Floyd Collins and the White Angels of Sand Cave is a script for a full-length drama for 7 to 50 actors, made for educational, professional, and community theatres and is easy to stage.
The play is an almost operatic blend of voices, stage movement, and contrapuntal action with delightful opportunities for experimentation by directors and set designers.
The play is set in Kentucky. In 1925, Floyd Collins became trapped 200 feet underground while searching for a new cave to make his fame and fortune. Caves were popular tourist attractions and a source of revenue.
Floyd hoped to find another entrance to the Mammoth Cave, the largest and most popular cave in the area, or possibly a new unknown cave to draw more visitors and greater profits.
For the two weeks he was trapped underground, before he died of starvation and lack of water, a media circus ensued, heightened by a new invention, public radio broadcasts. The incident inspired the 1951 movie “Ace in the Hole”, starring Kirk Douglas.