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NEWS
Starke applauds playful play
By Amy Reinink, "The Gainesville Sun"
The mayor still doesn't understand about the
stripper.
But after attending opening night of The Great
American Trailer Park Musical at the Hippodrome on
Friday, Mayor Steve Futch said he found the
satirical play, which is based on his hometown and
features a stripper as its main character,
hilarious.
"I think most of what happened in the play was
accurate for Starke or for any small town in
Florida," Futch said. "Except for the stripping
part. Starke doesn't even have a strip club. We
passed legislation to prevent them."
The play follows the adventures of a stripper named
Pippi when she moves to a fictitious trailer park in
Starke accidentally, after a wrong turn on U.S. 301.
The musical pokes fun at the Bradford County seat
for U.S. 301, the electric chair and the trailer
parks referenced in the title.
After weeks of public relations efforts to assuage
Starke residents' fears about the play, residents
who came to Gainesville to see it said those fears
had largely given way to amusement.
Pre-play publicity
The day before opening night, news about the musical
was just reaching some folks in the city of 6,000
people about 25 miles northeast of Gainesville.
"This is not a town that pays much attention to
theater," said one clerk at Madison Street Pharmacy.
"I doubt most people have even heard about it."
Fellow pharmacy employee and lifelong Starke
resident Michelle Colson had heard about the play,
and said she loved the idea.
"It sounds like a prime example of art imitating
life," Colson said. "I think it sounds hilarious."
Dorothy Starling and daughter Sheila Barnes, who
co-own a flower shop on U.S. 301, hung a poster
advertising the play in their front window as soon
as they heard about it.
"I think it's going to be cute," Starling said. "Oh
my gosh, I'd love to go see it."
"We've got to go," Barnes said. "You've got to have
a sense of humor about yourself. I mean, we do have
a lot of trailer parks here. We've delivered to all
of them."
Their only point of contention? The jokes about the
electric chair.
"Everyone associates the prison with Starke,"
Starling said.
"But it's not even in Starke," Barnes said. "It's in
Raiford."
Residents react
Friday night found Charleen Gathright, owner and
broker of the Starke realty firm American Dream, and
about two dozen co-workers carpooling to
Gainesville. The group filled two rows at the
Hippodrome.
"It was so funny," Gathright said. "We laughed until
our faces hurt and then laughed all the way home. We
can even think about certain parts now and laugh
again. How can anything that makes you laugh that
hard be bad?"
Michelle Allmand, a secretary for the company, said
while the play may have exaggerated some aspects of
rural life, other parts could easily be true of
Starke - or of any community.
"I've had the privilege of living in mobile home
parks in Jacksonville, and they pretty much hit it
on the head," Allmand said.
But Gathright and Allmand both said as much as they
loved the play, overly sensitive Starke residents
may want to stay home.
"If you have sense of humor, you should definitely
go," Allmand said. "If you don't, if you're stuck-up
or offended easily, you shouldn't."
A visit from the mayor
Not everyone greeted news of the musical's
Gainesville debut with laughter.
Earlier this year, Futch told The Sun he worried how
the play would affect his city's reputation, which
he said has already taken some unfair knocks.
When Jessica Thompson, director of marketing at the
Hippodrome, heard about the mayor's skepticism, she
got to work.
She sent posters and promotional materials to
businesses in Starke and other outlying areas. She
offered Starke residents $10 tickets - compared to
the $22 to $32 they'd usually pay.
And she sent a personal letter to the mayor, telling
him he'd feel differently if he saw the show.
"It took him a few weeks to call me," Thompson said.
"I was so happy he called, though. I just felt that
if he saw it himself, he would see what a sweet,
good-hearted story it is. He and his wife came on
opening night. I watched them during the show, and
his wife laughed the whole time."
Futch said the play was entertaining, the performers
talented and the script professional and respectful.
He even stayed for the cast party after the play,
chatting with the actors and sharing his impressions
of the performance.
"I told one of the actors the only thing I would
have changed if it was me writing it was the
language," Futch said, referring to the four-letter
words sprinkled throughout the script. "She told me
her dad had an issue with that, too."
Also, Futch said, he's starting to see opportunity
in the attention.
"I've been thinking about what this sort of exposure
can do for Starke in terms of name recognition,"
Futch said. "I think this can be a catalyst to get
people to come here and see some of the good things
we have to offer. I guess it's nice to have some
notoriety."
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