#bee doyle

Do you have a favorite moment in the show? VOCE: Yes, actually. When we all come together in the carnival and we have that, like, stompy, like, get-it-out-of-your-system moment. It’s just any of the moments we’re all on stage, I just love. I just love! I just love it.

Yeah. Okay, wait. So, there was a moment — or, two moments really — that I, I meant to talk to Tina about, ’cause this is what happens on an opening night. [This is what happens.] You’re just like, bada bing, bada boom, bada bing, famously. [Yeah.] And, the — the silhouettes, the human silhouettes. Can you talk about that? VOCE: Yes. I mean, it’s, it’s meant to do exactly what it’s doing to you. Like what’s happening over here, over there? It’s all part of Tina’s amazing storytelling. Like, it’s not — I’m not a director, nothing that I would think of, but like, it really just keeps us in the world of the show, and what’s happening over here, and that life is still happening, no matter what’s happening in your view, or my view, or, you know, so I, I think it’s genius and wonderful.

So, just to like, give a little bit of context, there’s this scene — like, Lizzy McAlpine’s singing and then I turn and I was so blown away. There’s just, like, a human silhouette… VOCE: Skyline of people, just like, like, what conversation are these people having? What are they talking about over there? Is this one doing this? [Gorgeous.] It’s all meant to just tell stories of different people in their, you know, just… mwah.

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Can you describe your character to everyone? VAUGHAN: Describe my character? He’s doing just a little bit of everything, you know? Oh, who are the two old guys in the Muppets? [Yeah.] Who are just watching from the sides the whole time. That, that’s kind of me. That’s kind of what, thematically, what I bring to the story, but, but you know, a little more, a little more heart, but you know, just kind of watching and laughing along with the audience.

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What is it like to just be a delightful person that has to be very stern? KRILL: You know, it’s funny that you’re asking me this. No one’s ever asked me this before. [No way.] No! [Journalist!] I, I — yes, the hard-hitting questions right here. I, I really appreciate you asking, because I as a person, I do think I sort of lead with, like, a smile, and I love to laugh and giggle, and, um, and, uh, and I also don’t necessarily love taking up, like, a lot of space, like, you know. [Yeah.] You know, uh, and, and, and yet for some reason, I’m always called upon to play these men who come in and just take over, like, [unintelligible], and, um, so it’s a really fun exercise for me as, especially as an actor. [Right.] Um, but also maybe a little bit of, as a human being. [Right!] You know, to kind of, uh, find that little part of myself that is actually, it’s okay to take up a little bit more room. So yeah, how about that? [How about that!] So, um, so yeah, but yeah, I, and I, I love this guy, and I love these characters for it. I love H.T. Carmichael because of the fact that he’s not afraid to kind of come in and assert himself and say, “I’m going to get this guy out.”

Right. What, what is like — it feels weird to be like, what, what’s your mission, as like, your actor in this moment, but like, how are you keeping yourself grounded as there are, like, so many things happening in this show throughout your — like with Jeremy’s character, and like, there’s just so much happening, and you have to be like, “Listen to me, I know what I’m doing.” KRILL: Yeah. Uh, the thing that keeps me grounded, the thing that keeps me sort of tethered to, uh, a sort of, uh, truth for him — that isn’t just that he’s, like, a mean, nasty dude coming from outside, of every-, you know, outside of Mammoth Cave — is, uh, the fact that when you really analyze the script, uh, Carmichael just wants what everyone else wants. He wants to free Floyd, right? He’s not necessarily a people person. He doesn’t, you know, I mean, he doesn’t make friends easily, but it doesn’t, that doesn’t make him wrong. [Yeah.] You know, a lot of what he says is actually quite correct. And, uh, and, uh, he, uh… uh, so, yeah, so that’s what keeps me tethered, is that he doesn’t lie. [Right.] And he’s not, he’s not deceiving anyone. He actually wants the same thing as everyone else in the play, is to get Floyd out.

