When audiences discovered the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at New York’s Waverly Theatre in 1976, they rapidly transformed the screenings into wild celebrations of the film campiness. The movie itself had bombed upon its initial release the year before, and it had only been resurrected by the Waverly as an April Fool’s Day gimmick (Peary 302). Creator Richard O’Brien relates that, soon thereafter, “people would come and say to me, ‘Hey, have you seen what they’re doing to your movie?’ When finally I went to see it, it was possibly the best piece of theater I’ve ever seen. It encapsulated live action with filmed image with audience participation, and three out of three ain’t bad” (Rocky videocassette). Rocky Horror had evolved into a performance event par excellence, and O’Brien makes no mistake in naming the element of live action first in his description of the experience. The contribution of the live actor, over and above even the commonly noted feature of audience participation, has become sustaining element of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This study is not intended to chart the whole of the Rocky Horror phenomenon and its myriad manifestations in performance. Rather, it explores of the work of one particular group of performers, the Full Body Cast, who take over the Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge on Saturday nights. The Full Body Cast’s production, however, should not be assumed to be “typical” of Rocky Horror worldwide: every group in every location has its own unique flavor. Furthermore, the performance of any ensemble (Full Body being no exception) changes dramatically from night to night. This study focuses on one particular show on April 29, 2000, and it incorporates interviews with actors and production staff to build a model of how the performers’ work before, during, and beyond the film defines the experience. Nevertheless, the audience is told after the conclusion of each show in Harvard Square, “Come back next week! It’s different all the time!” It is precisely this mutability, the responsiveness of the performance event to different bodies, different locations, and different moments in history that keeps The Rocky Horror Picture Show America’s premiere “cult movie” experience a quarter of a century after its inception.

AP (Audience Participation) vs. LP (Live Performance)

Mainstream attention to the Rocky Horror Picture Show often focuses on the audience participation aspect. In fact, for those unfamiliar with the experience, this element generally proves to be the most striking feature. “Virgins” (those who have never attended a live performance of Rocky Horror) are inevitably tutored by the friends to respond with the crowd to the most basic cues: to shout “Asshole!” whenever the hero, Brad Majors, introduces himself, and “Slut!” whenever he introduces his girlfriend, Janet Weiss. Throughout the show, more experienced audience members (some of whom can boast hundreds or even thousands of viewings) mock, ridicule, and comment irreverently on the film, yelling lines at the screen and the actors every few seconds. For example, they shout, “Brad, how do you spell ‘urinate’?” just before the onscreen character dumbly spouts out, “You are . . . ?”; the audience cuts him off with “Close enough!” While some lines have become more or less universal, audience response patterns vary significantly across the country, and they change continuously to reference current events in the news, entertainment, and popular culture. The audience in Harvard Square takes potshots at MIT when the beautiful but slowwitted Rocky grunts and slaps meaninglessly at a switchboard, and the performance addressed here included audience barbs directed at Elian Gonzalez and George W. Bush.

Although audience participation occurs joyously and continuously throughout the entire show, the aspect that truly keeps Rocky Horror alive and fresh is the participation of live actors, who greet the audience waiting outside the theater, welcome them formally when they take their seats, declare and then mock the rules laid out by the theater management, induct new members into the cult, and perform original pre-shows. Ultimately, these actors (re)perform the movie itself simultaneous with the screening, complete with costumes, props, and (in advanced productions like the Full Body Cast’s) lighting and set pieces. Experienced audience members know to train their attention not on the movie screen but on the live performance down front. Without the presence of a live cast, the show’s energy quickly dissipates. Sara Wendell, one of the former directors of the Full Body Cast, notes, “I’ve seen Rocky without the performers. It’s boring. Yes, you can still yell and throw things, but it’s just not the same without the kind of give and take you get from live actors. I have yet to see an audience get anywhere near as psyched up to see Rocky movie-only.” Alex Savitzky, a current director, is even more succinct: “Without a live cast, the movie gets very boring very fast. There are only a handful of theatres worldwide that can get away with showing the film without a cast.”

