“It’s a theatre experience like no other,” claimed 23-year-old Rocky Horror Show director, Tyler Livingstone, as his cast could be heard chanting vocal warm-ups backstage at the River Run Centre.
Livingstone debuted his directing skills for Royal City Musical Productions Inc. this past spring with a sold-out run of the cult classic stage show, even after adding an additional midnight performance.
“I think the audience reaction was totally unprecedented. We knew it was going to be positive, [but] it just blew all of our expectations out of the water,” he explained. The show was so successful that the prospect of doing an encore performance on Halloween at the Main Stage was met with great enthusiasm from the cast and crew.
Rocky Horror has always had a rich association with Halloween. Originally a staged musical in the early ‘70s, The Rocky Horror Picture Show hit movie theatres in 1975 and was met with a tepid response from critics and audiences alike. “[The film] was a total flop when it came out,” said Livingstone, “it was panned completely, and it actually took a few years before it started coming back.” After its initial underwhelming debut, The Rocky Horror Picture Show found secondary success in underground cinemas and has since held the record for the longest running film in cinematic history—this year celebrates its 40th anniversary. Many of the screenings continue to happen yearly, either on or around Halloween night, with audiences getting involved, dressing up, and becoming ingrained in the show’s legacy.
“I think the audience really had more to do with the success of it in pop culture than the people who put together the movie… I think the richness in the show really comes from what the audience brings to it. Watching it at home, by yourself, alone, and watching it in a theatre with 400 screaming people that are all shouting and yelling and throwing stuff is a completely different experience.”
Odesia Howlett, president of The English Students’ Society at the University of Guelph, shared a similar sentiment at the campus screening the day before: “It’s one of those movies that, if you watch on your own, it just seems very odd… but watching it with a whole bunch of other people who have seen it before and who know the things to yell and the times to throw things, it’s more hilarious, and it’s a really good community.”
Both events encouraged audiences to get involved; whether it was a costume contest, or offering prop kits that included items to be used or thrown throughout the show, such as newspapers, rubber gloves, noisemakers, and sponges.
Rowdy audience participation has come to be expected at any Rocky Horror event, but for the actors of the live stage production, it was quite a unique experience. Jane Martin, who played the Narrator in the Guelph production, received the brunt of the audience’s facetious verbal abuse: “It was quite shocking when we did it in the spring. I wasn’t quite prepared for it, but I had a few comebacks for them after the first time I had done it. It was really exhilarating having that feedback from the audience, whether they were shouting ‘boring!’ or not. The force you that you felt, it was something special.”
Even off-stage, Livingstone experienced that same special force after the first run of the show: “I will never forget that experience and how into it everyone was, and how the cast fed off of the energy of the audience, and the audience fed off the energy of the cast.”
The spirit of Rocky Horror seems to lie in its comedic entertainment value and having a good time with friends, yet the message behind it is rooted in culturally significant themes that continue to be relevant in 2015, if not arguably more so.
“One of the theories that floats out there is that the story is actually a representation of Frank’s internal struggle; that the external characters are actually internal, and that he is struggling with his sexual identity [and] non-conformist views,” Livingstone explained. “What I take from it—and it may very well be different from what other people take from it—is that it’s important to be yourself.”
In the 1970s, when the musical was first produced, the story of Dr. Frank N. Furter, a promiscuous alien transvestite, was seen as absurdly provocative. “I would submit that Rocky Horror has gone from being an almost unnecessarily risqué shock value production to a celebration of diversity as culture has changed,” offered crew member, Jeff Perkins, “it’s truly just a celebration of how equalized things have become, how accepted the broad spectrum of sexuality has become in society.”
“It’s a really good example of the evolution of Rocky Horror and how, while it was this underground thing, much like LGBT rights movements were at the time, it has become very forefront [and] people are very aware of it”, Livingstone added, “people refer to it as a cult classic, but I would argue that it’s really quite mainstream.”
The mainstream success of Rocky Horror also stemmed from the fact that the songs are catchy, the characters are timeless, and each new adaptation has been able to breath life back into the story.
At 10 p.m. on Halloween, the RCMPI crew returned to the stage with one more chance to relive this cultural phenomenon. Armed with a fearless, fishnet-wearing cast, a killer live band, and an extremely passionate creative team, the show was electrifying from start to finish. It was clear that everyone was there to have a good time, and a good time was had by all. That being said, when the talent and dedication shone through the performance, it was difficult to believe that this was an amateur theatre production with an entirely volunteer crew.
“It’s amazing what a community can do,” reflected Livingstone, “in general, I don’t think that people understand just how many hours go into making something like this work, on a massive stage with a lot of technical elements that can be very complicated. So, I think that it can be stunning what people can do when they want to do it, and they do it because they love it, because it’s so much fun to be able to put on a show like this.”
Even after seeing the film many times, the live show brought a much higher energy and sense of community to the experience, demonstrating that Rocky Horror was really meant to be on stage. For seasoned actress, Martin, Rocky Horror is about not taking life to seriously: “Just to see people come out and enjoy themselves, and forget everything for 90 minutes, and have so much fun shouting things back—that’s the magic of theatre… You be who you want, no one’s judging, and it’s just a lot of fun.”