The Rocky Horror Show

On the way to visit an old college professor, two clean cut young people, Brad Majors and his fiancée Janet Weiss, run into trouble and seek help at the freaky Frankenstein mansion. However, little did they know that the mansion is inhabited by alien transsexuals from the planet Transylvania and Dr. Frank N Furter is in the midst of one of his maniacal experiments.

Name Gender Vocal Part Age Range Role Type
Brad Majors male tenor 21 - 27 lead
Janet Weiss female belt 21 - 27 lead
Frank-n-Furter male tenor lead
Usherette Trixie female alto lead
Riff-Raff male tenor 25 - 45
Magenta female mezzo 30 - 45
Columbia female mezzo
Eddie male tenor
Rocky Horror male tenor
Dr. Everett Scott male tenor

The best part of this show has to be the rocking tunes. How many musicals can attract rockers? Joan Jett and Meat Loaf to name a few. We had a reviewer state "It was like being at a rock concert at the [Madison Square] Garden"

Other fun bits were the audience "props" - newspaper, flashlight, and bell to name a few of the "allowed" - food items, water pistols and such were discouraged due to danger to the actors and cleanup issues with the theater.

Then the call backs ... this was probably the most challenging part for the actors. Community theater actors are just not used to the audience shouting things back at them. We actually had several individuals that came to rehearsals and got us all used to the quips. Even so there were times when something unexpected got shouted out during performances and the actors had to take a moment to get back into things.

Although my favorite audience interaction wasn't planned. One woman in the first row had her cell phone ring, which was rude enough, but then proceeded to actually answer and talk on the phone during the performance! Columbia, one of my more seasoned actresses, didn't have any lines at that moment so she started staring the woman down. The woman, once she noticed the "attention" promptly got off the phone.