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A Tree Grows in Indiana.
Barrett, Richard
Stage Directions. Dec2005, Vol. 18 Issue 12, p56-59. 4p. 2 Color
Photographs.
Article
CHURCH architecture -- Conservation & restoration
BAPTIST church buildings
ARTS facilities
THEATER architecture
SOUND -- Equipment & supplies
BUILDINGS -- Environmental engineering
INDIANA
The article focuses on the transformation of the Living Christmas
Tree, the sanctuary of the Bethesda Baptist Church in
Brownsburg, Indiana, into a theatrical space. The facility's stage
is on an elevated platform five feet above audience level. Feed
speakers were hanged from the ceiling to enhance the sound in
the balcony and in the orchestra. Some of the lighting and sound
equipment used in the Tree include tree lights and Yamaha
house mixer.
1090
1278
1047-1901
19177809
MasterFILE Premier
SPECIAL HOUSES OF WORSHIP THEATRES SECTION
A Tree Grows in Indiana
A church transform itself into a 1,200-seat theater, replete with a 25-foot-tall free, for the
holidays.
It's the first week of September, and auditions have just begun for the 27th annual December production
of the Living Christmas Tree at Bethesda Baptist Church in Brownsburg, Indiana, a western suburb of
Indianapolis. During the next three months, the sanctuary, built in 1970, will be transformed into a
theatrical space that can hold a seven-tiered, 25-foot-tall tree adorned with 60,000 MidiLite-controlled
lights, a 60-piece choir and a 30-piece orchestra. In eight performances given over the course of two
weekends, over nine thousand people pack the pews each year for Bethesda's Tree, and over half of
them come back the following year.
The change from a large community church to a 1,200-seat theater is a rewarding challenge, according

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to Van Lawson, the Tree's technical director for the last four years and the church's facilities manager.
"There are interesting problems to solve," says Lawson. "And it's under pressure, usually." Nick Tynan,
Bethesda's Minister of Music, putting it more plainly, contends that "it's a miracle of God we're able to
pull it off." Lawson, hearing this, chuckles and says, "We make it work."
Besides auditions for the performers, September marks the first step in the show's technical preparation:
programming the Tree's 60,000 lights. Lawson starts at the beginning of September, first on a smaller
mock-up tree. It is a meticulous process: "It can take up to 30 or 40 hours to program one song if you're
picky," he says. He has two months to complete this step. The real Tree is then assembled in the church
by November 15, at which point the lights are transferred from the mock-up and bugs in the
programming are ironed out.
The Tree comes within five feet of the 30-foot high ceiling, and within six feet of the proscenium. The
stage is on an elevated platform five feet above audience level. Bethesda's Tree involves dramatic
vignettes interspersed between the songs, and playing areas are set up at stage left and stage right, as
well as down center at audience level. There is no wing space as such, so performers must enter
directly through doors into the auditorium, using portables behind the main building as a waiting area.
One practical consideration is the location of the Tree directly in front of the church's elevated baptismal
font, rendered unusable until the Tree's disassembly.
Even after 27 years of mounting the show, the process of preparing the production isn't always smooth
sailing. Ever-evolving technology, combined with a building that hasn't changed much since it was
erected, creates an annual technical conundrum for the production staff. The trickiest puzzle to solve
every year, according to Lawson, is the sound design. "The goal is for everybody in the audience to
hear the same thing at the same time, so that they all feel like part of the same group. We want to make
sure every seat is a good seat, and that's a challenge. It's a building that was originally designed for
speaking, not choirs and orchestras and praise bands."
Feed speakers under the balcony, combined with a cluster of speakers hung from the ceiling, help
alleviate the problem, as does section miking in the orchestra pit, but Lawson notes a bigger problem:
The sound board is located on the stage left side of the balcony, directly over the orchestra pit. "You get
no visual contact with the orchestra," he says, "and you don't get any sense of the mix, either. You're
hearing it live and from the cluster, and that's not a great combination to work with." The solution that he
and Tynan hope to implement for this year's Tree is moving the orchestra to the stage. Besides aural
concerns are visual ones; sight lines are a recurring issue, with pylons supporting the balcony blocking
the view of the stage for some members of the audience, necessitating the installation of video screens.
Once the point of dress rehearsals and performances is reached, the focus turns to setting everything in
motion--and making sure it stays in motion. "Keeping it all going is the toughest thing," says Lawson,
"and that becomes more complicated when we get to the run."
He goes on to describe a particularly challenging set of circumstances: "We use Digital Performer to
handle the lights, and last year, somehow, it lost all the assignments right before a performance. Well, I
also play in the orchestra, and Jeff Titus, who operates the computer and the sound board during the
run, came and got me from the pit. With four minutes to go before we were on, I was manually

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reentering all the assignments."
Despite nearly three decades of success, the long-term future of the Tree is uncertain. A 12-
performance schedule has been cut to eight in recent years, but Lawson admits that "even that can feel
grueling." He mentions that there has been some discussion amongst Bethesda's staff to put the
production on indefinite hiatus, but thus far everyone wants to keep it going nonetheless. "We were
without either a permanent pastor or a minister of music for a few years," he says, "and our interim
pastor insisted that he couldn't make the decision to cancel the Tree. Now we have a permanent pastor
again, and we have Nick, and they want to continue, at least for the time being. As many people as we
reach in such a short amount of time, we believe it's worth it. There are plans being talked about to build
a new church facility in about five years, and we'll revisit the question then.
"Nine thousand is a lot of people to bring through the door in two weekends," Lawson says. "There are a
lot of first-timers, but we've found that over half of them came the previous year. We've become a
Christmas tradition for a lot of people, and it would be hard to just put that off."
Despite all the time and toil that it takes for Bethesda's production staff to get the Living Christmas Tree
up and running, Lawson insists that this "miracle of God" merits the push, and that it's the intangible
rewards that make it so. "There's all of the effort we put forth on the technical end, but come December
every year, all of the community is lending a hand somehow--feeding the crew, helping with parking,
and so on," he says. "The whole church really comes together to make the run happen. All of the hard
work turns out to be a blessing in the end."
For more information on Bethesda Baptist and its production of the Living Christmas Tree, visit
www.bethesdabaptist.com.
Check Out the Specs
Following is a partial inventory of the lighting and sound equipment used for Bethesda Baptist's Living
Christmas Tree:
Tree Lights
• MidiLite ML-54, 8 rows plus an auxiliary
• 414 MidiLite channels
• Matrix: 8x8x6 (+ 30 auxiliary channels)
Bethesda synchronizes to ADAT via SMPTE time code and runs Digital Performer on a Macintosh with
a Korg 1212 digital audio card.
General Lighting
• House control board: Minstrel Lite, 48-channel
• DMX NSI Motorized Lighting Controller
Sound

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House mixer: Yamaha M3000A, 56-channel
Microphones: AT4050/CM5, AT4033, AKG-451, AKG C1000
House amplifiers: TOA Power Amplifier P3000 (used under balcony and for floor monitors), Mackie FR
M-2600 (orchestra monitors), Beta 52 (kick drum), AKG C535
PHOTO (COLOR): Here and opposite: The construction of The Living Christmas Tree
PHOTO (COLOR): A view of the sound control console used for the production
~~~~~~~~
By Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett is a freelance writer living in Bloomington, Indiana.
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