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Your character gives us so much depth, which is, like, really beautiful to see you, like, go like, “I’m going to save my brother, but I also have this, these big dreams of being an actor,” and, like, you are dealing with all these different aspects of being a human in these, like, really tough situations. What is your thought process as you’re getting ready for this show eight times a week? GOTAY: My gosh. Wow. That’s such a great question. There’s so much in here. I think that, you know, before we started, I did so much homework about trapping out — mapping out the character’s trajectory, every scene, how one moment leads to the next, and how Homer’s, um, journey to leaving home is woven through each moment that we’re seeing. And so, once you track all of that, and once I literally write it out and create a map of how one moment leads to the next, then once you get in rehearsal on stage, you just got to get up there and play each moment. Look at every person in the eyes and just tell the story as truthfully as you can.

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Okay, so as a journalist, it was very cool to see your journey in this show and like going from like, “Okay, I’m telling this story,” […] so, you go from this person who’s like, “Okay, I’m on a mission. I’m telling this story,” to like, “Oh, wait. I’m actually going to help out,” to like, “Wait, I’m very personally invested in this.” Like, what is your journey throughout the show like? TRENSCH: Um, it’s a really fun, very emosh…ional. I could have just said the whole word. I don’t know why I abbreviated that. [I really appreciate the abbreviation.] Really fun. Like a career, like a real high point for me. This has been a really special experience, largely because of this ensemble of, like, wildly talented, preposterously gifted, idiosyncratic actors and artists. Um, I feel so lucky to be in a group of these people really, especially with Wade McCollum. There’s, like, a lot of caretaking happening on stage, and also it’s so fun to just watch. There’s so many moments where we get to be on stage and watch the action and that’s been one of the greatest gifts, is like, just watching everybody else be so talented. MCCOLLUM: It’s so true. And watching Taylor Trensch’s performance every night is one of the highlights of my life. It’s true. No, it really is true. It’s spectacular.

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Um, something that I loved is the, um, the, the use of this stage, which, when you first look at it, you’re like, “Okay, simple stage,” […] So, the back, I’m obsessed with the silhouette scenes, and like, the like, you know, the use of the, like, the, the tools, and the stance, like, what is it like — ’cause you, there’s at least one that you’re in the back, right? Doing a, a motion? MCCOLLUM: Yeah, I do a few silhouettes. And it’s fun. I love that part. [Do you?] Yeah. I like being part of the sculptural narrative storytelling, the sort of unexpected circuitous poetry that’s happening, that’s physicalized, and sort of adding to, through abstract shapes that add to the story. It’s really fun, and really, and then to be a part of an ensemble too, where everybody’s really listening, and moving together like a flock of birds. It’s, it’s a really special experience, really. [I love that!] TRENSCH: And it forces — what I love so much about the show is, it forces the audience to imagine. We’re not, like, um, spoon feeding you the cave. You have to, like, really engage and lean forward. And I think that’s, the best theater makes an audience do that.

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Can you tell us what is going through your soul, your energy as you’re performing this? JORDAN: Uh, pretty much every emotion you could imagine. I mean, he, he runs the gamut. I mean, you meet him and he’s just this effervescent, loves life, you know, even though he’s this sort of solitary, you know, quiet figure. I mean, he, he is so happy and so content in his world. And then even when he gets trapped, you know, he’s, he’s like, “Ah, it’s fine. I’ll get out.” [Yeah.] And then as the show progresses, you see him sort of change and go through the gamut of emotions, the sort of, the fear, the reconciliation, the wonder, the, the love, the, the hope, the despair, all the things. It’s, it’s really lovely, and, and, and to do all that through music is, is, um, is a, really a gift.

