MTP Musical Unearths 1925 Kentucky Cave Tragedy

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

The man at the center of "Floyd Collins" does not move much.

That is the practical problem that became the artistic premise for Mill Town Players’ new production of the Adam Guettel-Tina Landau musical, opening Friday in the renovated Historic Pelzer Auditorium. "Floyd Collins", the real Kentucky cave explorer who was trapped underground in 1925, spends most of the story pinned in darkness while the world above him becomes increasingly frantic, divided, hopeful, opportunistic and, eventually, too late.

How do you stage a man who cannot leave the place where he is trapped? How do you show the rescuers, reporters, family members and crowds above ground while keeping the audience aware of the person below?

For Will Ragland, Mill Town Players’ artistic director and founder, the answer was to turn the theater itself into a layered cave system: platforms at different heights, a raised upstage area, splintered reclaimed wood, crawling bodies, shadowed passages and a wall that is not quite a wall.

“The set was a real puzzle to figure out because our stage is relatively small with limited space,” Ragland said. “This play takes place mainly above ground and underground, in which "Floyd Collins" stays in the same spot for most of the show.”

The production opens Mill Town Players’ 13th main-stage season and is the first season mounted after the Pelzer auditorium’s renovation. It also represents a rare production that Ragland said has not previously been produced in South Carolina, making the Mill Town staging a state premiere.

The musical will run for eight performances across two weekends.

Ragland and director Mary Nichols needed a set that could isolate scenes, give actors compelling entrances and allow the audience to understand the separation between the world outside the cave and the dangerous space where Collins is trapped.

They created a vertical landscape. Platforms at varying levels allow actors to crawl through underground passages, while the elevated rear portion of the stage gives Collins a place to begin high before crawling downward and disappearing behind the set.

The harder question was how to separate the two worlds without losing sight of the one beneath.

Ragland found inspiration in an approach used by Shannon Robert, a Clemson scenic-design instructor. The technique begins with black screen material like the mesh of a screen door. When sculpted, scrunched and installed in layers, it becomes a three-dimensional scrim: a rock wall that can appear solid under front lighting but reveal action behind it when illuminated from another direction.

“A scrim, in the theater world, is a loosely woven piece of black fabric that, if you light it from the front, it looks like a wall,” Ragland said. “But if you light whatever’s behind it, you can see through it.”

The result is a cave wall that is both barrier and window.

“So you have this see-through rock wall,” Ragland said. “When we’re focused on the scenes outside, we don’t necessarily have to see what’s going on inside the cave. And then when we do need to see inside the cave, with lighting, we can focus on what’s beyond or what’s beneath.”

It is a technique Mill Town Players has not previously used on its stage.

“I’m excited to see how it works under the lights,” Ragland said.

The production has used more lumber than any Mill Town Players set Ragland can remember. Yet, he said, the company did not buy a single piece.

The set incorporates existing platforms, legs and stock materials saved from earlier productions. Mill Town Players, like many community theaters, keeps objects that may one day become useful: a platform from one show, a wall from another, an oddly shaped piece of lumber that can be made into something else when the right story arrives.

Ragland needed boards of a consistent thickness to cover the platforms and prevent tripping hazards. He also happened to have an old backyard deck that needed to be removed.

“I thought, this is a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone,” he said.

The deck was dismantled and brought to the theater. When the company needed more materials, Ragland made a brief Facebook request for reclaimed wood from old fences and decks. The response was more than he expected.

“People were excited for us to come get their old wood,” he said.

The stage is now covered in layered, painted, reclaimed boards, arranged to suggest splintering rock, danger and mystery. Rather than building the set in modular pieces in a scene shop and assembling it later, the team created this one largely in place.

“It almost seems like some sort of art installation or sculpture in place,” Ragland said.

The materials carry their own history — deck boards from a backyard, lumber from other people’s fences, components from past Mill Town productions — now repurposed into the walls and floor of a Kentucky cave.

The musical is based on the real story of "Floyd Collins", who entered Sand Cave near Cave City, Kentucky, on Jan. 30, 1925, searching for a new cave attraction that might bring tourists to his family’s land.

Collins had already discovered and developed Crystal Cave, but it was too far from the main road to attract enough visitors during Kentucky’s competitive era of privately operated “show caves.” He believed the caves beneath the region were part of a larger system. In time, he would be proved right: the Mammoth Cave system is now recognized as the world’s longest known cave system.

But Sand Cave trapped him.

While trying to return through a narrow passage after his lantern began failing, Collins dislodged a rock that pinned his foot. The rock weighed only about 27 pounds, Ragland said, but it lodged in a narrow shaft in a way that made escape nearly impossible.

“It wasn’t the weight of the boulder,” Ragland said. “It was the fact that he was lodged solidly in there.”

Collins had squeezed through openings scarcely larger than a sheet of printer paper making the passages too narrow for rescuers to reach him. Neighbors and family members initially brought him food and water, but part of the cave passage later collapsed, cutting off the route. Rescuers began the dangerous work of digging a vertical shaft from above.

