Book of Mormon or the history of the LDS Church, and McCurdy said it's a story that can only be told in this sacred location.
"This is the birth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," McCurdy said. "It all happened here in central New York."