In response to unprecedented attendance, the summer production at Promised Valley Playhouse, "Celebrating the Light," will be repeated next year.

J. Murray Rawson, playhouse manager, made the announcement and said attendance for the 45 shows this summer was 35,894, a playhouse record. Of that number, an estimated 16,700 were not members of the Church, Rawson said, based on tickets given to local stakes and the Utah Salt Lake City Mission for distribution to non-members.Running since July 6, the show, starring the BYU Young Ambassadors, was a sellout after the first two weeks, with hundreds being turned away, according to Phyllis Hilliard, who handles public relations for the theater.

"We want people who came in from out of town who were turned away to know it will be playing next summer and they will have a chance to see it then," she said.

To meet the expected demand, the show will begin next year on June 21 - two weeks earlier than this year.

Director and composer Michael McLean said the success of the production "dramatizes that people are hungry for things that make them feel good."

He said that after seeing the show, many people investigating the Church have set baptismal dates, less-active members have become reactivated, and people who have been excommunicated from the Church for several years have decided to come back. Some people after seeing the show have called the mission office in an attempt to locate missionaries so they could be taught more about what they felt, McLean added.

The playhouse manager added, "A missionary zone leader told me he brought 16 non-members to the show, and after they saw it, 15 committed to baptism."

Rawson estimated that about 75 percent of those attending have been under 30 years old.

"These young people have been coming because they want something decent in their lives," he remarked. "And then they go out and bring their friends to see the show. It has just been spontaneous, because something good is filtering through the minds of these young people, and boy, are they loving it!"

The impact has been consistent among all ages of people who have attended the show, McLean affirmed. "People feel the power of the message because the Young Ambassadors are living the message. They are what they proclaim to be."

Although the show does not overtly preach Mormonism, it reflects gospel principles, Rawson said.

"The message is one that people either recognize or have hoped to hear all their lives," he said. "When it is given to them on that stage it is just like a revelation, and they know it's true."

Through orchestra and vocal music, dialogue and choreography, the production uses various vignettes from history and contemporary life to illustrate the way people have risen above their circumstances and responded to the light within them.