Hill Cumorah Pageant

Hill Cumorah Pageant
Hill Cumorah Pageant logo
Written by	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Date premiered	July 23, 1937
Subject	Ancient American events reported in the Book of Mormon, the visitation of Christ to the American continent following his resurrection, and the restoration of the Gospel in the latter days.
Genre	Religion
Setting	Foot of the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York, United States
Official site

The Hill Cumorah Pageant is an annual production of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) staged at the foot of the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York, United States. Premiering in 1937, it is considered to be the flagship pageant of the LDS Church. It depicts Joseph Smith's encounter with the Golden Plates (translated into English as the Book of Mormon), as well as a dramatization of the events recorded therein. The pageant features 700 cast members, 1,300 costumes, and a 10-level stage. It runs for seven nights in late July and attracts approximately 35,000 viewers annually. No donations are accepted and no tickets are required, although seating is first-come, first-served.

The pageant traces its roots back to the early 1920s and the "Cumorah Conference" of the Eastern States Mission, which was held each year annually in late July. Mission president B. H. Roberts would take some of his missionaries from New York City and travel to Palmyra and the recently acquired Smith Family Farm to celebrate Pioneer Day, acting out scenes from the Book of Mormon and LDS Church history as part of the commemoration. Over the next decade, the conference grew in duration and scale, and New York University English professor H. Wayne Driggs wrote the script America's Witness for Christ for the first official performance of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which premiered on July 23, 1937.

The pageant advanced technologically over the next few decades, with stereophonic sound inventor Harvey Fletcher designing, building, and installing a five-track recording system; and Crawford Gates composing an original score for the pageant, which was recorded by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony Orchestra in 1957. In 1973, LDS Church president Harold B. Lee visited the pageant and called for a phasing out of full-time missionaries in the pageant. Consequently, the cast has since consisted entirely of regular church members. In 1988, Orson Scott Card was tasked with writing a new script. He was instructed to make the script "accessible to a modern audience, targeting the non-scripture-reading, non-Mormon young adult," which he did in part by making the new version approximately 40 minutes shorter than the previous one.