MIDDLEBURGH — Scrooge paces backstage in his top hat. Marley’s ghost quietly reads his lines one last time from an oft-folded script.

The actors — builders, hospital workers, homemakers, retirees and students — line up for makeup, straighten their bonnets and pull on fingerless gloves. Kids in the cast bounce around and ask each other “Are you nervous?”

It’s opening night and the curtain is about to rise in upstate New York farm country.

There is Broadway, there is off-Broadway and there is the Valley Bible Baptist Church’s production of “A Christmas Carol.” The play is staged at a high school auditorium in a Schoharie Valley town, which — with its fresh snow, old storefronts and Christmas lights — is more Bedford Falls than Manhattan. This play is about community and spirituality, not profit.

“This is not quite your Hollywood production here,” said David Stasko, a dentist who does double duty as the director and Bob Cratchit.

Broadway grabbed headlines this season with a stagehand strike that threatened to sideline the Grinch, but amateur productions like this are hitting far more stages this Christmas. Across the country, grown men are hoping their backs don’t go out when hoisting Tiny Tim on their shoulders, parents are converting bed sheets into shepherd’s robes and little girls are tip toeing around giant nutcrackers.

Here in Middleburgh (about 160 miles north of Broadway) Pastor Shawn Foster adapted the Charles Dickens classic to spread the message about the meaning of Christmas. The church has been putting on the play for three years now, but there are always some butterflies. Will it come off? Will people show up?

Foster, seconds from taking the stage as Scrooge, peeks through the curtain.

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“Is everyone set?” Stasko asks the cast.

It’s a snowy Sunday night, two weekends before opening night. The evening service at the church is over and members hurry into bonnets and breeches. The first dress rehearsal is in a church basement with unfinished walls and a stack of drywall.

The play is under construction, too.

Lines are flubbed. Kids exit stage wrong. The Ghost of Christmas Past is not present and a doorknob falls off a stage door when it’s slammed. Marley’s ghostly gray tailcoat looks suspiciously like ’70s groomwear. And ominously, Scrooge suffers from more than a shriveled soul. Pastor Foster has bronchitis and keeps coughing between lines.

Though ailing, the Baptist preacher still knows stage presence. When he says “Bah! Humbug!” you believe it. Stasko likewise attacks his role as “an older, slightly overweight” Cratchit with gusto.

Stasko essentially directs when he’s not on stage as Cratchit, which is typical here. Many in the cast have two roles and many of the adults are playing alongside their children.

“With a small church, we don’t have a lot of leeway with personnel,” Stasko says.

Still, a lot goes right this night. Alton Diamond, with his real beard, golden goblet and head wreath, looks like he’s ready to toss back some mead as The Ghost of Christmas Present. And Tiny Tim (the pastor’s 6-year-old son, Derek) nails his “God bless us, everyone” line.

By the next weekend, when they switch to the school stage for three final nights of dress rehearsal, things are starting to gel. Stasko - pacing the stage with his pants tucked in his socks, Cratchit style - is directing actors who are made up, miked and psyched.

“Scroooooooooooge!” Len Charletta moans as he appears on stage in a puff of smoke as Marley. With his white makeup and oversize chains draped over his gray suit, Charletta, a builder, looks much more ghostly than last week.

“I wear the chains I made in life. I made them link by link!” Marley bellows. “ ... Remember what awaits you in eternity without Christ!”

Dickens never wrote that last line. Foster put it in his adaptation, just like he added the part of the street preacher. In this production, Scrooge is not just turning his back on his fellow man, but God.

“We believe Scrooge was saved,” explains cast member Richard Finch.

Foster follows a long tradition of tweaking Dickens’ “ghostly little book” from 1843. Scrooge has been cast in latter-day productions as a duck (Scrooge McDuck), a diva named Ebony Scrooge (Vanessa Williams) and a TV executive (Bill Murray).

In “A Christmas Carol,” Foster saw a way to convey the spiritual message of Christmas without preaching. He added lines from Dickens’ own religious writings published posthumously as “The Life of Our Lord.”

Along with raising money for the Scho-Wright Ambulance Service, the message is why church members sacrifice dozens of hours each to perform the play. Charletta’s kidney stones make it painful for him to stand. But he feels the play is too important skip.

“Plus there’s no one else who knows the lines,” he says.

With a week until showtime, little things still need to be ironed out. Tiny Tim needs to practice his cough. And where are Scrooge’s eyebrows? Foster, who is conquering his own cough, ends up gluing a fake black mustache cut in half over his eyes.

The brows are more Groucho than Scrooge, but it doesn’t faze Foster, and it fits in with the night’s light mood. In one scene, 15-year-old Lyndi Cummings cracks up castmates by balancing a glass upside down on her head.

“I love all the practicing and the acting and the screwing up and everyone can laugh about it later,” says Cummings, who plays the Ghost of Christmas Past. “It’s fun to watch everyone get better.”

An ice storm five nights before opening curtain cuts short the last rehearsal. Stasko worries that might affect the all-important “final push” for opening night.

As the curtain is about to rise Friday, Stasko is backstage and declines the offer to peek out at the audience.

“I don’t want to know,” he says.

Foster gives a quick look.

About 100 people show. At $5 a ticket (half price for kids and seniors) the Scho-Wright squad is looking at a hefty donation after the Friday and Saturday shows. Far to the south, where Grinch tickets went for $25 to $199.50, New York City officials said the 19-day strike cost $2 million a day.

For all the botched lines and technical glitches in practice, the show comes off fine.

Marley booms his lines, the ghosts hit their marks and Foster finds his Scrooge eyebrows. The audience, filled with friends and relatives, is quick to laugh and applaud. Foster does such a convincing turn from rancid old skinflint to a man giddy with redemption one audience member cries out, “That old geezer came alive!”

During the curtain call Foster, reminds the crowd to support the ambulance squad and the cast sings “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Some people in the audience sing along.

After the applause stops, the players rush out to the school hallway and line up along the lockers. They make sure to greet everyone in the audience before they step out into the cold night.