Upon learning in May that UT-Austin wouldn\u2019t host the annual student shadowcast for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Nani Matthews felt exasperated. They wondered what warranted the banning \u2013 they\u2019d loved their experience directing last October\u2019s show and had even complied with the university restricting gender-bending and pushing an (oxymoronic) \u201csanitized Rocky.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
After sharing the news with their friend and aspiring director for this fall\u2019s iteration, Maggie Cook, Cook immediately began working to save the student production.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor it to not be allowed, it feels like trampling on college culture [and] queer culture,\u201d Cook says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The end of the 11-year-old shadowcast tradition came after the University of Texas System instituted a campus drag ban<\/a> in March and preceded the campus\u2019 ongoing gender studies audit<\/a>. However, Austin college students have a 50-year-old love affair going with<\/a> the campy musical; movie theaters on the Drag frequently screened it even before its midnight screening popularity; UT\u2019s student newspaper raved over its 1975 release; and enthusiasts alongside Time Warp \u201cvirgins\u201d religiously waited hours in line for annual on-and-off campus productions.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u2019s backyard for a 500-person capacity, bring-your-own-chair viewing. The shadowcast runs Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 at 6:30pm.\u00a0<\/p>\n The crew has received substantial outside support since announcing the independent run.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody always starts it out with: \u2018I love Rocky so much, and I would love to be a part of this in any way,\u2019\u201d says Cook, smiling while scrolling through all the DMs she\u2019s gotten.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n O\u2019Brien\u2019s Orchestra \u2013 who touts the city\u2019s longest-running Rocky Horror shadowcast production \u2013 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\u00a0the university\u2019s Events + Entertainment Department production making the show accessible to students across majors.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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,\u201d Mendez says.<\/p>\n While this year\u2019s \u201ccreatures of the night\u201d worry about the off-campus production limiting student accessibility, the loss of university sponsorship has welcomed new involvement from West Campus residents who aren\u2019t UT students. Notably, Angel Ribbons, who will play Frank-N-Furter and serve as the production\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d Ribbons says. \u201cBeing exposed to it validates our art. Our art\u2019s just as creative, as valid, as beautiful as anyone else\u2019s \u2013 if not more.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of [students here are] people from small towns like me. \u2026 I\u2019d never met a gay person over the age of 16, and I came to Austin, and everyone is gay, and it was beautiful,\u201d Cook says. \u201cI saw my first Rocky Horror Picture Show [here], and people were so expressive and so out about their gender and sexuality \u2026 You could still be a successful [business owner or] leader and also wear fishnets and a corset on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upon learning in May that UT-Austin wouldn\u2019t host the annual student shadowcast for The Rocky Horror Picture Show,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1551,15817,2471],"class_list":["post-21053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-feature","tag-the-rocky-horror-picture-show","tag-ut-austin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}