Faith, pageantry on display in N.Y.

MANCHESTER, N.Y. — 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, 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.

Since the first pageant in 1935, the church says, more than 5 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 plates, buried 1,400 years before, that he translated into the Book of Mormon.

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 today, 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.