Flagler Playhouse returning to the stage with 'The Great American Trailer Park Musical'

With the building itself still a shell from the October fire, Flagler Playhouse is performing in Matanzas High School's auditorium. The first show date is Jan. 25 at 7:30 p.m.

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The Flagler Playhouse is returning to the stage at a new location with its first place since Playhouse building burned down in late October. 

"The Great American Trailer Park Musical" will be performed in four shows at Matanzas High School auditorium from Jan. 25 through Jan. 27. Flagler Playhouse President Jerri Berry said everyone is grateful to Flagler Schools and Matanzas High School for the use of the school's auditorium.

"It's been a blessing," Berry said. "It's not been easy, of course ... However, we have a place to go do what we want and it's a beautiful theater. It really is."

On Oct. 29, a fire tore through the Flagler Playhouse main building, destroying the theater. It took firefighters six hours to put out the flames.

Berry said some of the Playhouse's damaged areas is being cleaned out. The cleaning should be complete by early February, she said, and the next step will be demolition and planning the rebuild. 

In the meantime, the show must go on. 

This is director Bob Pritchard's fifth time directing a play with the Playhouse. He said there was definitely a transition period for everyone as they all settled into the Matanzas auditorium.

"But after we got into the show, started learning it started having some fun. Now it's okay,” he said. “We're just doing a show out here. We'll be back.”

The first performance of "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" is at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan 25. There will be two more 7:30 p.m.-shows on Friday, Jan. 26 and Saturday, Jan. 27 and a matinee showing at 2 p.m. on Saturday as well.

Berry said the transition to shorter show runs — going from 10 performances to four — as well as performing a show twice in a day for the first time are just some of the changes the Playhouse has had to make in the wake of the fire. 

The Playhouse has also had to cut its planned showing of "Sister Act" because of a lack of availability during the timeframe of the licensing agreement. Berry said she hopes the Playhouse can run it the next season instead.

After "The Great American Trailer Park Musical," "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" will run in March and the Playhouse's Penguin Project, which will be held at Bunnell Elementary School, will kick off in June.

The Musical is a show about a trailer park, inspired by a real north Florida trailer park. Pritchard said the play is centered around a married couple where the man ends up having affair. Three characters — Betty, Pickles and Lin — act as a Greek Chorus, spectating the main plot with the audience while telling bits of their own stories as the show goes on.

The play is a comedy, but, Pritchard said, it goes where a lot of plays don’t and characters interact with the audience. Pritchard said he first heard of the show a while back, but was not particularly interested in seeing it at first.

“Somebody dragged me to it, and within 15 minutes, I'm like going, ‘Everybody should see the show.’ [It] was just so much fun,” he said. “And I think the key here is that the characters interact and engage with the audience almost throughout.”

 

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