The story became national news. Crowds gathered. Reporters arrived. Vendors sold food, drink and souvenirs. The site became an unsettling mix of emergency operation and carnival.

“A literal media circus,” Ragland said.

William “Skeets” Miller, a small-framed reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, was able to crawl into the cave and interview Collins. His coverage and rescue work earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Thousands of people came to Sand Cave. Newspaper coverage spread rumors alongside facts. Arguments broke out over how to save Collins. By the time rescuers finally reached him, he had died. The National Park Service places his death around Feb. 13, 1925; workers broke through to the passage on Feb. 16.

The story’s national reach was immediate. Ragland said a 1925 recording called “The Death of "Floyd Collins",” by Vernon Dalhart, sold more than 300,000 copies around the country.

That history is embedded in the musical, but Ragland said the production is not simply a literal reconstruction. Its real subject is not only the trapped man, but the social world that forms around his entrapment.

“Yes, it is about a man,” Ragland said. “But the real story takes place all around him in the response to what happens to him.”

"Floyd Collins" opened off Broadway in 1996, with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and a book and additional lyrics by Tina Landau. It had a brief initial run, but its cast recording helped develop an enduring following among performers and musical-theater enthusiasts.

The show received renewed attention through a 2025 Lincoln Center revival starring Jeremy Jordan.

Guettel is the grandson of Richard Rodgers and was mentored by Stephen Sondheim, a lineage that might seem intimidating if the music were not also so distinctly its own. Ragland describes the score as rooted primarily in bluegrass and folk, with strings, banjo and harmonica shaping a sound that fits rural Kentucky without reducing the story to period pastiche.

“It’s a blend of different genres mostly based in bluegrass and folk music,” he said. “It’s very unique and interesting.”

The final song, “How Glory Goes,” has become especially beloved among theater performers and is often heard in auditions and cabarets.

“It is one of the most beautiful, haunting songs you’ll ever hear in musical theater,” Ragland said.

The show’s combination of difficult music, an unconventional narrative and a historical tragedy explains both why it has devoted admirers and why it is not produced frequently. Ragland said the score is complex enough that the company will perform it with a live orchestra.

The musical has attracted performers who specifically wanted to be involved with this production. The cast includes 14 people, mixing Mill Town regulars with new faces appearing on the Pelzer stage for the first time.

“It’s definitely an ensemble show,” Ragland said.

Philip Rast plays Collins. Rast is active in Upstate theater and also works with theatrical projections, which are being incorporated into the production. Ragland said the role has long been a dream part for him.

The show’s devoted following has reached beyond the region. A couple from Canada contacted Mill Town Players after learning it was staging South Carolina’s first production of the musical; they bought tickets and plan to travel to see it. Ragland also has friends from Kentucky, including one from Cave City, who plan to attend.

Ragland’s own family research uncovered another connection: the Raglands are distant cousins of the Collins family.

“There’s a lot of connection,” he said.

The Mill Town Players have approached the historical details with the kind of care that becomes visible in small objects.

For scenes involving local filmmakers covering the rescue, Ragland found an affordable 1925 movie camera on eBay. The prop is not a reproduction. It is a real camera from the same year Collins was trapped.

“When the local movie producer is filming Homer, who is Floyd’s brother crawling out of the Sand Cave entrance, he’s actually using a real movie camera from that time period,” Ragland said.

The recently renovated Pelzer auditorium will also play a significant role in making the cave feel present.

The theater now has a new sound system, and Ragland said the company is using it to create echoes and surround-sound effects. Collins yodels in the cave to test its dark passages and understand their distance and size. The production uses those echoes through speakers around the auditorium, allowing the cave’s sound to seem to come from more than one direction.

“You do feel surrounded by the sound effects and the music,” Ragland said.

The company held its first rehearsal with the orchestra the night before the interview.

“Boy, was it gorgeous,” Ragland said.

The production comes after a substantial renovation of the Historic Pelzer Auditorium. The theater reduced its seating capacity from 556 to 389, trading quantity for wider seats, more legroom, improved sight lines, stronger railings, better aisle lighting and greater accessibility.

Ragland described the result as “a whole new world” inside the building. One visitor, he said, compared the renovation to “flying first class.”

The smaller capacity makes sellouts easier, but it also makes every available seat more valuable. Ragland stressed that the redesign has improved the experience throughout the auditorium.

“Now every seat is a great seat,” he said.

The show will run only eight times across two weekends. Ragland expects word of mouth to spread quickly among theatergoers who see it, but the short run means there will be little time for audiences to wait for someone else’s review.

The company has built a cave from old decks and saved lumber. It has found an almost-century-old camera. It has arranged platforms, scrims, projections, echoes and darkness around the story of a man who could not move.

The historical Collins died alone beneath Kentucky ground while the country watched from above. On the Pelzer stage, his fate will unfold in music — tragic, strange and beautiful — with the audience seated close enough to hear the cave answer him.

“Floyd Collins” opens Fridays and is set to run for two weekends. Tickets available here.