The Great American Trailer Park Musical Comes to Golden

It’s been eighteen years since The Great American Trailer Park Musical premiered off-Broadway, and in the case of composer David Nehls, absence has made the heart grow fonder.

“I’ve approached my role as musical director for Miners Alley Playhouse as if I were doing somebody else's work,” Nehls says. “It’s been years since I’ve listened to this music, so I had forgotten parts of it. I have these moments when I work with the ensemble where I’ll hear a part and think, 'Wow, that sounds damn good. It’s so cool — I wrote that!' The process has been gratifying, and I feel like I'm bringing a new energy to it that I didn't have twenty years ago, when I was first writing the show.”

Miners Alley Playhouse has assembled a cast of Colorado theater staples, including Nehls as musical director, to stage an updated version of  the musical. Piper Arpan, a veteran director and choreographer, is taking the reins as director.

“I came through Denver in 2007 with a tour of Monty Python's Spamalot, and I stumbled on this handsome fella, and it turns out that was my human,” Arpan says. “So after ten years of working on Broadway and in film, I moved to Colorado in 2009. I got my first job at the Arvada Center, where David was the music director; the theater world is a small world. We worked together on my first job in Colorado and have since become frequent artistic collaborators.”

Arpan and Nehls have collaborated on dozens of shows in the Denver area, including Xanadu and The Other Josh Cohen for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Miracle on 34th Street and Tarzan for the Arvada Center, and Big Fish for the Aurora Fox Arts Center.

Nehls wrote the tunes for The Great American Trailer Park Musical while working as an actor in New York. He met Betsy Kelso, who wrote the musical's book, while they were actors on a European tour of The Rocky Horror Show. “We were playing opposites in the show, and would mess around on the tour bus, writing different ideas,” Nehls recalls. “It’s so stupid; we came up with some really weird shit.”

When the two first became friends, Kelso was focused on doing sketch comedy in New York, and Nehls was making inroads in the cabaret scene. One of Nehls’s signature roles was a drag queen named Idaho. He had done many shows as the queen, and considered assembling a trailer park-themed drag show around the character.

“However, as I was looking at the drag show, I realized I had written a lot of original music for it and thought there might be something more here,” Nehls says. “So I approached Betsy, and I asked her, 'Would you want to do this?' She said no. And then I said, 'Okay, would you be willing to just string the songs together for me?' And three days later, Betsy turned in the first draft of The Great American Trailer Park Musical.”

The first presentation of the musical was in 1998. It went through several industry readings and workshops before its sold-out run at the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival, which led to the 2005 off-Broadway run.

“We went through many different incarnations,” Nehls says. “The story has changed, and characters and songs have come and gone, but the core of the show has remained the same. It’s always been about highlighting a section of society that isn't showcased in traditional musical theater.”

The Great American Trailer Park follows the residents of Florida’s most exclusive trailer park, Armadillo Acres​. The story revolves around Norbert (played by Rory Pierce at Miners Alley) and his agoraphobic wife, Jeannie (Abby Apple Boes), a couple whose marriage is jeopardized when a stripper named Pippi (Norrell Moore) moves into the trailer park.

Armadillo Acres is also home to Lin (P-jay Adams), Betty (Julia Tobey) and Pickles (Jenna Moll Reyes), a trio of local women who break the fourth wall to discuss their problems with the audience and serve as the musical’s narrators. The show is a bawdy and outrageous — yet surprisingly heartfelt — look at trailer park culture.

The Great American Trailer Park Musical is Nehls's third Miners Alley production (he previously served as music director for Once in 2019 and Hair in 2022), and is Arpan's directorial debut with the company. Miners Alley feels like home for Arpan, and she is enjoying the opportunity to bring to life a musical she’s been wanting to do since she arrived on the Front Range.
When Arpan moved to Colorado, she stumbled across a poster for a production of The Great American Trailer Park Musical at the Denver Civic Theatre. “The poster caught my eye; I was like, 'What the hell is this?'” she recalls. “And then I did a little research, found out [David] wrote it, and just became obsessed. After seeing a production of it, I fell in love with the musical and have wanted to get my hands on it since then.”

She is so grateful to Nehls and the team at Miners Alley for letting her direct a show that hits so close to home for her. “It's totally up my alley,” Arpan says. “My husband and I own two bars; I went to Florida State University and was raised all over the South, so I understand what this show is. It's a wild, raunchy, rock-and-roll, emotional take on this underserved group of people. I love it, and I'm so excited for people to see it.”

Both Arpan and Nehls are delighted with the hard work of the cast throughout the rehearsal process, and they look forward to sharing an updated version of the musical with audiences. Kelso and Nehls have slightly rewritten the book and lyrics to update show references and make the musical more timeless.

Arpan also sought to make the cast of the musical reflective of 2023. “I’m proud of embracing diversity through our casting. The cast on Broadway was an all-white cast; our trailer park looks different than that,” she says. “There are all different genders, colors and shapes. It’s more like what you would see in a community like this.”

The Great American Trailer Park Musical opens on Friday, January 27, and the creative team is working hard to ensure that audiences have as much fun as possible. “I hope that they leave here having the best time ever, because we haven't been allowed to have the best time ever lately,” Nehls says. “Coming back from the pandemic, I feel like [theaters] have been presenting a lot of programming that was heavy, which is wonderful and all, but it’s also a lot.”

“I hope that people forget all the crap that's happening outside while they're here and look at the idea of people living in a trailer park differently," adds Arpan. "They're no different from anybody else, and hopefully, that will make people realize that no matter where you come from, we aren’t all that different from one another.”

The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Friday, January 27, through Sunday, March 5; Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m., Miners Alley Playhouse, 1224 Washington Avenue, Golden. Get tickets and more information here.