Baltimore shadow cast performers keep Tim Curry’s ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ legacy alive

As Ximena Mier chased her friend, Delaney Fairley, around the auditorium aisles, the two dodged the chairs and tried not to fall in their platform heels and corsets.

In the background blared the sounds of a guitar, the fast beat of the drums and the booming lyrics warning, “You better wise up, Janet Weiss!”

Other performers watched them zigzag across the Arellano Theater, giggling when Mier and Fairley ran out of breath as they neared center stage.

It was the night before the shadow cast club at the Johns Hopkins University performed “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and the group of students had just finished rehearsing the final scene for the first time.

Jason Lafita, the club’s president, joked to the other members that they were way ahead of schedule compared to other years.

“We are a serious ...,” he said with a pause. “No, we’re not a serious theater group.”

The others cackled.

Since “Rocky Horror” made its debut in 1975, performers and movie lovers, especially among the LGBTQ+ community, have been attracted to the campy cult classic’s quirky characters and evocative plot. As part of its subculture, generations of fans have reimagined the movie through shadow cast shows — an interactive stage performance done in front of a projection of the film.

The 50-year-old film resurfaced in headlines in recent weeks following the death of the actor at the center of the movie, Tim Curry. He died Aug. 25 at 80 years old.

Many have honored him for his iconic role as Frank-N-Furter: a pansexual, alien, mad scientist and a self-identified “sweet transvestite.” His character, and the film in general, gave decades of shadow cast performers, including the group of Johns Hopkins students, a place to freely express themselves outside of gender norms.

“Without Tim Curry, we wouldn’t have such an open queer community for so many people,” said Mier, who played Frank-N-Furter in the Hopkins club rendition. “This show was like revolutionary for its time.”

Mier, a junior who is studying opera, said she became “entranced” with “Rocky Horror” when she was in high school, sometimes sneaking out of her home in the Southern California suburbs to see midnight showings with friends.

It wasn’t until her sophomore year in college that Mier decided to join the shadow cast club, and she landed the legendary Frank-N-Furter role in her first performance.

“It felt like there was a lot on my shoulders at first,” she said. To prep, Mier scoured Curry’s old interviews and studied behind-the scenes footage of him on set, drawing her closer to both Frank-N-Furter and Curry.

“I think that Tim Curry was a tremendous actor, and obviously he brought a lot of joy and a lot of peace to a lot of people,” she said. “When Tim Curry passed, I just cried for a long time.”

Most of the students in the club share reverence for the film and its founding cast, but rehearsals for the performance felt as silly as the film.

Many of them cracked jokes, hyped each other up during the wildest scenes and shouted at each other from across the stage. Several members agreed the fun atmosphere was part of a shadow cast show’s charm.

The club puts on four shadow cast shows of “Rocky Horror” every year. Although sometimes it’s difficult to recruit enough people for every part in every show, the club had a large number of people join this September, said Lafita, a senior and head of the group.

He said he went to all four shows during his freshman year before taking the leap and joining as a cast member his sophomore year. Since then, he has almost always played Brad Majors, an all-America man who stumbles into Frank-N-Furter’s mansion on a rainy night when his car breaks down.

It wasn’t an easy role at first (spoiler alert: Brad spends much of the movie in his underwear), but Lafita said he became comfortable with the character by his second show and “completely fell in love with it.”

“I’m really grateful for the tradition of shadow casts to be there to help provide a safe space for queer people,” said Lafita, adding that, in a tumultuous era for the LGBTQ+ community, shadow casts are a way “that a lot of queer people can come together and have fun.”

Most members of his club have memorized each of the “Rocky Horror” callbacks, which is when the audience shouts phrases or words in response to the movie. Knowing that most people going to their show have likely never seen it before, the Hopkins cast will shout the callbacks out instead of the audience.

For the first show of the year Friday, the cast added callbacks of their own to honor Curry, including shouting “Tim Curry” when Frank-N-Furter raises his glass at the dinner table and says “a toast to absent friends.”

If you missed the group’s midnight showing on Friday, you can see the second show on Oct. 30 at Levering Hall’s Arellano Theater. There will be another shadow cast show in Baltimore that weekend at M&T Bank Exchange from Oct. 29-31.

For those who are Rocky Horror “virgins,” you can read up on what to expect before heading into your first show. But some of the Hopkins students recommended walking into your first show blind and with an open mind.

“I think that a lot of people may feel intimidated to either go to the shows or even join the cast of ‘Rocky Horror,’” Mier said. “You can be anybody and you can come here ... and you can just become somebody else on the stage here, and you can also become somebody else in the audience here.”