I was part of the cast and the technical directore for a Rocky Horror Picture Show shadowcast for just under three years, fifteen years ago. The cast I was on did a performance literally every Saturday night at midnight, and I was at almost every show during that time. Yeah, I was kind of insane, ngl.
So if if you’re going to your first RHPS event this year for Halloween (or if you’ve just ever been curious) here’s what’s happening on the back end.
What IS a RHPS Shadowcast?
There’re two parts to any shadowcast performance: the show and the audience interaction.
For the show what you’re looking at is actors mirroring the movie as it plays on the screen behind them. There’s a lot of improv and goofy site gags and just people being silly. Every cast takes “screen accuracy” a little differently in terms of costuming, but my group was always a little more loosey goosey. What of the characters I played pretty frequently was The Criminiologist (or Crim), and I made a Crim puppet (Crumpet). So I would just wear tech black and perform with him pretty consistently.
They audience participation involves props and callouts. You get a newspaper and you put it over your head during “There’s a Light.” You throw toilet paper across the theater during Rocky’s unwrapping.
Then you have callouts which is stuff you shout at the screen in response to certain cues. There are quite a few pretty common ones, but each cast has their own unique spin. You just kind of go with the flow and get silly.
A list of some screen callouts.
What it is like being on a cast like this?
As technical director, my job was to make sure all the technical spots were filled each night and training new cast on the technical roles. For our cast that was a spotlight, a homemade box of foot lights, sheet holders for the sillouette scenes, a few bits and baubles of props, throwing and catching Frank’s cape, and managing the Box of Death.
The Box of Death was a two-part table that could be turned into a cube with flaps for Frank’s throne and Columbia’s jukebox. It was a beautiful piece of work that the Cast Director’s husband designed and built that I did some prime, paint, and upholster on.
The biggest hurdle, because we were a weekly show, was maintaining a cast from week to week to week. I, personally, had a fuck of a time getting people to do tech after their required tech probation. We ran tech with just 2-3 people a lot. One person on spot. One person running floor lights and handling prop throwing. One person manning the floor (or the cast having to do it).
While I normally ran tech, I also played a few characters. Magenta once or twice. Brad quite a bit. Then if I had to run double duty, Eddie or Crim. I, in fact, played Crim a lot. Crumpet got a workout and consensually touched many a décolletage with his little felt puppet hand.
We also got together to put together prop bags for the shows, and that was usually a pretty good time. Eating pizza, little light drinking, watching a movie together. Sometimes that movie was terrible pornography (there’s a Rocky Horror parody porno). That’s pretty much the least sexy circumstance to watch porn, but I gotta tell ya it really does rewire your brain in a not terrible way.
Because my actual biggest takeaway from being on cast like this is a sense of comfort in my body and exposing it in a controlled fashion. Particulalry as a fat person. I spent nights walking around in tighty whities and a tank top, and there was no negative reaction. I’m out here in a corset, fishnets, and garter belt and people are clapping for me.
You get really really comfortable with partial nudity and sex and sexuality and your own body. You can do anything or dress any way within reason and no one cares. Everyone there is just sort of equally gross in terms of just experimenting with the raw, unfiltered human body.
But there’s also a reason I haven’t been to an RHPS shadowcast show in fifteen years. That shit will burn you out.
What should you expect at your first show?
If you’ve never seen the movie before and actually care about hearing it and understanding the plot, watch it ahead of time. You’re not going to be able to hear/understand shit at the live show.
Dress up! Keep in mind local decency laws, but you can either dress as a character or just slap on a corset and short shorts. Or don’t! There aren’t any rules apart from have fun. My first show, I wore a suit and a party hat like the party guests.
Most casts sell prop bags at the show, but you can also find a list online and bring your own props. Check the site of the venue because it’s very possible they don’t allow water guns, glitter, or rice. The cleanup on those is really high, so a lot of indoor venues have to prohibit them. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
If you throw glitter or rice at a no glitter show, I will feel it in my bones like The Force then come hunt you down. Do not be an asshole.
(When in doubt, lean on that rule, in particular.)
A lot of casts will do a “virgin sacrifice” which is basically a little light hazing for anyone who’s never seen the live show before. My cast had you stand two deep, take an oath, and do a little light simulated doggy-style. I’ve also seen and heard, from other casts, Meg Ryan-style fake orgasm competitions, ass-to-ass balloon popping, and just general heckling. You don’t have to do any of it. You don’t have to self-volunteer as a “virgin.” And if the presented activity makes you uncomfortable, you can bail. You might get a little light teasing, but every cast I’ve known and met has been really big on consent.
You’ll also need to sort of gird yourself for the to screen callouts. The list I linked above has a lot of the ones I’m familiar with, but my cast had a lot of homegrown ones, as well. And some of them were dark. We had a few abortion jokes that we…rough but also kinda…actually kinda funny (I’m going to hell). We gained a cast member, though, for whom those kinds of jokes were really really uncomfortable. So we just either cut them or replaced them with something equally funny of a different variety. There’s also a callout (that I didn’t see on the link) where you make a kinda fucked up joke about a recently deceased person that, depending on the deceased, will either go really cringe or make you sad.
Think about famous deaths lately…
Yeah…
If that cast does that callout during “Time Warp” be fucking ready.
If there is something that you’re concerned about, you can usually contact the cast ahead of time and ask if they have any particularly gnarly call-outs or specifically ask if they have jokes about whatever subject you might be sensitive to. They’re probably not going to make a change just for you, but then you’ll at least know “hey, this is coming.” At the same time, you also can’t control the rest of the audience who might be coming in with who knows what. So you’re just going to have to deal with that uncertainty.
The big thing to remember is that if anything makes you uncomfortable, you can leave at any time, and no one is going to give you shit for it. If a cast member gives you shit for anything, you tell them I said they’re an asshole. That is not reflective of the art as a whole.
Most of all, have fun. That’s the goal.
Pixels and Pins Studio 