Yes. One of my favorite things about this show is how you and Lizzy have this beautiful, like, love of, of the weird, of the sparkle, like, the, the crickets, right? JORDAN: Yeah, we, we have this connection that sort of transcends space. [Yes.] Um, like, kind of like a twin energy, almost, where like, we can feel and hear each other, and it’s one of my favorite things to do in the show. It's like, she’s kind of living in her strange ethereal world, and in my mind, that’s her sort of reaching out and connecting, and on occasion I can feel it and grab a part of it and, and feel her there with me, and, um, you know, I can’t, I never get to see her until the end of the show. [Right.] And, but, I feel her with me the whole show, and it’s, it’s really lovely, and I love Lizzy, and it’s been wonderful getting to, like, be a part of her Broadway journey.

I love that. Okay. So, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about that. I mean, I’m sure you know by now how much of a Newsies fan I am, right? [Sure. Oh, yeah.] Like, it’s pretty, I’m pretty vocal about it. [You got it. Yeah.] Um, and I wanted to make a joke about like, oh, I wonder if we’re going to hear “Santa Fe.” Um, but then we saw, like, a newspaper, like a, like, a newspaper scene, and like, a journalist scene and I was like, “Are, are we getting it?” No, I’m just kidding. But — [Only you would go there.] I would and I did. But, um, like, does it feel like, maybe a — this is a stretch, I’m, I’m letting you know before I ask this question that this is a stretch. [Alright.] Hear me out. But, like, there’s a part of this moment where it’s like, you’re really getting to, like, dig into these roots of, like, what is the story that we’re trying to tell? And, like, the news, the journalist here is — not even just, like, telling the story, but is a part of the story, is, like, really trying to, like, get you out. And it’s not just, like, a love story, it’s like, a friendship love story. And I don’t know, I just was like, I am always going to draw it to Newsies. That’s just, like, who I am. But I was, like, really blown away, of the different type of story from the journalist being like, I’m a part of this, but not in the way you would think. JORDAN: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that, uh, the journalism aspect of the story is really wild, how they spin the news and how they sort of make it, sensationalize it. And it became, like, the first real media circus in America, and it was all just people watching this guy die slowly. I mean, hoping that he comes out, but like, kind of also being like, “Is he going to die? And am I going to, like, get to be a part of that in a strange kind of way?”

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A reading of the show was first done in composer Adam Guettel’s living room in 1992. After major rewrites and further development, the show was then done in a full production at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia in 1994, in a more operatic version. The entire opening sequence was replaced, retaining only the echoes. The original opening had been more stream-of-consciousness, more inside Floyd’s head. The new opening did a better job of introducing the audience to Floyd and was easier to sing and easier for the audience to process, with a clearer structure. This opening now included several musical motifs which would be used throughout the rest of the score to lend the show a sense of musical unity. The show was revised and opened again March 3, 1996 off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon in New York. A cast album was released which created more interest in the show, and it was produced at several regional theatre in 1999. The story of a man trapped in a cave may not seem like musical material but it’s a story that needs both the things only a musical can supply. First, it is said that in a musical a character breaks into song when his emotion becomes too big for spoken words. That’s why West Side Story, Carousel, and Sweeney Todd had to be musicals; spoken words cannot contain emotions that large. The same is true of Floyd. This is a story of enormous passions, enormous fears, and profound love. This story needs music. Second, musicals are the only contemporary theatre form in which the soliloquy still feels normal. Shakespeare’s audiences were used to soliloquies, outward expressions of inner thoughts, but contemporary naturalistic theatre has discarded this device. Musicals, on the other hand, still use soliloquies, in songs like "C’est Moi" and several other songs from Camelot, "Being Alive" in Company, "Johanna" in Sweeney Todd, "Now" in A Little Night Music, "One Song Glory" in Rent, "I Know Things Now," "Giants in the Sky," "Moments in the Woods," and other songs from Into the Woods. In Floyd Collins, with the main character stuck in a cave, usually with no contact to the outside world, the only way we can get inside Floyd’s head is through soliloquy, in songs like "The Call," Time to Go," How Glory Goes," and others.