The events following the release of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on videocassette by CBS/FOX in 1990 bear these views out. At first, home video release was anathema to many Rocky purists—it allowed the mainstream access to the source material, the “script” for the event, without proper immersion in the experience and formal induction into the cult. Rocky Horror rules were quickly amended to specify that a virgin was any person who had not specifically seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show performed live in a movie theater. The fans’ concerns, however, quickly proved unjustified. Though a potential existed for Rocky Horror to shift from a cinema-based event to a home-based one (a video shown at parties, for instance), that change never materialized. In private viewings, two of O’Brien’s three elements remain (the filmed image and audience participation), but without an organized live cast, the experience dies quickly. Interestingly, the video release and subsequent television airings have, if anything, encouraged the curious to participate in the “real” event. The videocassette (and its 1999 Special Edition re-release) includes a short documentary prior to the feature that incorporates shots of fans, footage of live stage performances, and interviews with actors. The mini-documentary concludes with the words, “Dream it in your living room. Be it in the theater!”

The Composition of the Full Body Cast

As in nearly all productions, actors who perform Rocky Horror in Harvard Square invariably start as frequent audience members. The Full Body Cast invites anyone interested in participating in the production to join the technical staff, which is divided into four areas: lights, props, costumes, and security. The crew serves as the framework supporting the live performers, and cast hopefuls use their time in tech to demonstrate their commitment to the show and to gain familiarity with the staging. The Full Body Cast normally holds auditions every six months, when “every part is reauditioned to make sure people aren’t slacking off and to give new people a chance” (Full). Extra auditions may also be held in the interim on an as-needed basis. The Full Body Cast at full capacity maintains three actors for each character—two full-time performers who alternate weekends and one understudy. Literally every performance, therefore, features a different collection of faces, providing a source of variety for both the actors and the fans.

Once new audience members are devirginized (which happens prior to the start of the movie), they are welcomed into the cult and invited to determine their level of involvement. The Full Body Cast and their fans exist on a continuum roughly along the lines of

Audience ßà Technical Staff ßà Performers

The continuum is entirely fluid. As fans shift from audience to crew, crew to cast, and cast back to crew or regular audience member, and as new fans are injected into the mix every weekend, the vitality of the cult is maintained.

Pre-Pre-Shows

With the Full Body Cast, the performance actually begins on the streets outside the Harvard Square Theatre, where a long line forms along Church Street. As regular attendees greet their friends and newbies glance around nervously, members of the technical crew (some in sexy or outrageous costumes) file through the crowd crying, “Are there any virgins here tonight?” People in the know gleefully point to the red-faced parties, and the crew members inscribe “V”s on their foreheads with lipstick. On a typical night, a quarter of the audience might easily be virgins.

Entering the auditorium is its own ordeal. The audience splits into separate queues according to sex (to whatever degree possible, anyway), and the security team frisks everyone before allowing them into the theater. Considering the sexual kookiness of the show, the pat-down is its own perverse pleasure; tonight, a nearby audience member declares, “This is my favorite part!” The procedure is less in response to fears of violence than concerns about the “props” that over-enthusiastic audience members have been known to bring. At most theaters, audience participation includes throwing rice during the opening wedding scene, shooting water guns into the air during the rainstorm, and tossing rolls of toilet paper across the auditorium when the film’s wheelchair-bound scientist, Dr. Scott, is introduced. The fans generally transform the theater into a sordid mess by the end of the night, but it is a mess the cast and crew are happy to clean. On occasion, however, audience members in Harvard Square have pulled stunts like filling Super Soakers with (in one cast member’s words) “bleach and piss,” crossing the line between fun and dangerous nuisance. As a compromise measure, the Full Body Cast sells their own “neatly bundled   [. . .] bags of shit for just a buck” (Full).

A regular cast member welcomes the audience; tonight, the honors go to “Acid” (Jim Willyard, a full-time actor in the part of Rocky). Rules are laid out, but with a snide, Rocky-style twist. Acid states that, for safety reasons, participants should not throw things at the actors; he asks for the man who “has the biggest dick in the room” to stand up, then instructs the audience to throw all of their “shit” at him. When he slips up in explaining the past prop fiascoes and states that they had seen squirt guns filled with “peach and bliss,” he covers by proclaiming, “I DO DRUGS!” to the cheers of the audience. At this performance, the cast extends a middle finger to one of their own rules and tosses the “bags of shit” out for free to the audience—a peek inside reveals rice, toilet paper, playing cards (for the song “I’m Going Home”), a party hat (for the dinner scene), and a noisemaker (for the first lab scene). Acid also exhorts the audience to return again and again and to bring their virgin friends, screaming joyously, “Rocky Horror is a cult! If you like Rocky Horror, you like our cult!”

