4 at -” 4 QA0 bs —— ia ¥ RICHARD _ Notes L. EVANS Largest Audience ~ ho: LDS Ponder eet eo Success — 2 * et et Of Pageant ‘ » PALMYRA, N. Y. (UPI) — ae LDS officials wondered today - ‘how to cope with the success > of their annual Hill Cumorah ibe Ay . Peageant. «> “Pageant audiences havel. reached such tremendous » portions in pro-| | years that recent we are often completely filled ~ up an hour or so before we said Elder Wilburn C. “start,” West, presidenof t the Eastern | * ' Wes 4 ea “States Mission of the Chureh, kl.| ‘the organization sponsoring | ce _proiect “(We have’ about 50 acres of parking space and five acres “fof seating but it doesn’t seem to be enough,” West added. — 5 vay em! ¢ ao be a SS, ek >: Estimated total attendance at ‘the outdoor portrayal of scenes the »-from Mormon| of: Book »stopped 130,000 for the four-day -erun. Thousands could not find), “Uspace to watch. ; | LARGEST IN HISTORY +» ~ Elder Richard L. Evans. of|: - . Salt i I Lake City, one of}: Utah, the Twelve Apostles of the LDS| Church, told an estimated 50,000) persons at Saturday’s final per- , formance that they were “ the * Jargest audience in the 26-year “chistory of the Pageant.” — : « Plans are under way to in- -erease the seating capacity by 25 per cent next year. Adding a), performance was also under |. ~‘eonsideration. _ Se | Dr. Harold I. Hansen, who has}: . directed the famed spectacular’. Since its inception, pointed out, |: - however, that adding a perform-|: ‘ance would not necessarily solve the problem. ~ “We would increase the over-|’ all attendance, all right,’ Han-/|' sen said, “but Friday and Sat-|' urday evenings would very like- ly continue to attract a ae 4 i wae “ overfiow crowds, since many people wait until the weekend to come.” Hansen, regularly in the dra- ma faculty of Brigham Young ‘University; Provo, Utah, recalled, “when we started in 1937, they hopefully predicted we'd get 10,000 persons a year, and I thought they were out-of their minds.” oe