Confessions of a Transylvanian (46 page)

Maybe.
I’
m only trying to be fair.

All I can say is, Sunday, Tracey and I went back to Florida with our heads held high. All this time, right up until our trip north, we had proudly believed that there was
n’
t a Rocky cast anywhere in the world that could measure up to what we were doing twice-weekly at the Ultravision.

We thought, prior to that evening, that the Wild and Untamed Things had the best live Rocky show in the country.

Now?

We
knew
it.

22

Spaced Out on Sensation

I
n defense of our friends and colleagues in New York: Doing Rocky can get to be a drag after a while.

I know it sounds like Rocky blasphemy (if there is such a thing), but the truth is that performing the same show, week after week without any variation at all, can be draining and demoralizing. This is true of live theater, rock music and dolphin acts. Doing each and every piece of Rocky choreography, by rote, each and every night leads inevitably to boredom and stagnation. You think Keith Richards
likes
playing “Satisfaction” at every single concert while h
e’
s on tour? No. He fucking hates it. But he does it because tha
t’
s what the people want. And, you know, for all the money and stuff.

Fortunately, the people who perform the Rocky show on a regular basis know that atrophy can set in after constant and mindless repetition. And their solution to this malady is: Mix things up every once in a while.

Now, what
I’
m about to describe did
n’
t happen that often. We generally did the show exactly the way it was meant to be performed and worked every night to nail the characters as perfectly as we could.

But every once in a great while (say every three months or so) Russ would announce at a cast meeting that we were going to have a Very Special Rocky Horror Show. This meant that, for one night and one night only, the rules went out the window.

These Event Nights were as diverse as they were rare. And they came in all shapes and sizes. In the time that I spent as a Rocky cast member, we enjoyed the following Event Nights:

SWITCH NIGHT

Pretty simple: All the boys played the girl
s’
parts and vicey-versey. We had a female Frank and a male Janet so...something for everyone. The female Rocky wore an ace bandage wrapped around her...attributes. And the male Magenta strutted around in a man-sized maid outfit, which was always a crowd-pleaser.

This was the most popular and most common of our Event Nights because it was fairly simple to do, involved the same blocking as our regular show and needed very little rehearsal to pull off.

Besides, seeing Andrea play Frank was enough to ensure that I would die a happy man. As if that were
n’
t enough, I got to see Kenny play Magenta too, so...le
t’
s just say that switch nights never failed to be an enjoyable alternative to the regular routine.

PUNK NIGHT

Le
t’
s call this one a failed, but worthy, experiment.

Punk was all the rage in those days (and had been for a few years), so we decided to give it a go. All the characters in the Rocky show would become punked out and Mohawked, complete with torn shirts and safety pinned jeans. What could go wrong, right?

Well, for one thing, it just made everyone
angry
. Brad and Janet were pissed off, Frank was pissed off. Even Rocky, that mindless goop, was all in a lather.

And two hours of nothing more than seething, hacked-off Rocky actors is no way to run a railroad. We tried it. It sucked. We moved on.

Kinda like early
'
80s punk, come to think of it...

BLUES BROTHERS NIGHT

Okay, this one was pretty high concept: Instead of doing the regular Rocky show and performing the characters on the stage exactly as they appear on the screen, Russ concocted a plan to have us play our roles as if each of us was one of the various characters from the Belushi/Aykroyd comedy classic, “The Blues Brothers.”

This show, lemme tell ya, was the definition of bizarre. Russ and Kenny played Jake and Elwood Blues who, in turn, played Riff Raff and Magenta. With me so far? Ron and Tracey played Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Aretha Franklin as they might have conceivably portrayed the characters of Brad and Janet. I played Dr. Scott as the Henry Gibson Nazi leader from the film (the German connection making this a natural choice). Boyd played Sister Mary Stigmata (if you remember, the nun who ran the orphanage) as she would theoretically appear as Frank-N-Furter. And it just went on from there.

It was, to say the least, extremely strange. But a hell of a lot of fun.

I truly hate to think that anyone came to see the Rocky show for the first time that night, because if they did, they likely never returned. It was crazier than paintball for the blind.

And yet, somehow...it worked. Well,
worked
is probably a little strong, but it was pretty hilarious to watch. I mean, instead of doing Elbow Sex, Jake and Elwood would face each other and sing “Stand By Your Man” accompanied by the appropriate Blues Brothers choreography. Completely whacked-out, but we practically wet our pants.

SHE NIGHT

If yo
u’
re
not
someone who grew up in South Florida during this time period, yo
u’
re probably thinking this referred to an all-girl Rocky show. Nuh-uh.

Instead, it refers to the Home of Rock, WSHE radio, 103.5 on your FM dial.

The tag line: “SH
E’
s only Rock and Roll.”

There were other rock stations in South Florida (Y100 was probably the alternate choice if SHE was playing something you did
n’
t like), but for true rock fans, there was only one station worth listening to in the entire region.