Pre-Shows

The Full Body Cast has garnered nationwide recognition for their exceptional pre-shows, which have received standing ovations at Rocky Horror conventions (Savitzky, Alex). Sara Wendell states, “They are what keep some of the regulars coming back, and [they] keep the entire cast and crew energized, especially when we have a particularly kick-ass number.” New pre-shows are introduced monthly. Enthusiastic performers propose their ideas at the cast meeting on the first Wednesday of the month. When a concept is selected, the originator of the idea and the directors spend the next two weeks determining blocking, props, lighting, and casting. When the group reassembles for their next meeting, they rehearse the new number; it can be polished again on the next Wednesday as well as in the theater shortly before it debuts (Savitzky, Alex).

This particular performance includes two original pre-shows. The first begins with the film’s clean-cut protagonists, Brad and Janet (tonight played by Rishi Basu and Sarah Tarbox), reenacting the opening of the song “Dammit Janet” from the film. The music quickly changes, however, and Richard O’Brien’s sappy number is replaced with rock band Limp Bizkit’s noisy rendition of “Faith.” Rocky (Acid Willyard), the film’s gorgeous “creature,” dances out and seduces Janet away from boyfriend (inverting her seduction of him in the film). With each screamed chorus, the lighting crew rapidly flashes the front of the auditorium with colors as Janet and Rocky writhe together. The second pre-show has the film’s creepy “handyman” Riff Raff (understudy Bruce Ellis) in front of a microphone, wildly lip-synching the bizarre patter of “Must of Got Lost” by the J. Giles Band and looking for all the world like an interstellar beat poet. The audience is also treated to a pre-show performance of the “Time Warp,” here enacted to the Roxy Cast recording from the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show, accompanied (of course) by audience members dancing in the aisles.

The pre-shows “get the crowd going and get them pumped up for the show” (Santosuosso), but, more than that, they allow the actors to flash their creativity to the audience before the film begins. Ruth Savitzky, one of the full-time Columbias, declares, “I think it shows the audience that, “Hey, look at us! We don’t just act out the movie in front of a screen. We’re very talented people!” Pre-shows provide an opportunity for the actors to toy with the transgressive themes of the event and to move the characters they play in different directions than the film does. Wendell relates, “In a preshow, you can take a character a lot further than you do on stage [during the film], when everything is already choreographed and set. You can do things like put Riff Raff in a dress, or give Janet a whip. Or you can do something totally unrelated, just because it’s fun.” Several cast members note with particular pride a recent pre-show arranged to Nine Inch Nails’s “The Perfect Drug,” which was fused with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. A technical sensation, the show included a fog machine, strobe lights, and a Cheshire Cat who faded away to a smile with the help of a blacklight. The spectacle climaxed with Alice smashing a mirror to end her mushroom-induced fantasy (Savitzky, Alex).

Virgin Sacrifice

Before the film commences, one final detail must be attended to: virgins, all clearly marked by this time with the sign of the V, must be inducted into the cult. When the pre-shows wrap up, Bianca Mauro strides into the auditorium as the caped Dr. Frank-N-Furter and combs the audience for virgins to be “sacrificed.” Pushed to their feet by friends or seductively coaxed out by the “transsexual,” four volunteers make their nervously to the front of the auditorium. Frank surveys them and asks for their names. Tonight’s victims are Marci (it’s her birthday), Musaki, Mary, and a strangely androgynous person who gives his/her name as “Denis”—or is it “Denise”? Frank scans the shirtless torso with curiosity and then yells back at the audience, “There’s nothing worse than a half-assed transsexual!” She then leads the virgins in a Rocky-style contest: on the count of three, each contestant does his or her best pelvic thrust. The audience votes with their applause for the best humper—the “lucky” winner tonight is Musaki, already the butt of one joke for his unusual name.

The way to sacrifice a virgin, of course, is to “pop his cherry.” Frank instructs the fidgety victim to turn away from the audience, lean over, and spread his legs. He does so, and she is handed a red balloon by a fellow cast member, which she playfully sticks between his legs. The audience screams, “Higher!” and she rams the balloon up toward his crotch. She leans over to pop it with a pin, but the audience shouts, “Teeth, teeth!” Frank smiles, kneels down, and with her mouth pops the balloon as the audience cheers.

The virgin sacrifice serves an essential role in the event as a rite of passage for new audience members. With poor Musaki’s minor humiliation, all first-timers symbolically “lose their virginity” and join the fold, clearing the way for the seminal event, the showing of the film, to begin. It also provides an opportunity for some of the night’s most stimulating actor/audience interaction, keeping the process amusing for all attendees. Frank (the most beloved character in the film, whose first appearance in drag elicits cheers from the crowd) gets her chance here to jibe with the audience, grope newbies, and in general connect the on-screen feature to the in-house experience through the medium of live performance. In Mauro’s talented hands (and teeth), barriers between the new and the faithful fall away, and as she exits (the sheepish Musaki in tow), the audience begins chanting “Lips! Lips! Lips!” in anticipation of the giant red mouth that opens the film.

