Everyone loves Pickles at the Muse Theatre’s latest production

Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical 
added show tonight, wraps up this weekend

When looking back on her acting career so far, Tegan Blank remembers where it all started.

On stage, in the back, completely blue. She wasn’t sad. She was six. And her favorite color was blue. So, she demanded she be an Oompa Loompa.

It was the first of many roles for the 28-year-old, who said she remembered being a blue Oompa Loompa, though Willy Wonka’s ‘henchmen’ are actually orange.

Regardless, there’s nothing like telling people the first role of your acting career was as an Oompa Loompa. Today, she’s gone from blue – or orange – to blonde. The stereotypical blonde that is, playing Pickles in the Muse Theatre’s production of the Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical. It opens at 7:30 p.m. tonight and closes its six-week run Friday and Saturday. Get tickets here, as those last two shows may sell out.

Christmas is a special time for Blank, so this comedic musical, perhaps, brings back some memories of what the holidays are all about – excitement followed by chaos and stress, before it all comes together with one big happy ending.

Blank has a big family full of nieces and nephews from her four older sisters. When she was 10, she’d gather the kids, give out roles and lines, and put on a Christmas show for the family.

“There would be five or six of us,” she remembers, “and we would rehearse it and put on some show. I just really enjoyed that.”

Perhaps that’s what makes Trailer Park Christmas so special to Blank. She can relate. 

“It brings everybody to what Christmas is supposed to be,” Blank said of the musical. “People get really excited that Christmas is coming. But then they get really, really stressed out. And things seem to always go wrong, and nothing can go right and it’s craziness.

“But there’s always something magical that happens when you realize it’s Christmas. It’s a cool feeling when people come together. And I like the end of the play, where it’s like, ‘We’re all people, let’s celebrate the holiday.’ And it goes to the true meaning of Christmas.”

Sure, the musical takes place in a trailer park. One full of all kinds of odd personalities seemingly foreign to most. But, in the end, Blank feels everyone will relate to something or someone within the story.

Oh, and they’ll laugh along the way. A lot.

“They’re going to feel a little sentimental at the end,” said director Vicki Elwood, who also plays Betty. “Prior to that, there will be riots of laughs.”

But that’s not all, according to Elwood. Just when you think you can’t laugh anymore, your jaw is going to drop.

“I think we’ll have one moment where the show is stopped,” Elwood said. “I can’t give it away, but there was a moment like that in the first (show). Where everybody talked about that one moment like ‘You have to go see it to see this!’”

This will be Blank’s sixth show at the Muse. She’s been all kinds of characters – a hippy, a man, a bitch, the overly dramatic and, of course, miss happy-go-lucky, who everyone loves.

That’s her favorite, even if it’s a ditzy blonde, like Pickles. 

“She’s very kid-like,” Blank said. “She truly believes Santa Claus exists. I don’t want to call her stupid. She’s actually very smart. But she’s living in her own world, bubbly and happy no matter what’s happening.”

Blank, herself, is happy-go-lucky. And blonde. But not ditzy, argues Elwood, “She’s kind of a space cadet, but very lovable, very likable.”

Wait, that’s Elwood describing Pickles, not Blank.

“It takes a smart person to play that kind of a character,” Elwood said, about Blank this time.

When it comes to one of her most experienced actresses, Elwood sees Blank as the energy that can help bring the best out of everyone.

“Big time,” Elwood said. “She has that natural draw, and when she’s on stage, you can’t take your eyes off her.”

You really couldn’t take your eyes off Blank if you happened to be in the theatre for a pre-production of the show “9-to-5.”

Blank was doing a dream scene where she wanted to kill her boss. In the scene, she threw him into a chair and just happened to hear a funny noise. In the next scene, it was Blank that had to sit in the chair, and she figured out the hard way that funny noise from earlier was the chair breaking. When she sat down, the bottom fell out and her butt hit the ground.

“And, you can just picture it, the seat was a circle on the inside, so my legs were pretty much straight up,” Blank said with a laugh.

Stuff like that doesn’t bother Blank, however. She couldn’t come up with a most-embarrassing moment, just funny ones she cherishes as much as a good show.

What is funny, however, aside from her first role being an Oompa Loompa – a blue one at that – was when acting became something she fell in love with after she got her first big role in high school. Then again, maybe it wasn’t that big.

“It was the show called, ‘While the Lights Were Out,’” Tegan said, “and I was the ‘Unidentified Blonde.’”

The beginning of her being typecast, she thinks, but she also cherishes those types of parts. And, why not? They’re roles everyone loves, like Pickles the ditzy blonde in the Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical.