c. 2006 Religion News Service

STRASBURG, Pa. _ The sprawling stage at Millennium Theatre is more than 300 feet long, wrapping around both sides of the 2,000-seat theater.

The sets are gigantic, the lights brilliant, the music thunderous. At any moment, dozens of actors and live animals might be swirling across the stage or up the aisles. Angels are often dangling from wires 50 feet overhead.

This is no place for actors to show off their Al Pacino grimace or their Jennifer Aniston pout.

“No one can see your face,” said a smiling Brandon Talley, 24, who has performed at the Lancaster County theater for three years. “You have to put your whole body into it.”

The theater, the larger of two operated near Strasburg by Sight & Sound Theatres, specializes in large-scale Bible stories. The actors are talented, but they know that the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ are the stars.

It’s demanding work. “The Miracle of Christmas” runs more than two hours and is staged 10 or more times a week (through Jan. 6, 2007). Lead roles are double cast to keep from wearing out the actors.

The passion onstage is matched behind the scenes, where a small army of Christian soldiers churns out costumes, builds sets and tends the theater’s large menagerie of animal actors.

Sight & Sound is no earnest-yet-amateur church production.

It’s a sophisticated, computerized professional theater that for 30 years has been mounting multi-million-dollar spectacles that are seen by more than 800,000 people annually who expect Broadway-quality production values.

“We sow the seed at Sight & Sound,” theater founder Glenn Eshelman said. “The seed is the Word of God, it’s the Gospel. We want the best here.”

To achieve that, Sight & Sound has created a unique operation that mixes faith and fantasy.

On staff are animal handlers who raise and train the more than 100 animals used in the shows. The animals live in barns and stalls behind the theater. That’s where you’ll find Scooter, an 1,800-pound camel, and Windsong, a 17-year-old Arabian mare.

Sight & Sound public relations manager Pamela Evans said that when the animals become too old or infirm to perform, they are still cared for. “A lot of people here have ended up adopting them,” Evans said.

The costume shop uses an elaborate system of bar codes to enable stitchers to find a particular item among more than 16,000 articles of clothing.

Ask costume inventory coordinator Pat Summers to find a woman’s drape from the 2003 production of “Daniel,” and she finds the answer in her computer, not in the racks that line the walls.

“There were 1,000 pieces just for `Daniel,”’ Summers said as she calls up information on item No. 001038, which includes size, color and washing instructions. “And since everything we do is biblical, a lot of things look the same.”

Up a flight of stairs is the dusty scenery shop, where sets and effects for the next production, “In the Beginning,” are being built. A foam blower awaits use, while nearby the head of a woolly mammoth hangs from a forklift high above the floor.

Vinny DePaul, a repair and maintenance team leader, starts to explain the workings of the mammoth’s aluminum substructure then stops, worried he might be giving away too many secrets.

“Well, it’s going to be awesome,” he concluded.

Set design is the responsibility of Jim Mulder, the director of show technology. He worked for 22 years at Disney’s Imagineering division before coming to Sight & Sound about seven months ago.

Mulder said he feels free to propose any idea, regardless of cost. He often travels to see the latest gizmos and techniques on Broadway and elsewhere.

“They may have to rein me in because of cost, but we are trying to be very up to date here,” he said. “It’s actually kind of a chore to keep up with the technology, it’s changing so fast.”

What isn’t changing is the Sight & Sound mission. Operations director Jeff Baughman said the dedication of the 400 workers tends to be extreme because they believe in what the company is doing.

“Without them, we couldn’t do what we’re doing,” Baughman said. “The way we do things has changed, but the heart of what we do hasn’t changed at all.”

KRE/JL END DUNKLE

(David N. Dunkle writes for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.)

Editors: To obtain photos of the Millennium Theatre, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

See mainbar, RNS-BIBLE-THEATER, also transmitted Dec. 28, 2006.