(Re)performing the Film

The screening of the movie is the culminating event of the evening, during which the performers stage the action live immediately below the projected image. Interestingly, the Full Body Cast does not hold rehearsals of the film itself. Wendell states, “Each cast member is expected to learn his/her part individually [by watching performances and studying the videotape version]. Other full-time actors and directors are available to work with people if they like, but they need to take the initiative. Since we run on an audition process, it becomes apparent pretty quickly who knows the part and who doesn’t.” Indeed, one of the biggest gaffes a performer can make in Rocky Horror is to break character and glance back at the screen for reference.

Regarding staging, Wendell notes, “Our blocking has been set for years. We know the space we’re working with, and what works best so that no one is upstaged or blocked, so it’s simply a matter of new actors learning the blocking we already work with.” In fact, the system that has evolved excellently transfers the two-dimensional screen image to the three-dimension space—no small feat considering the shifting camerawork and occasional continuity errors that can cause bodies to move unpredictably. When the onscreen Janet (Susan Sarandon) and Brad (Barry Bostwick) mysteriously switch sides during “Over at the Frankenstein Place,” Tarbox and Basu subtly link arms and turn effortlessly past one another, so that they are in perfect position the next time the twosome appear in the film. On the other hand, the cast does not hesitate to adopt awkward arrangements to fit the stage more effectively. Characters seated around the table in the film’s “dinner scene,” for example, are in the live version resituated on one side of it, Last Supper-like, so that the audience can watch their reactions.

During the live performance, strict fidelity to the screen image alternates with slyly inserted additions to and deviations from it. Variations from the projected “script,” both major and minor, by necessity and by choice, happen constantly, offering the audience new delights. The famous opening credits, for instance, sung onscreen by a huge pair of red lips, are essentially unstagable (barring a riff on Samuel Beckett’s Not I). Instead, the part of “Trixie” (also called the “Usherette”) has been imported from the stage musical by many Rocky casts to perform the opening. The role exists outside of the story and can be played according to an actor or actress’s wishes. Tonight, Trixie is a pink-haired kewpie doll who, with the aid of a blacklight, offers up a sexy striptease down to an animal-skin bra. The introductory wedding sequence features not a cast member, but the now ex-virgin Musaki, dolled up in a wedding dress for the minor role of Betty Hapschatt. Prop changes permit the actors to stay in character but offer a visual gag to attentive audience members. In this performance, Frank hacks Eddie (Jenn Santosuosso) to death, not with an ax, but with a mirrored disco ball on a stick (prompting catcalls of “Disco’s dead!”), and Dr. Scott (also Jenn Santosuosso) pulls out a Bullwinkle J. Moose plush toy instead of “Eddie’s Teddy.”

With regard to movement, fidelity to the screen image (when it is stagable) serves as the rule, but when characters are off-screen, the actors find some freedom to improvise. Wendell notes, “[F]or the most part, I’ve felt that times where a character isn’t physically on the screen are open to personal interpretation. I don’t think, for instance, that during ‘Make You a Man” Janet should be blowing Brad [which would be distracting and out of character at that point in the film], or anything like that, but small things are fine. It adds the individual actor’s flair to the character and can be fun.” Tonight, for instance, Basu as Brad mimes a saxophone solo during “Hot Patootie.” The screen, after all, shows Eddie (Meatloaf) taking off his saxophone and absently shoving it into Brad’s surprised grip; Brad still clutches it stupidly in the next scene. But while the camera is off him during the song, someone on the soundtrack starts playing the saxophone, so why not Brad?

The Actor/Audience Connection

During the Full Body Cast’s performance of the film, specific breaks in the actor/audience barrier happen infrequently, though the groups constantly feed off each others’ energy. In general, actors remain in character, responding to the actions of other performers onstage rather than the lines of the fans. The separation succeeds, of course, because the audience’s joy during Rocky Horror comes from joking maliciously at the silliness onscreen and onstage while the characters, both live and projected, march onward ludicrously without firing back.

