CSULB FALL 2022 SEASON
The Rocky Horror Show
Class Study Guide
What is the show about?
With music, lyrics, and book by Richard O'Brien, The Rocky Horror Show is a wild night of sci-fi shenanigans, 1960’s B movie antics, and sex-positive celebration!
In this cult classic, sweethearts Brad and Janet, stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite scientist with intoxicating charisma, intimidating genius, and an insatiable libido.
Brad and Janet’s misadventures will cause them to question everything they’ve known about themselves, each other, love, and lust. Directed by Jen Richardson, we'll watch these wholesome homebodies become CREATURES OF THE NIGHT!
Who are the characters?
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USHERETTE/MAGENTA (A Domestic)
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Famously played by Patricia Quinn, their lips inspired the Rocky Horror branded lips seen all over the globe.
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BRAD (A Hero)
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Famously played by Barry Bostwick, they have a somber solo song that only appears in live performances, not films.
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JANET (A Heroine)
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Famously played by Susan Sarandon, they are the only character to have two credited performers during the original run of the show.
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NARRATOR (An Expert)
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Famously played by Charles Gray, they have an omnipresent knowledge of everything going on.
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RIFF RAFF (A Handyman)
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Famously played by Richard O’Brien, they are the mastermind behind the entire show.
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COLUMBIA (A Groupie)
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Famously played by Little Nell, they are known for their fantastic tap dance skills.
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FRANK ‘N’ FURTER (A Scientist)
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Famously played by Tim Curry, their character is inspired by clowns and panto dames.
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ROCKY (A Creation)
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Famously played by Peter Hinwood, they were always typically cast from bodybuilders.
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EDDIE (An Ex-Delivery Boy)
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Famously played by Meatloaf, their fast-talking lyrics created a rock and roll fantasy onstage.
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DR. SCOTT (A Rival Scientist)
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Famously played by Jonathan Adams, this role is sometimes shared with Eddie.
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PHANTOMS/TRANSYLVANIANS
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These characters can act as a “shadow cast,” helping bring the audience into the world of the play onstage.
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History of the Rocky Horror Show
Rocky Horror Picture Show was created, written with music and lyrics by Richard O’Brien. O’Brien in a 2002 interview with the New York Times describes his intent with creating this show saying he was motivated, ““to write a rock ‘n’ roll show that combined the unintentional humor of B-movies with the portentous dialogue of schlock horror.”
O’Brien pitched the show to director Jim Sharman who brought the show to be produced at the Royal Court Theater in London. Rocky Horror Picture Show is an amalgamation of decades worth of pop and cultural references.
Cast of the original London production of The Rocky Horror Show which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs on June 19th, 1973.
In an analysis written by Scott Miller, Miller writes that “[Rocky Horror] uses as its vocabulary pop a heady mix of cultural icons like Charles Atlas and muscle magazines, Frederick’s of Hollywood, old science fiction B-movies with scantily clad women, horror movies with barely sublimated sexual fantasies, punk and glam rock with their blurring of gender lines, collectively representing a long history of Americans hiding sex behind other things, of pretending to be sexless”
This lyrical and visual language that came from this vision was further supported by a a crew of creatives that were at the heart of the experimental theater scene in London. Director Jim Sharman committed deeply to the sincerity of the characters believing that the dramatic outrageousness of the show only works if rooted in the truest of motivations. Rocky Horror was made into a film in 1975 and has since become the center of much of the cult following that the show has developed.
The first midnight showing of Rocky Horror took place on April 1st, 1976, at the Waverly Theatre
Rocky Horror as a Home for LGBTQIA+ Communities
Rocky Horror Picture Show has been lauded as a celebration of androgyny and gender fluidity. Tim Curry’s protrayal of Frank N’ Furter put on the stage a loud and bold androgynous character complete with fish net stockings and thigh high heels. Frank N’ Furter depicts a complicated, sexy, funny and villanous queer character.
In an article entitled, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” Taught Entire Generations to Embrace Queer Expression“ by Tom Fitzerald and Lorenzo Marquez, they write, “In many ways, The Rocky Horror Picture show represented one of the biggest cultural triumphs of the queer art community immediately post-Stonewall. O’Brien, like many queer people in the underground theater and experimental film scenes of the late ’60s and ’70s, took his babyqueer obsessions with B movies, camp, movie musicals, sexual desire and non-conformity and turned it into an explosively queer form of art with not only mass appeal, but culture-shifting power.”
Rocky Horror Show forced a conversation that made spectators question what we have accepted in our culture, our relationships and our personal identities woven between it all.