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Floyd came from a poor Kentucky family who lived in Flint Ridge, Kentucky. Lee Collins was born in May 1858 and was sixty-seven when Floyd was trapped. Lee’s first wife Martha bore him eight children: Elizabeth in 1883 (who died at age three), Jim in 1885, Floyd on April 20, 1887, Annie in 1890, Andy Lee in 1895, Marshall in 1897, Nellie in 1900, and Homer in 1903. Though several were present at the site of Floyd’s tragedy, the show’s creators combined them into just two siblings, the two youngest and the only two still living at home in 1925, Nellie, who was twenty-five when Floyd was trapped, and Homer, who was 22. Martha died in 1915 of tuberculosis and Lee married Sarilda Jane Buckingham, known simply as "Miss Jane," whose first husband had died in a cave. Floyd loved caves from the time he was a small boy. At age six, he went exploring in Salts Cave near the Collins home. He was often late or absent from school because he was caving. Everyone remembered him as completely without fear, putting himself happily into physical danger all the time. He saved his money and when he was twenty-three he bought thirty acres of land next to the family’s land. He found a small cave there, which he named Floyd’s Cave, and sold piece of onyx and stalactites from the cave to area souvenir stands. Floyd worked as a guide for local caves and learned everything he could about caves. In 1917 Floyd discovered a cave which he would later name Crystal Cave (because of its gypsum flowers) and open to the public as a commercial venture, with the help of the whole Collins family. It was only occasionally profitable but Floyd was more interested in finding new passageways and chambers than in making money. Floyd had a theory that all the caves in the area were actually connected in a vast network comprised of hundreds of miles of caves. No one believed him but today we know Floyd was absolutely right. As of 1999, three hundred sixty miles of connected caves, including Floyd’s Crystal Cave, have been discovered in the Mammoth Cave system, and the total is increasing every year. There are also other cave systems nearby that may be connected to the Mammoth system, which could bring the total to well over five hundred miles. And still today, as cavers find new passageways and new chambers they frequently find Floyd’s initials carved on the cave walls. No one had any idea how far he had explored.

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The story of how Floyd got trapped and died in his Great Sand Cave is basically as the musical tells it. Some things are left out, like the court which was assembled to decide if Floyd’s tragedy was just another publicity stunt perpetrated by the cave owners to get more tourists. People are left out, like Johnnie Gerald, one of Floyd’s closest caving friends, who was in early versions of the musical but later combined with the character of Homer. Andy Lee, Floyd’s other brother, was also combined with Homer. Floyd’s brother Marshall was cut as well. Lt. Burdon of the Louisville Fire Department and other authority figures were all folded into the character of Henry Carmichael from the Kentucky Rock and Asphalt Company. Ed Bishop is an invented character, loosely based on the famous black cave guide Stephen Bishop. The book Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins by Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker (University Press of Kentucky, 1982, revised 1999) is an invaluable help to anyone doing the show or wanting to know more about the real story. It chronicles in great detail the morning Floyd got trapped and every day after that until the end. It goes into detail about Floyd’s descent into the cave, how he got trapped, and even includes diagrams of the tunnel. It’s helpful for directors and actors to line up the events in the play with the real life events, to see exactly when things happened, how long Floyd had been underground at each important moment, and how the telescoped events in the show correspond to the actual events. Landau and Guettel have taken liberties with the musical, to be sure, but they are remarkably faithful to the sequence of events, the major players, and the important moments.

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A Stone History Book The cave is just as major a character in Floyd Collins as the title character. Floyd talks to the cave as a person and refers to it more than once as "she." In a way, the cave is the antagonist, both Floyd’s lover and his executioner. The cave is Floyd’s world, more real to him than the world above ground, the only place where he feels comfortable. He tells Skeets Miller, "It’s jes’… when I’m under… I feel right in my bones." Though Floyd is uneducated and even inarticulate, he becomes a true American poet when he describes the caves he so loves: Looks wet, Every wall looks wet, Meltin’ with a snow made a’ cream… Shinin’ everywhere with tiny diamonds. Shine the lantern an’ git All the colors of the world comin’ back. . . . No tellin’ what’s on these walls, Layerin’ on slow Like a stone history book With a couple of sentences ‘bout me. And more than Floyd could ever know the caves did indeed tell his story once he was gone, as cave explorers today continue to find Floyd’s initials carved on the walls of newly discovered caves – exactly like "a stone history book with a couple of sentences" about Floyd.