During at least two major points in the performance, however, the actor/spectator divide is breached, not by the actors leaving character to address the audience, but by the viewers leaving their seats to assume their own roles in the fiction. The first instance occurs during the famous “Time Warp” number, probably the film’s most loved scene and the culminating moment of audience participation. During the “Time Warp,” the entire audience leaps from their chairs, crams into the aisles (a performance space in the Cambridge production), and dances together. The stage action continues up front, and the fans’ invasion of the performance area allows them to assume the role of the onscreen guests at Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s party.

The second point at which the audience steps across the actor/spectator divide to become full characters in the drama occurs near the end of the film, during the song, “I’m Going Home.” On the screen, Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), deposed by his servants, finishes his song of regret, and an imaginary audience appears in the empty auditorium he has been addressing. Frank slowly makes his way down the aisle as the illusory spectators rise and applaud. In Harvard Square, Mauro also moves down the theater’s aisle, and the fans rise to their feet to clap for her. This moment is significant not only because the audience members enact specifically the movements of their onscreen counterparts (rather than merely commenting on them), but also because their focus is drawn specifically to the actor: nearly everybody turns to face the live Frank rather than the projected one. The focus on Frank is even more striking when taking into account her position in the aisle: though often used by the Full Body Cast, the audience generally resists following the actors when they move away from the screen. In this case, however, the projected image is physically turned away from and the live actor is rewarded with applause.

Gaining audience attention from the screen image is a unique challenge for live actors in Rocky Horror, but Full Body Cast members unanimously declare their desire for the fans’ gazes. Wendell notes, “Obviously, the actors are at a visual disadvantage here, playing against something five times bigger than they are, but if they play it well, they can capture the audience attention. I’ve appreciated at times hearing comments to the effect of, ‘He was so good, I didn’t even watch the movie!’” Virgins inevitably focus their attention on the projected film, accustomed as they are to directing their gaze upward in a movie theater. More experienced audience members know to watch the live actors, but they are adept at shifting their eyes back up to the big screen to make jokes based on (filmed) visual cues.

Interestingly, at several points in the film, actors are lifted upward to the point where their bodies block part of the screen. When the monster Rocky (“Acid” Willyard) leaps on top of his tank during “The Sword of Damoclese,” for instance, and when Frank (Mauro) bursts out of the pool on Rocky’s shoulders during the Floor Show, live bodies suddenly interpose themselves above their screen counterparts. An unintended (but appreciated) side effect of these moments is to draw audience focus back down to the actors, who in physically thrusting their bodies in the way of the projected image have essentially demanded attention.

During the “Time Warp,” the alteration of audience attention between screen action and stage action becomes particularly noticeable. Bunched together in the aisles, it becomes impossible for most audience members to watch the live actors; gazes float upward to the (still-visible) movie screen, on which the Criminologist (Charles Gray) demonstrates the steps and the party guests (and audience) perform them. During the song’s verses, however, experienced audience members shout “Down!” and the dancers crouch on the floor. The radical change of the audience members’ positions not only clears the sightlines to the live actors, it also dynamically draws the spectators’ focus downward, since gazing at the screen becomes extremely uncomfortable while hunched near the ground. The performers playing Magenta and Columbia (Kathryn Mrzlik and Ruthie Savitzky) therefore gain the audience’s full attention for their moments in the “spotlight.”

Non-traditional casting

In the Full Body Cast, non-traditional casting (as if any aspect of the show could be considered “traditional”) provides a means of rewarding talented performers (whether or not they resemble the actors from the film version), and it also serves as another source of variation that keeps the performance fresh. Intentional or incidental, the alternative casting strategies set up a peculiar resonance between stage character and screen counterpart that proves to be one of the most interesting aspects of performance.

In particular, cross-casting by gender works so well in Rocky performances that the Full Body Cast holds occasional “Gender Bender” performances in which every role is played by an actor of the opposite sex. This form of casting allows for the reconfiguration of the sexual relationships portrayed, refracting them through the prism of performance and blurring the differences between hetero- and homosexual. In tonight’s production, Eddie (the “Ex-Delivery Boy” with half a brain) is played by Jenn Santosuosso, a woman. His relationship with Columbia (Ruthie Savitzky), occurring heterosexually onscreen between Meatloaf and Little Nell, is reflected as a lesbian relationship in the live performance. The disjuncture is striking and is certainly not meant to be ignored. The recasting of Columbia’s desire as lesbian, moreover, is completely in line with a later scene in the film in which she toys seductively with fellow domestic Magenta (understudy Kathryn Mrzlik onstage, Patricia Quinn in the film). When a man plays Magenta, this particular relationship is re-imagined as heterosexual, all the more surprising since a male performer dressed in drag, often assumed to be a marker of homosexuality, then engages in straight behavior.

