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Thursday, October 24, 2002 Freaks, Geeks and Thrusting Pelvises City
Circle provides Halloween By
Reed
Dunn
City Circle Acting Company of Coralville is putting up "The Rocky Horror Show," opening Halloween night, and costumes are encouraged. Rice and water guns, for those familiar with the show's cult-followed participation tactics, are discouraged. No worries. Audience participation packs, including toilet paper, whistles, confetti cannons, newspapers and flashlights will be sold for $5 at the door. "I don't even think it's the actual story that makes the show," actor Derek May said. "I think it's what people do to get themselves involved. I think it's more what the audience brings to it that makes it fun."
Precisely. "Rocky Horror" is more than a movie and more than a stage show. It is an experience. The show opened in the mid-1970s on a small stage in London. A movie version - "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" - made it around the world within a couple of years, and a cult following soon developed. Time and time again people would go to the theater dressed in drag, and whoop and holler at the on-screen actors. "I was completely captivated from the beginning," says Susie Gilbert, who portrays Trixie in the City Circle rendition. "I thought it was completely a riot." Gilbert and her college-age girlfriends went to see the movie every night during its original one-week Iowa City run. They also spent an entire summer traveling to Des Moines on Saturdays to see the midnight screening. "The movie was like the centerpiece for a wild, massive, ongoing party," Gilbert said. "Everybody could dress up and get together and sing and dance and carry on. It got to be fun. You'd see the same folks week after week after week."
It was a somewhat excusable chance to get rowdy. In fact, Gilbert has had 212 chances - the easily remembered number of times she went to see the show in theaters. "I've never watched it on TV," she said. "I won't." If nothing else, Gilbert has learned a trick from her fanatic ways: "You can freak out an entire restaurant showing up with five or six people dressed in 'Rocky Horror' drag." City Circle director Chad Larabee asked his cast to steer clear from watching the film in preparing for the show. There are differences, but the shallow storyline is still there. "There's no great subtext," Larabee said. "It's pretty straight-forward." Basically, Brad and Janet stumble upon Dr. Frank N. Furter, who sets out to create a man, Rocky. A supporting cast of transvestites and transsexuals turn out from Transylvania, filling the stage with sight-for-sore-eyes characters. "Rocky Horror" is a musical spoof of epic proportions. The show was unlike anything from its time, creating reason for the rage. "Madonna trotting out in her underwear and stuff like that is like old hat to people now," Gilbert said. "At the time 'Rocky Horror' came out, there was nothing like that."
Not all of the actors in City Circle's production are as fanatical as Gilbert when it comes to "Rocky Horror." May, who portrays Brad, has only seen a few Broadway clips of the show. Devin Smith, a University of Iowa student playing Rocky, watched the movie one time, when he was a child. "I remember because I stayed up until 1 a.m. watching it," Smith said. "Back then, I didn't even know there was time after 11 p.m. at night." Smith is now joining the Coralville cast of mostly twentysomethings almost daily to get dressed down in thong underwear - covered by a silver loincloth - to prance around stage as Rocky. Other cast members wearing stiletto heels, red boas and plain white undergarments grace the stage during rehearsals. Once the audience is incorporated, Smith expects the cast will kick it up another notch. "I think it's going to be a hysterical romp," he said. "The whole cast is a little bit nutty, and we just feed off of each other." Larabee first saw the stage show in the early 1990s. He said the interaction between audience and actor was unlike musical theater he had seen. "Rocky Horror" is less elitist than other live performances, which attracted him to apply for the rights. "In many ways it's the anti-musical," Larabee said. "It tends to buck a lot of the rules for what you would think musical theater would be." "Rocky Horror" has been known to grow an audience for live theater, which is another plus for City Circle. "This is the kind of show that celebrates individuality and the outsider," Larabee said. "At the same time it brings all these freaks and geeks together to sing together and thrust their pelvises." |
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