U of A creates original voice with cult fave ‘Rocky Horror’

Invite audience participation.

“The Rocky Horror Show” kind of demands it, especially if the audience’s only reference to the sci-fi rock musical is seeing the midnight show with the chaos and calamity of a shadow cast.

Those are the die-hard fans who dress up as the characters and mimic and mock the characters and shout slurs and insults while singing along to “The Time Warp,” "Sweet Transvestite" and "Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul."

Director Christie Kerr doesn’t mind a little interaction, but she’s not sure she wants to see a shadow cast pop up at Marroney Theatre when the school puts on its production Oct. 16-25; previews are on Oct. 11 and 15.

“It's a delicate balance, and to be honest with you, I'm not really quite sure what's going to happen,” she said earlier this month during a break in rehearsals.

“It's very important, I think, for the energy of this show that the audience is responding and reacting to us, which honestly feels so backwards for the theater that we're used to presenting,” added Harrison Dodge, who has the lead role of the gender fluid mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

There’s that delicate balance Kerr, the school’s associate director and musical theater professor, was referring to.

That’s also where Kerr’s TFTV colleague Patrick Holt comes in.

As The Narrator, Holt, who made a name for himself as drag artist Tempest DuJour on two seasons of RuPaul’s “Drag Race,” will encourage the audience to have fun; get up and laugh and dance as the mood strikes you, Kerr said of Holt’s pre-show announcement, which also warns the audience: “Don’t touch us and we won't touch you.”

This is the first time since spring 2005 that the UA has mounted Richard O’Brien’s dark musical comedy and the first time it’s been on a Tucson stage since Live Theatre Workshop’s late-night arm Etcetera performed it in early 2010.

The plot and plot twists

When their car breaks down in a pouring rain, Brad (Jack Feeney-Munoz) and Janet (Lillian Aganost), who are newly engaged and extremely conservative, go for help at a nearby castle.

When the door opens, the couple is greeted by party guests in elaborate costumes and the house staff — Magenta (Annie Houglum) and Riff-Raff (Christine Winn). There’s also the resident hanger-on Columbia (Savana Dorame) and the castle’s owner, Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Dodge), a mad scientist and alien transvestite from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.

Frank, with the help of Riff-Raff, has just created a real-life muscle man named Rocky, who may or may not have been made with parts borrowed from Eddie, a bandaged house guest/motorcyclist who Frank ends up killing in front of his unexpected house guests.

Later that night, Frank sneaks into the couple’s rooms and seduces the unsuspecting Brad and Janet — each thought they were with the other when it was actually Frank in disguise. When Riff-Raff torments a frightened Rocky, he hides in Janet’s room and Janet, who’s pretty peeved that Brad slept with Frank, seduces Rocky in retaliation.

All sorts of chaos ensues from a dinner not fit for a king and a great escape that isn’t so great as Frank’s staff of aliens threaten to defect to their native planet, leaving the humans Brad and Janet to crawl out of the dirt and rubble, wondering if what they had experienced was even real.

Finding an original voice to a cult classic

Aside from some cool and schlocky props including ray guns, Kerr’s production has a few special nods to the late Tim Curry, the English actor who originated the Frank-N-Furter character in both the stage and film versions.

The UA’s production comes two months after Curry died in August at the age of 80.

It also follows the Broadway revival last April of “The Rocky Horror Show” at Studio 54. The Sam Pinkleton-directed show will run through Feb. 28, 2027.

None of that played into Kerr’s decision to do the show, however.

“This was a title that I felt strongly about,” she said, and one that she felt would resonate as the school tries to find new audiences and re-engage longtime Tucson theater fans.

“We’re really trying to find titles that are exciting for our students as well as for the campus and for the Tucson community,” she said, including leaning into a more goth feel in the staging and costumes.

When auditions were held last spring, Dodge, a music major and music theater minor, was initially going for the role of Brad.

“My mom was a part of the shadow casts at The Loft when she was in college and she was like, ‘Oh yeah, Brad. That makes sense for you’,” the 21-year-old Tucson native recalled.

And while he prepared for the role of the nerdy all-American Brad, “I also prepared the Frank-N-Furter stuff.”

“Once we actually got into the audition room and I did my thing, I felt like there was something there with the character of Frank-N-Furter that I was able to play with more, and it was more exciting to me than the other role,” he said.

He also admitted Tim Curry loomed large when he first started working with the script over the summer.

“There's so much with his performance of the role and everything that when you're doing this role, you're kind of honoring him anyway,” Dodge said. “There's definitely moments where it's hard to take his performance out of my head.”

But that is exactly what Kerr advised him.

“I don’t want Tim Curry’s version through you; that’s not what we’re looking for,” she said she told him. “I want something that is uniquely your voice.”

The Catalina-Foothills High School alumnus took that advice to heart and throughout the process of developing the character, he said he felt like “it’s more becoming my own.”

“So much of this character you have to be really, really comfortable in your own skin,” Dodge said, explaining that his character spends a lot of time “talking about all these sexual desires and things.”

“So it's been a process for me for figuring out what is comfortable for me and what is the truest expression of myself in that way,” he said. “There’s so much to play with in terms of acting and singing.”

Kerr said the cast has been great “and so open to creating their own unique voices and their own individual characters.”

“This offers so much in terms of the message of the show about discovery and your journey and finding your own true voice, and everyone feeling like an ‘outsider or alien,’ and finding your community in its own way,” Kerr added. “(‘Rocky Horror’) really kind of represents all those different ideas, which I think are really applicable to our students.”