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"Rocky Horror" Turns A Bar Into A Blackbox

Leah Andelsmith | October 30th, 2018

LGBTQ  |  Arts & Culture  |  Theater  |  Fairfield Center Stage

 

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Photos courtesy Brian Bish and Fairfield Center Stage. Actors did not want to be identified outside of their roles, because many of them are teachers who do acting on the side. 

Brian Bish was at the mic, hair dyed bright blue and pink, face covered with glitter and rhinestones. When Diana from Milford yelled out her two cents from the audience, Bish immediately called her up on stage. Decked out in a mini-skirt, fishnet tights, and platform boots with silver buckles, Diana strutted across the parquet floor and won second place in the costume contest.

The campy scene preceded last Saturday’s early showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Trevi Lounge in Fairfield. With Bish as director, Fairfield Center Stage theater company had only planned to give two performances of the Halloween favorite last weekend, but those shows sold out so quickly they had to add a third.

For the uninitiated, the Rocky Horror Picture Show is a cult classic that initially flopped when it was released in 1975. But when theater-goers started talking back to the screen, yelling out zany and biting remarks during showings of the sci-fi/horror musical, the film was reborn, and its rabid fans developed their own culture and traditions.

The movie follows the exploits of mad scientist Dr. Frank-n-Furter—the “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania”—as he hosts a party, creates his own personal boy toy, pursues “absolute pleasure” with unwitting house guests Brad and Janet, and lives life on his own terms at all costs. It’s at once reviled for its use of harmful, outmoded tropes about LGBTQ characters and passionately adored for the way it gives folks permission to be themselves even if they have felt marginalized.

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“It’s still as important today as in 1975,” Bish said, sitting down for a chat before the show. “It’s a community people have been welcomed into.”

At its best, the movie is a celebration, an invitation to let your freak flag fly, which is probably why many feel it has a special place in the heart of the queer community.

“It’s a piece of our history,” Bish said. Noting the current political climate, he added that “it’s so important that we have these positive messages.”

“These were the people who fought for the rights we have today…We’re honoring our history,” he added. “We have to remember where we came from to know where we’re going.”

Last weekend’s production of Rocky Horror was a shadowcast, which means that live actors in full-costume lip-synched the entire movie—both songs and dialogue—performing each scene as it played on screen. As each beloved character took the stage, the audience eagerly anticipated and then applauded their entrances. Bish joked that the cast was under strict instructions to “lip-synch for their lives.”

Traditionally a shadowcast is done in a movie theater, with the full-sized screen towering over the actors. But at Trevi Lounge, a much smaller space, the film was played on television monitors around the room. That meant that the intimate audience of 40 to 50 people had their eyes trained far more on the actors’ faces than on the screens.

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The company delivered the precise lip-synching that was needed, along with fully inhabited characters, bawdy dance numbers, and blocking that made every audience member feel they were part of the action. The room nearly erupted when Dr. Frank-n-Furter sashayed down the aisle in a shimmery black corset, elbow-length gloves, and oversized pearls to deliver the character’s signature song, “Sweet Transvestite.”

Bish used of every inch of the space, including staging one scene on top of a pool table and having Dr. Frank-n-Furter climb the pole permanently installed on the dance floor during his escape attempt. The “sexy phantoms,” as Bish called the scantily-clad ensemble, frequently roamed the aisles looking for audience members to dance with.

Even in a frenzied scene, like when Dr. Frank-n-Furter chases his creation Rocky all around the laboratory, the actors weren’t hampered by the close quarters. By darting up and down the aisles, lunging across the stage, and carefully timing their movements so they wouldn’t cross paths, the actors gave the illusion of running quickly and covering ground.

Fairfield Center Stage’s inaugural season is built around that kind of creative staging. The theater company does not yet have a stage they can call home and they’ve decided not to survive the situation, but to thrive in it.

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Bish said that artistic director Christy McIntosh-Newsom and executive producer Eli Newsom are embracing the concept of being nomadic artists. Earlier this year, they told the company: “Until we have a home, we’ll have homes. We’ll do immersive theater.”

On November 17, the company is putting on a benefit concert called “Onwards and Upwards”at the Penfield Pavillion in Fairfield, right on the beach overlooking Long Island Sound. Bish said the concert will be “a big ole show,” with a cast of 70 singing songs that are “all about journeys” in a of variety different musical styles.

In March, they’ll be performing Dream Girls at the 900-seat Black Rock Church and in April there’s a staged reading of “Vows,” a new work written by a member of the company. Bish explained that “Vows” is based on stories of how couples met culled from the New York Times’ Vows section, and that in this reading, real-life couples will be playing the roles.

In May, the troupe will present The Secret Garden at the Pequot Library, showing the first act in the auditorium and the second act out on the Great Lawn.

But Bish couldn’t help talking up the company’s December production: A Christmas Carol Experience at Burr Mansion in Fairfield. Each audience is limited to 25 people, and instead of sitting to view the show, audience members will take in the experience on their feet, following Scrooge and the ghosts from room to room, even sipping cider and partaking in figgy pudding during the Fezziwigs’ Christmas party. Bish said that the show is already half sold out.

Bish said he is “crazy excited” about A Christmas Carol Experience. But for him personally, Christmas comes in late October, when shadowcast actors dust off their négligés and pop open fresh tubes of glitter and black lipstick. In other words, Rocky Horror season.

“This is gay Christmas,” he said, laughing. “Christmas is cute, but this is my day.”