The pair of platform heels in my lap had to be a men’s size 11, at least. The toes peeking out were wrapped in fishnets, which stretched up onto mile-long legs that were as thick as tree trunks and covered in dark, curly hair. Next came the dangling laces of a corset, pulled taut around a broad, muscled back. I was twelve, and flopped across my lap was the first man in drag I had ever seen.
He was beautiful.
It didn’t start as a picture show; rather, it began on the stage. Premiering in 1973, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show achieved respectable success as a live theatre piece in London. Soon after, the piece made the move to the silver screen, when, in 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in America, exposing audiences to the legendary cult classic we know today. It’s a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they decide to get married. Their car breaks down one night and they are taken in by an alien drag queen who has built himself the ideal man. They fall prey to their own taboo sexual desires and end up held hostage by the creatures of the night. A typical story, no? But the reviews were mixed; no one really knew what to make of the story they saw.
Luckily, though not commercially acclaimed, the film soon found new life via midnight screenings. By 1976, an entirely new subculture had formed around these late-night happenings — one that persists to this day. What started as one person ad-libbing lines in response to the film script soon snowballed into an entire series of callback phrases, memorized and yelled back to the screen at showings across the nation. Fans began to come in costume. Props that matched with moments in the film were carried into the theater and brought out at agreed-upon times. Toilet paper was hurled at the screen. Confetti was thrown into the air. People promptly learned to do the “Time Warp”, the film’s signature dance number.
And then, the “shadowcast” was born.
A now staple of midnight Rocky Horror screenings, “shadowcasts” are groups of actors who perform the actions of the Rocky Horror Picture Show as the film’s characters, while the movie is playing behind them. This is an important distinction to make; rather than a classic theatrical setup in which the cast of characters carry a story on their own, RHPS shadowcasts are meant as more of an enhancement to the film. They’ll often forgo speaking in exchange for lip syncing along to the dialogue and satirizing the campy moments of the film. Usually, the shadowcast characters are bastardized versions of the ones on screen, which works perfectly: the already-caricatured and zany denizens of Rocky Horror are begging to be bastardized. More than anything, the shadowcasts work to feed the flames of the audience, keeping the energy of the crowd at full force, and making sure that everyone is having fun. They act as the human embodiments of the chaotic revelry that comes along with a film like Rocky Horror.
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Without trying, The Rocky Horror Picture Show became a pioneer of immersive theatre, long before that term was even widely recognized. Fans began to create the world of Rocky Horror in their own local movie theaters and entrenched themselves in the characters and universe of the film. Attending screenings of the film went from being a cinematic experience to a fully-realized immersion, in which the movie theater itself became the story, complete with props, costumes, and sensory connections.
There is a particular memory that sticks out to me from my own Rocky Horror experiences. Towards the beginning of the film, there is a sequence where the unremarkable leading couple, Brad and Janet, approach a mansion in the distance, as rain pours down on them. As they sing, a light shines from the window of the castle, and Janet cowers beneath a damp newspaper. Whenever I see this scene, I remember a particularly full midnight screening I attended years ago, when I was still in high school. As Brad and Janet’s part of the song began, everyone lifted newspapers out of their carefully-prepared bags of props and held them up above their heads. Beams from flashlights shot across the audience, criss-crossing just so, making patterns in the air. Water rained down upon the sea of newsprint, shot from water guns held in the free hands of audience members throughout the theater. I remember feeling the newspaper above my head bend under the dampness, dripping down onto my cheeks. It was a rare moment of quiet in the middle of absolute mania. It felt reverent. I looked up at Janet, on the big screen, and she seemed to look back at me. I felt like her, in that moment.
In the same way the movie theater becomes the world of the film, the audience becomes its characters. In true immersive fashion, attendees are encouraged to enter the world and embrace the bawdy spirit of the piece. As shadowcast players connect with them, they are taken full force into the story. Suddenly, the characters are touching the audience in time to the way they touch each other on screen. Attendees are being asked to dance along with the music, and involve themselves (at maximum volume) with the script as its being spoken. The audience becomes a character itself, like what might happen with many interactive theatrical pieces. I can’t help but wonder if immersive theatre as we know it today would even exist without Rocky Horror.
On top of the vast influence that can be seen in interactive experiences, the endlessly replayable nature of RHPS live screenings is similar to some of the most popular immersive experiences of today. Every night at Rocky Horror, you will hear different callback lines and jokes, and even see performers that perhaps you’ve never seen before. There are endless permutations of how a midnight screening of Rocky Horror may go, making the experience feel fresh, time and again. This serves as the perfect breeding ground for superfans, who find solace in the Rocky Horror environment, and keep coming back for the ideal combination of a familiar story plus brand new additions in which to find joy. We see this same formula bring huge success to immersive theatre works today; superfans of Sleep No More enter the McKittrick Hotel hundreds of times for the possibility of somehow seeing an actor perform a moment in a way they’ve never seen it done before. Devotees of Then She Fell may return over and over to Kingsland Ward, just to be in a fantasy safe space that feels, and is (in many ways), real. And as RHPS fans cross their own thresholds, back into their local movie theater, they are greeted with the similar feeling of returning “home” with the hope of what might await them. There is a feeling of reverence, of ritual — it’s a midnight rite where RHPS enthusiasts are called to commune with their kin.
Through the efforts of shadowcasts and audiences alike, live Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings turn typically vanilla movie theater spaces into raucous, jubilant fantasy worlds, alive with an energy unique unto themselves. For devoted fans, the cinema becomes a separate world for two hours, transforming into a safe haven where they can be their most open selves. They are immersed into a universe where strangeness, sexuality, camp, and queerness are all celebrated with endless delight. In a way, the audiences experiencing Rocky Horror live become a version of the film’s own Brad and Janet; they go from regular people to wild and untamed things, losing their inhibitions and forgetting their troubles for the night. And therein lies the magic of a truly immersive experience.
*All photos provided by members of the represented shadowcasts. Thank you for sharing your family portraits with us!
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