Casting Shadows: The Cult Phenomenon of the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'

The lights dim in The Esquire Theatre auditorium near downtown Cincinnati where an audience of about 50 are gathered to watch “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” A 1970s funk-pop song strums through the speakers before a pair of bright lipsticked lips emerge from the screen’s blackness. A white spotlight bursts to reveal a young woman in front of the screen, dressed in nothing but fishnet stockings, a man’s button up and fiery rouge lipstick. She begins to mouth along to the film’s song. All eyes have forgotten the reel projecting onto the silver screen. Everyone is watching her as her shadow casts backwards and upwards.

“I was terrified the first time I saw it,” said Kearstyn Bowen, a student and actress with The Denton Affair. “You don’t go to movie theaters to not watch the movie. My mom had gone to ‘Rocky Horror’ when she was a teenager, she saw shadow casts in Texas, and she thought I’d like it, and at first, I really didn’t. But I kept going back, and then I knew I had to join the cast. You have to be someone somewhere, and I knew that at ‘Rocky,’ I’m me.”

“Rocky Horror” has united social outcasts in a safe space through shadow casting—the phenomenon of actors mimicking a film while it plays behind them—that allows people to be themselves, fishnet stockings and all. There have been hundreds of shadow casts across the country, with actors performing their own renditions of the 1975 film. Entertainment experts say these casts are also helping local theaters survive the decline of movie-going in the streaming age.

The Denton Affair cast has been performing “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for 30 years, and found its home at The Esquire Theatre in the late ‘90s. The team of costumed lip-syncers immerse themselves and their audience into the film one Saturday at midnight every month.

Roy Rossi, 62, joined a shadow cast in Providence, Mass., in 1981 after he graduated from college. Rossi played the character Riff Raff, but since 2003, he has primarily been coordinating the RKO Army, the New England travelling shadow cast he founded.

“When I joined in the ‘80s, we’d be up on stage every Friday and Saturday, but it wasn’t about the film,” Rossi said. “A year after I joined, I wasn’t going because I loved the film—sure, the music was always fun, but I’d go for the camaraderie.”

Rossi was drawn to the film because of how different it was from any he’d seen before. Many films premiering in the ‘70s and ‘80s had macho-man protagonists, like Sylvester Stalone in “Rocky” or Al Pacino in “The Godfather,” but “Rocky Horror”’s own lead, Frankenfurter, was a completely new man. Frankenfurter wasn’t even a man but an alien.

“You think of Frankenfurter, a ‘transvestite,’ and you don’t see anybody like him. He’s just himself,” Rossi said. “I watched that movie and said, ‘I want to be like that. I want to do that, I want to play that game.’”

Bowen said the “Rocky Horror'' shadow cast community has grown so significantly because the LGBTQ+ community feels drawn to the film. Bowen, who identifies as bisexual, said that a lot of her castmates are queer.

“What people have always said about ‘Rocky,’ and will continue to say about it, is that at ‘Rocky,’ you can put glitter in your hair, wear stupid clothes or nothing at all,” Bowen said. “A lot of queer people come to ‘Rocky’ because they can be what they want.”

Melissa O’Moore joined The Denton Affair cast in 2005 when she was 18 years old. Now 32, O’Moore manages the cast that has helped her blossom into her identity and continue the shadow-casting traditions.

“As terrible as this sounds, you should probably be a little gay if you join the cast. We’re just a bunch of alternative queers,” O’Moore said with a laugh. “It’s a place for misfits. The majority of our audience is college-aged, and most people around that age are looking for a place to go. They see ‘Rocky,’ and they feel it immediately—that they’re surrounded by people who feel the same as they do. That’s what draws them back.”

O’Moore said she’s a completely different person now than who she was when she joined The Denton Affair. She added that seeing confident women performing when she was a teenager helped her feel comfortable in her body and her queer sexuality.

“I was raised in a really strict, religious community; I couldn’t wear pants, I couldn’t cut my hair, couldn’t wear make up, and being gay definitely wasn’t okay,” O’Moore said. “But seeing other people thriving at ‘Rocky’ makes you feel like you can thrive.”

Rossi said that, even when shadow casts first formed in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, it was primarily a space for loners. Rossi said he himself only had one friend, and that friend introduced him to “Rocky Horror.”

But such extravagant expressions were often met with angry audiences, Rossi said.

“I got into fist fights in the ‘80s. Back then, you’d get people at the shows who were less progressive and looking for trouble,” Rossi said. “‘You’re a bunch of faggots,’ that’s what they would be thinking. But I had to defend my turf. I’m not going to let them take this from me. I love doing this. I love my friends, even if some people think it’s crossing a line when guys would wear high heels and fishnets.”

Henry Jenkins, a media scholar and provost professor at the University of Southern California, has studied the phenomenon of interactive media. He said “Rocky Horror” shadow casts are a unique element for immersing movie audiences, especially during the streaming age.

“‘Rocky Horror’ was intended as interactive theater when the original play premiered in 1973 on the West End. They literally handed out manuals on how to do the ‘Time Warp’ dance so audiences could do it with the actors,” Jenkins said. “What ‘Rocky Horror’ fans have been doing has always been in the spirit of the movie.”

Shadow casts continued growing throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, so casts began hosting conventions for “Rocky” fans and performers.

Rossi’s RKO Army hosted its first shadow cast convention in 2013 and has since hosted two more. A fourth convention is planned for 2022 in Providence, which will be the first convention since the COVD-19 pandemic halted movie-going, shadow-casting and large gatherings in 2020.

Rossi had never attended “Rocky” conventions, but when he finally hosted his own, he said it was “like living in the future.”

“When you run a con, it’s about doing it for each other,” Rossi said. “You get individuals coming to you, a lot of people who are dealing with anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, telling you how much this all means, and you realize, ‘It’s bigger than our cast.’ You can really only express it in a hug.”

Bowen, O’Moore and Rossi all stressed that the pandemic has caused them and their casts to struggle because they’ve lost a safe space.

Student actress Kearstyn Bowen performed in The Denton Affair’s final show before the theater temporarily closed because of coronavirus. Now, Bowen is a senior in college working a part-time job while student teaching, and she said she’s not sure if she’ll re-join the cast when performances restart.

“If I had known that that show was going to be my last show, I would’ve probably appreciated it a lot more,” Bowen said.

O’Moore worked at a karaoke bar before the pandemic started, but she now works in health care. “‘Rocky’ was a job for me,” O’Moore said. “I’ve been doing it for 16 years, and suddenly I’m not doing it at all. It’s like getting laid off.”

Movie theaters have been struggling during the pandemic, too. Late in 2020, the major theater chains AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas announced that they were considering bankruptcy, and both companies barely survived the year even after receiving massive investments.

Jenkins said that small, independent theaters, like The Esquire Theatre, are more equipped to survive the pandemic and the lack of movie-goers during the streaming age.

“The real danger is the multiplex. It has no special logic. It’s a completely anonymous venue. When you’re trying to get people off their couches, it’s the small theaters with the community events that will get them to a theater,” Jenkins said.

Despite changes in movie-going and the stress of the pandemic, Bowen, O’Moore and Rossi said that people will certainly want to see shadow casts again when it’s safe. Since its original theatrical release, the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” has grossed nearly $500 million in ticket sales. The Esquire Theatre in Cincinnati has continued showing “Rocky Horror” on Saturday midnights since it re-opened in June under COVID-19 restrictions.

“It’s not about the film,” O’Moore said. “It’s the people—the casts and the audiences. I want to keep the tradition of shadow casting alive; it’s been around for almost 40 years, but I stick around for the people.”