Listen to a Tale… In fact, the story of Floyd Collins is storytelling. Because all the important action takes place a hundred and fifty-five feet below ground, because television doesn’t yet exist, there can be no direct, unbiased reporting (if in fact you think television can be unbiased). And Floyd’s lasting fame is the result of storytelling as well, the embellishments and drama imprinted on the actual events leading up to Floyd’s death. Composer-lyricist Adam Guettel and bookwriter and original director Tina Landau use storytelling as a major theme throughout the musical Floyd Collins to show how Floyd’s predicament was communicated to the world, how the players in the drama disgraced themselves, and how entertaining and simply passing the time was different in 1925. Storytelling takes many forms in the show. It figures prominently in many of the songs in the show, "The Ballad of Floyd Collins" (obviously), "Tween a Rock and a Hard Place," "Lucky," "Daybreak," "The Riddle Song," and "Is That Remarkable?". We see Jewel begin to write "The Ballad of Floyd Collins" midway through Act I, mirroring the actual "Ballad of Floyd Collins" (a different song in real life, that became very popular throughout the country), which later in Act II, blossoms into a full length song. And as we see Jewel’s song develop, we also see his understanding of Floyd’s situation and his understanding of himself develop as well. "Tween a rock and a Hard Place" is an important song for several reasons. First, after spending twenty minutes alone with Floyd, the audience finally meets the social context from which Floyd comes, in the persons of Floyd’s friends and fellow cavers, Ed Bishop, Bee Doyle, and Jewel Estes. Second, after the very sophisticated music of the lengthy opening sequence, music that requires a great deal from the audience, "Rock and a Hard Place" gives the audience some respite. It’s a simple song structurally and harmonically, and it establishes the very important musical contrast between the world above ground and the world under ground. Third, and most important, it firmly establishes the theme of storytelling. Doyle, Bishop, and Estes tell each other progressively harrowing – and perhaps fictionalized – stories of bravery, each trying to outdo one another. We see the practice of distorting the truth long before any reporters show up. We see that exaggeration is common here, that storytelling – and embellishment – is in all of us. If these three can distort the truth and we find it charming, why do the reporters become villains for doing the same thing?

The reporters represent a similarly dishonest form of storytelling – exaggeration, distortion, bald fictions – but it seems a bit more dangerous here, perhaps because it’s not just casual bragging. Here, the storytellers’ audience doesn’t agree to the same rules, that distortion is just good entertainment. A reporter’s audience expects the truth (however unlikely that may actually be). The dishonesty is less benign in this case because it’s all for the sake of selling papers, storytelling disguised as objective reporting. Newspapers are frequently used as historical documents decades later; what would we think of Floyd’s story today if the papers were our only source of information? And though reporter Skeets Miller is one of the only people in the show who acts honorably throughout, still he is a reporter, and Landau dramatizes the gap between truth and journalism by having Skeets actually speak the punctuation of his reports, as reporters had to do when dictating a story over the phone. It gives his speeches an artificiality and a distance that reminds us that this is coming through a filter. Like the reporters, Cliff Roney shows up to tell Floyd’s story on film, and he too wants to fictionalize things, to make the story "better" than it is. But is his objective really any different from Guettel and Landau’s? More to the point, is it possible to find objective truth? Are there different kinds of truth? Have Guettel and Landau told Floyd’s story truthfully even though they’ve left out incidents and combined characters to give their work structure? Is it possible to get at psychological or emotional truth without adhering strictly to all objective facts? And like the musical Assassins, can Floyd Collins be truthful without being entirely accurate historically? Perhaps it all comes down to a question of audience expectations. Bishop, Doyle, and Estes expect each other to embellish their stories. They make allowances for this and they know the truth is probably less interesting, less heroic than the storyteller describes it. Cliff Roney’s audience is sitting in a movie theatre, watching a film; the question here is whether Roney presented his film as documentary or not, and if he were making the film today, would it become the nebulous "docudrama"? Guettel and Landau’s audience does not expect a musical based on a true story to be a documentary, to include every incident and every character. In fact, Guettel says one of the earlier versions of the show was a live "four-hour documentary" and he realized how wrong that was. He realized that as a dramatist it was his job to focus the story, to make his audience feel the truth, rather than learn facts. But though Guettel and Landau focused the story, the reporters on the scene added to the story, facts that did not help to get at the truth. They invented a girlfriend and a dog for Floyd, neither of which represented any kind of truth at all. Their audience expected facts and more often than not, the reporters gave them fiction.

