Upon learning in May that UT-Austin wouldn’t host the annual student shadowcast for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Nani Matthews felt exasperated. They wondered what warranted the banning – they’d loved their experience directing last October’s show and had even complied with the university restricting gender-bending and pushing an (oxymoronic) “sanitized Rocky.”
After sharing the news with their friend and aspiring director for this fall’s iteration, Maggie Cook, Cook immediately began working to save the student production.
“For it to not be allowed, it feels like trampling on college culture [and] queer culture,” Cook says.
In the science fiction musical, a couple spends an eventful night with a mad scientist who is building his perfect golden-shorted man. Traditionally around Halloween, theatre companies have the film projected behind a shadowcast of matching characters, often cross-dressing, performing with tons of audience engagement.
The end of the 11-year-old shadowcast tradition came after the University of Texas System instituted a campus drag ban in March and preceded the campus’ ongoing gender studies audit. However, Austin college students have a 50-year-old love affair going with the campy musical; movie theaters on the Drag frequently screened it even before its midnight screening popularity; UT’s student newspaper raved over its 1975 release; and enthusiasts alongside Time Warp “virgins” religiously waited hours in line for annual on-and-off campus productions.
Cook and her friends brainstormed alternative production plans all summer. In September, producer Drew Kampf, a bookkeeper and fundraiser at Pearl Street Co-Op, was able to book the popular West Campus locale’s backyard for a 500-person capacity, bring-your-own-chair viewing. The shadowcast runs Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 at 6:30pm.
The crew has received substantial outside support since announcing the independent run.
“Everybody always starts it out with: ‘I love Rocky so much, and I would love to be a part of this in any way,’” says Cook, smiling while scrolling through all the DMs she’s gotten.
O’Brien’s Orchestra – who touts the city’s longest-running Rocky Horror shadowcast production – and the LGBTQIA-focused Austin Rainbow Theatre lent the crew sequined corset costumes, plus nearly $2,000 in various donations for projector rentals and costumes and equipment purchases. UT alum Marliza Mendez, who participated in the shadowcast in 2016 and 2017, donated $200 to the production and encouraged others to do the same. She remembers the university’s Events + Entertainment Department production making the show accessible to students across majors.
“It brought all these people together that were trying to find other like-minded individuals that were open to exploring not just creative art [or] theatre, but also themes Rocky Horror [explores] with going into sexuality and identity and self-expression that people may not be able to explore in their day to day,” Mendez says.
While this year’s “creatures of the night” worry about the off-campus production limiting student accessibility, the loss of university sponsorship has welcomed new involvement from West Campus residents who aren’t UT students. Notably, Angel Ribbons, who will play Frank-N-Furter and serve as the production’s makeup artist, is an Austin Community College student. Ribbons says as someone who identifies as transfemme and has performed drag since she was 17, she looks forward to representing the legendary role Tim Curry played onstage and onscreen.
“It’s become too condoned to act like people who are doing Rocky, doing co-ops, doing drag, are weird or not worthy of their art being validated,” Ribbons says. “Being exposed to it validates our art. Our art’s just as creative, as valid, as beautiful as anyone else’s – if not more.”
True to the co-op culture hosting the production, the cast and crew say the show uniquely builds community. For decades, attendees have stumbled into the production and left feeling empowered to not dream of, but be who they want to be.
“A lot of [students here are] people from small towns like me. … I’d never met a gay person over the age of 16, and I came to Austin, and everyone is gay, and it was beautiful,” Cook says. “I saw my first Rocky Horror Picture Show [here], and people were so expressive and so out about their gender and sexuality … You could still be a successful [business owner or] leader and also wear fishnets and a corset on the stage.”
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