The gender bending reaches its summit in the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a character (played by the biological man Tim Curry in the film), who wears feminine clothes and makeup but assumes a stereotypically masculine position as an authority figure, who seduces both the hero and the heroine, and who therefore has neither definitive gender nor sexuality. Frank-N-Furter’s mystery makes it not only possible but entirely natural for a woman to perform the role. Bianca Mauro’s interpretation of Frank in this performance perfectly reflects the character’s pansexuality. The casting of a woman in the part only furthers the sexual complexity and is regarded by many audience members as an interesting take. Again, the casting fits smoothly with the movie. Frank-N-Furter declares himself a “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania”: if Tim Curry represents the pre-operative transsexual side of Frank, then the Mauro (re)playing him becomes his post-operative reflection.

Rating Performance

There are almost as many opinions of what makes a “good” performance of Rocky Horror as there are actors and spectators. Alex Savitzky (who, besides his directing chores in Rocky, does technical theater professionally), lists “Professionalism and Audience” as his categories for success. The first part includes hitting cues and staying precise in mimicking the screen’s movements; the second involves feeding off of and back into the energy of the crowd: “If we have a sellout crowd, and they’re all screaming AP [Audience Participation] lines and throwing stuff, we have a blast, and our performance will definitely reflect that.” Santosuosso concurs, stating “I think a good performance is just having fun, and being able to tell the crowd is having fun.”

Sara Wendell notes that, “this is [an issue] that I’ve been fighting with people about for years. In my opinion, a ‘good’ performance of Rocky (FBC [Full Body Cast] style) is one where the audience is impressed with how close to the movie we can be. Now, I’m speaking specifically about the FBC. I have seen performances that were completely off the wall that I thought were good as well, but then I am a Rocky person and can appreciate a lot of the inside jokes.” And a bad show? “A bad show is one that loses the audience.” Wendell relates the story of a performance she attended on the West Coast where flour tortillas were handed out to the attendees prior to the show. The event degenerated into a continuous tortilla fight, actors “made no effort whatsoever to stay in character,” tech crews chatted loudly, and over half the audience walked out.

Perpetuating the Cult

Wendell feels that “for a show to be good, it should be something that a Rocky virgin could see, understand, and appreciate (even love). A good show should be one that inspires people to return and see it again.” Seeing it again (and again and again) is, in fact, the entire purpose of the cult. After the actors take their final bows over the film’s closing credits, and the audience begins to file out of the theater, cast members shout out after them, “Come back next week! It’s different all the time!” And, in a hundred ways, through introductions, pre-shows, and (re)performances of the film, all done with a constantly shifting cast, the event actually does change each and every night. This mutability makes Rocky Horror a continuing pleasure for old fans and a surprising event for new ones.

The live performers of Rocky Horror are the fan members who have seized upon Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mantra, “Don’t dream it; be it.” They are the living embodiment of the film’s sexual themes, people who have tantalizingly transformed the screen icons into flesh and blood. These Rocky Horror fanatics, whose passion for the experience has carried them to the front of the auditorium, have sustained the cult during the twenty-five since the film’s release, in dozens of screenings nation- and worldwide every weekend and thousands of performances every year. These same fanatics, along with new devotees who join up after each virgin sacrifice, are the people who are proudly, and a little perversely, carrying The Rocky Horror Picture Show into the new century.

List of Works Cited or Consulted

Full Body Cast. Home page. 16 May 2000 <http://www.fullbodycast.org>.

The Internet Movie Database. 2000. The Internet Movie Database Ltd. 16 May 2000. <http://www.imdb.com/>.

Peary, Danny. Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful. New York: Delacorte Press, 1981.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Live performance. Full Body Cast, Harvard Square Theatre, Cambridge, MA. 29 Apr. 2000.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Orig. Musical Play, Music, and Lyrics by Richard O’Brien. Screenplay by Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien. Dir. Jim Sharman. Twentieth Century Fox, 1975.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Dir. Jim Sharman. 1975. Videocassette. CBS/FOX Video, 1990.

Santosuosso, Jennifer. E-mail to the author. 12 May 2000.

Savitzky, Alex. E-mail to the author. 3 May 2000.

Savitzky, Ruth. E-mail to the author. 4 May 2000.

Savitzky, Ruth. E-mail to the author. 12 May 2000.

Wendell, Sara. E-mail to the author. 3 May 2000.