Timeless weirdness
Actors live in the surreal moment to make The Rocky Horror Picture Show a religious experience for toast- and insult-tossing cinephiles.
By RICK GERSHMAN
Published October 21, 2005
CHANNEL DISTRICT - Talk about a Time Warp.
Late on a Friday night at the Channelside Theaters, a youth movement has taken over The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Chandler Maddocks, the cross-dressing dude playing the lead role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the "sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania," is only 20. And he has been involved with Rocky Horror productions since he was 17.
His castmates and roommates, Jessica Davis and Chris Christy, are 24. They also are the ones running this production and directing each night's show.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the film, was released in 1975, six years before Davis and Christy were born. They still weren't born when the New York City midnight shows, abetted by audience participation and live mimicking of the action onscreen, garnered national popularity when depicted in the 1980 film Fame.
Thirty years since its premiere, Rocky Horror remains a cult film/performance experience that can be enjoyed regularly in most major cities. These days it's living on through a generation too young to remember the original Star Wars phenomenon, much less a wacky musical horror-film spoof that bombed on its release.
The show's not exactly family friendly, though many productions, including the Channelside version, choose to be no more "adult" than the content of the R-rated film itself. As Davis says: "I don't want to see anyone's genitals."
But attendees can expect the essential experience, in which performers act out the film as it plays on the screen and audience members shout out lines - some now classic, others improvised - in response to the dialogue.
That includes screams of "slut" whenever someone onscreen mentions the character Janet. (The audience-adorned nickname for her companion, Brad, would be perfectly at home on South Park but remains a little too vulgar for a family newspaper.)
The Channelside cast, the Tampa Plain Dealers, has been around for about six months. It's an offshoot of a long-lived cast, Interchangeable Parts, which performs weekly at the Beach Theatre in St. Pete Beach.
The casts share a few members, and members of each likely would have appeared in Larger Than Life's annual Halloween weekend Rocky Horror performance at Tampa Theatre, directed by local Rocky Horror guru Brian Dare.
This year, however, there will not be a show at Tampa Theatre, because of a dispute no one wants to talk about publicly.
So the Tampa Plain Dealers will do a pair of performances Oct. 28 and 29 at Channelside. Interchangeable Parts will perform Oct. 28 at Necronomicon, a sci-fi and horror convention at downtown Tampa's Hyatt Regency, then return to St. Pete Beach for its Saturday show.
Meanwhile, Tampa Theatre will show Capote, the critically lauded Truman Capote biopic.
Right now it's crunch time for the Plain Dealers, who recently got their weekly start time at Channelside bumped back to 10:30 so theater staffers don't have to stay as late.
It's a mixed blessing for a cast on a wafer-thin budget: It was hard to get the word out to prospective viewers about the time change, which hurt attendance. Last Friday's show attracted a few dozen people. The time change saves the theater money, which means it's more likely to keep running the show.
Building an audience has been difficult, so the cast takes note of the few familiar faces, like the viewer they simply call "the broken foot guy."
Still, it's a crazy time for Davis and Christy, who are doing their best to prepare for the ramped-up experience required of the Halloween weekend shows. Unlike the weekly performance, these will allow prop bags, which contain fun stuff for audience members to throw in the air at particular moments.
Davis, who unlike roomies Christy and Maddocks A) completed her bachelor's degree (USF, professional and technical writing) and B) doesn't have a job, has been tasked with much of the preparations.
For example, filling 800 prop bags with a slice of toast. That's a lot of toast.
"We just found a discount bread store," she explained this week. "We've got 800 prop bags in my apartment tonight, and a giant tub full of noisemakers."
Davis first saw the Rocky Horror film on television when she was 13. These days she directs and often portrays Rocky, the muscle man created by Dr. Frank-N-Furter. For years, she remained behind the scenes, helping out with a Tampa cast.
"For the longest time, I just went to help out; I was too afraid to actually perform," she said. "The only part I've ever really done is Rocky."
With so many other entertainment options these days for audiences and performers, what keeps the Rocky Horror productions alive?
"I think it just has to do with the whole counterculture thing," Davis said.
"It's like how kids have an affinity for anything that speaks to them. It attracts the kids who want to dress up in crazy (stuff). It attracts kids like us who like to curse. But not all of us are even necessarily misfits."
Directing and performing in Rocky Horror seems like a necessarily creative endeavor, but Davis disagrees.
She contends, without an ounce of irony, that she's "not creative at all. Nope, not a bit."
"I can appreciate art, and I can imitate art, but I cannot actually produce something original at all," she said. ""Rocky's not acting; it's mimicry."
Perhaps, but it's a mimicry that provides something different than any other experience, Maddocks said.
""Rocky just gravitates the same people toward each other," he said.
"I get to be around people I really enjoy being around. It's kind of like a specific feeling that you get, a feeling from the energy of the show, a specific environment that the show creates."
Jeffrey Weinstock, an English professor at Central Michigan University, has studied the Rocky Horror phenomenon from an academic perspective for years.
He said Rocky Horror conveys a timelessness that might explain its continued popularity.
"I think most cult phenomena are linked to a particular historical moment and don't thus tend to have lasting power," Weinstock said.
Ironically, he's no raving fan of the film and its associated live performances.
"I always have the sense that I missed something," he said. "Because people talk about it with such fondness, and the reality of Rocky Horror is that it never quite lives up to that expectation. And I don't think it can."
The experience seems worthwhile to the young, unpaid Channelside performers, who drop their own money into the productions and spend much of their free time working on them.
"The movie's good, I think it's fun and entertaining, but I don't think people do this to watch the movie every single week," Maddocks said.
"The thing about Rocky is it appeals to generally younger people ... and it's something that I think people really need to try. Sure, there are misconceptions about it, but until you go there, you really don't know.
"I think it's a place where you can just really cut loose. It's therapy. And you can wear whatever you want."
Rick Gershman can be reached at rgershman@sptimes.com or 226-3431.