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Floyd’s spirituality is tied to Nellie’s mysticism. The show makes it very clear that Nellie possesses some kind of psychic abilities, that she and Floyd have some kind of very real supernatural connection. Nellie is a strong-willed woman, which could easily be interpreted as crazy among uneducated folk in 1925 rural Kentucky. And she’s psychic, which would definitely be considered crazy in that time and place. In Act II, she "hears" Floyd during Lee and Homer’s argument, and she starts singing to Floyd. Lee hears this and assumes she’s going crazy again. Is this why she was locked up in a mental hospital? Did she hear and talk to her dead mother? And did she tell anyone at the hospital that she could hear her brother Floyd back at home? As we meet her, she has just returned from a lengthy stay in the mental hospital, and we see that she has learned (either in the hospital or maybe before) how to live in her head, how to escape the unpleasantness and restraints of the real world by escaping inward. She sings in Act II: Some people go place to place; Some people go underground; Some gotta go crazy like; I jes’ journey in, An’ that is where I’ve been. In other words, Homer has to explore the world, Floyd has to explore underground, Lee is losing his mind, and Nellie travels inward and finds piece in the psychic realm where she can be with her mother and sometimes with Floyd. When Nellie and Floyd really connect psychically in Act II, they sing "welcome home" to each other – this is where they belong, together in the psychic world. Nellie tells us that she and Floyd were "together" when she was in the hospital, even though they weren’t together physically. She carries her mother’s life force with her, which she shares with Floyd. Nellie and Floyd’s psychic connection becomes an important dramatic device. When they connect – Floyd underground and Nellie above ground – we hear the same music in Act I and Act II, a kind of psychic musical motif. They are both connected deeply to the natural world. Floyd and Nellie both apparently talk to the crickets. Floyd talks to the cave. Nellie hears things – her mother? – in the wind. When Floyd first hears Nellie in Act I, Skeets hears only the wind. The wind becomes a symbol for their special gifts. When Floyd hears her in the wind and asks if she’s come to rescue him. In fact she has, but neither they or we know that yet. In Act II, she hears the wind blowing and she tells Skeets that it’s getting to be time – meaning time for Floyd to cross over, to with his mother. Has her mother told her this through the wind? She says into the wind, "Cave-in don’t matter none. I’m a-come to you, Floyd – no matter what." Floyd has told her that he dreamed of a cave with a gold at the end of the rainbow. Is this heaven? Did he dream his own fate and not know it? Nellie comes to Floyd in his dream, which arguably happens in the blink of an eye, just as Skeets breaks through the cave wall, and she helps Floyd cross over to heaven. In real life, the diggers swore they could hear Floyd just before they broke through, but when they got there he was dead, just as it happens in the show. But in that moment that he lets go of the physical world, Nellie takes him on a journey to help him understand what’s happening through the world of the dream. Nellie does finally rescue Floyd by helping him escape his physical tomb by entering heaven. Lee treats Nellie like a cripple, and nobody thinks Nellie can do anything, but ultimately she’s the only one who can save Floyd. Early in Act I, Nellie tells Miss Jane that she and Floyd will sing a "cave duet" and in fact they do, just before Floyd dies.

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