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Against an elaborate, three-story stage that re-creates Jerusalem in Lexington, twelve men rehearse their lines for that church’s annual Passion Play. Inside a climactic scene just after Jesus’s betrayal and piumini moncler capture, Bill White as Peter runs offstage toward the pews shouting, “He’ll never forgive me!” while Mark Giurgevich as Judas desperately efforts to undo the deed he’s done. “Take this money back! I don’t want it! I created a mistake!” he pleads.The Gardenside Baptist Church group represents the role of Jesus and his disciples, with just a little over a week until their first performance, the men are ready — right down to the freshly grown beards they're sporting just for the occasion. In several area churches, preparations for Easter season performances begin shortly after Christmas, with hours of rehearsal and planning required to pull together special musical and dramatic representations from the Passion story. Berea United Methodist Church’s annual Easter play titled Lord, Can it be I? has been the “dramatic punctuation of Berea’s Easter season” within the past 25 years, said Lea Schultz, the outlet moncler church’s secretary.“Most humans have no idea all the hours built on behind the scenes,” said pastor Mike Cox of Danville’s First Church of God, that can perform a Passion play with a cast of 60. Their play is told through flashbacks, with the aged disciple louis vuitton handbags John as the narrator, Cox said.At moncler outlet Gardenside, play coordinator Carol Marshall takes on the phones by mid-January. She is arranging volunteers for 18 committees, including parking, costumes and makeup, lighting, sound and special effects. Building the stage itself for that cast of 106 actors is a huge undertaking, said Gardenside’s set coordinator, Roger Kincer. It will take his crew of 13 men a couple weeks of full-time work to assemble the set, which includes “hundreds of parts” as well as electrical wiring for effects. The set is saved in a semi trailer it uses very little.“It would be the equivalent of you going home and taking your home apart and stacking it on your property, and coming back in a year and putting it back up,” he said.Altogether, it takes a lot more than 150 people to put on Gardenside’s play, now in the 15th year. With an average of 10 performances annually, the play brings in an audience of 5,000 in order to six,000 annually — many from across Kentucky and out of state. “This is one ministry of the church where everybody gets involved,” Marshall said.“What I like most is that it draws our church together,” said ­David Dale, music director at Gardenside Baptist Church. “It’s a project that the entire church family feels a part of.” At Safe Harbor Baptist Fellowship in Georgetown, the story of Jesus’s Passion will be told almost entirely in music. The church’s 20-person choir, led by volunteer choral director Ken Lewis, will conduct an Easter cantata titled Then Came the Morning. Throughout the 35-minute program, roughly 25 costumed actors from the church congregation will silently act out the scenes described from the cantata. The cantata didn’t come with plans to get a dramatic accompaniment. That idea was added by church pastor Dwayne Russell and his wife, MaryAnn. But the result continues to be inspiring, said choir member Teresa louis vuitton outlet usa Morris.“You can feel the spirit uplifting everybody. It’s just absolutely awesome every time we practice,” she said.Safe Harbor’s choir continues to be rehearsing for an hour each Sunday since January to get ready for their performances of the cantata in moncler their own church and as guests at Dry Run Baptist Church in Georgetown.Even after weeks of practice, there’s still one scene that will get to Lewis every time.During louis vuitton outlet the second to last song, Rise and become Healed, the actors appear out of costume as themselves, bearing signs using their own prayer requests. Then, as the song plays, the actor playing Jesus walks by and takes the signs and throws them aside, Lewis said. “The song covers bringing our burdens and our sins to Christ anf the husband will take those from us,” Lewis said. “Seeing that, I must be careful not to get choked up.” Lexington’s Macedonia Christian Church also will perform the story of the Passion with a cantata. Theirs is a brand new choral cantata, just published this spring, titled In Christ Alone, said director Bill Cooper. Their choir of 10 members has rehearsed since January, and with the “wonderful acoustics” of the church they sound twice as large as they are, Cooper said.Each and every of the churches, all the hours of preparation are about one goal: celebrating the story of Jesus’s final hours on the planet and his ascension from the dead on Easter Sunday. Program organizers say they hope their efforts help their audiences have the significance of the Passion story of their modern lives.