We knew the SHE DJs as well as if w
e’
d gone to school with them: Joe St. Peter, Skip Herman, Nancy G., Neil Mirsky, Drew Mellow and, in the mornings, the one and only Sonny Fox. From the time we woke up until we dropped off at night, in Broward and Dade counties anyway, WSHE was about the only thing pouring out of teenager-controlled radios.

And then, one day...a miracle happened.

Russ, our cast manager extraordinaire, got in contact with a buddy who knew a friend who was acquainted with a guy down at the radio station and between them all, they came up with a plan:

The Ultravision would host “SHE Night” at the Rocky show.

One night only.

Be there.

This idea could not have come at a better time. Russ had been looking a little nervous at the cast meetings about a month or so before this plan was hatched. One night, when he had downed a few beers and his defenses were low, he finally let spill that the attendance was starting to fall off, making the management of the Ultravision a trifle concerned about the sho
w’
s future prospects. As warm-up guy, I had noticed that we were
n’
t packing them in as we had, but I never gave it a thought.

Frankly, I was a little shocked at both his candor and his anxiety. Russ usually kept things pretty close to the vest.

“The management. The
y’
re worried,” he said, looking plenty worried himself. “Who can blame them? I mean, i
t’
s not that the crowds have been
bad
. W
e’
re getting twice the attendance of the Twin. But it ai
n’
t cheap cleaning up the theater after our crowd has been in there. Rice, toast, cards, all that shit. I
t’
s a pain in the ass. To justify it, the crowds have got to be big and
stay
big.”

“They are
n’
t thinking of shutting us down, are they?” I sincerely hoped he could
n’
t hear the panic in my voice.

“Nah,” Russ said, clearly lying. “W
e’
re fine. We could just...you know. Use a little bump. Tha
t’
s all.”

After that, he clammed up and tried to appear cheerful. But I knew.

When he finally announced the Big Event, I was fully aware that this experiment was more than just a one-off, “le
t’
s break up the monotony” night. This show could mean the difference between shutting it all down and staying alive.

SHE Night at Rocky was to be promoted on the air for the entire week before the show, courtesy of the full lineup of DJs on staff. As a bonus, the station agreed that, for this event, two of their on-air personalities would show up at the theater and personally judge the pre-show Time Warp contest that Russ had on tap for the night.

This was huge. South Florid
a’
s premiere rock station promising to spread the word all week long about our little Rocky show and actually
pay
DJs to drop by and become a part of the proceedings.

It was a marketing bonanza. A publicity miracle.

And it was
free
.

As the big week approached, news of even more perks started trickling in:

Following the Time Warp contest, record albums would be given away as prizes to the winners, courtesy of the station. WSHE swag (bumper stickers, T-shirts, beer cozies, anything the station had on hand) would be distributed to the crowd as promotional giveaways. Every day, the news got better and better. It got to the point where I would
n’
t have been surprised if they announced free blow jobs for the first twenty customers. It was
that
good.

We put our heads together and, for this one night, decided to do a totally new pre-show warm-up. We would turn the microphones over to the DJs, of course, to welcome the crowd and supervise the contest. But then, before running the previews, we would give the folks a one-of-a-kind show.

Kenny, Andrea, Sunday, Boyd and the rest of the Transylvanians would get up on stage after the DJs had turned things over to us. They would then cue the projection booth to flood the theater with
audio only
and perform a live version of “The Time Warp” and “Sweet Transvestite,” using pirated audio from the California production of the Rocky show at the Roxy Theatre.

One. Night. Only.

With all of this in place, we were praying (some of us more than others) for a fairly decent crowd.

We had no earthly idea what we were getting ourselves into.

Russ gathered the troops early that week and laid it all out for us. First, as I would
n’
t be doing my regular pre-show in deference to the SHE DJs, I would join the rest of the Transylvanians in trying to handle crowd control. In other words, we were supposed to keep the adoring fans back and off the stage while the DJs did their work. Who knew what kind of fruitcakes would show up?

Then, after the contest and right before the previews, the music would kick in and we would do our musical numbers, as agreed. Kenny, Sunday and Andrea had prepared their own choreography for their number. For his, Boyd decided to just go with the flow and wing it. Tom, up in the lighting booth, was tasked with following the performers with his spotlight, even though the theater would still be fully lit. This was to be a brand-new Rocky experience. W
e’
d have to see if it would be a bomb or a hit.

Following our new opening, everything would go back to normal. W
e’
d switch on the previews, roll the Curry videos, segue into the Rocky flick and do our regular show. That was it. Russ made sure that everyone was up to speed and knew their various assignments. We were as ready as we could possibly be.

As promised, the radio station promoted the show heavily every day leading up to that weekend. I think the announcers were selling some line of bullshit about it being the fifth anniversary of the first live Rocky show or something, but we knew better. This piece of fiction was concocted purely to promote the event itself (and probably originated with Russ). But we really did
n’
t care one way or the other. Just get asses in seats, that was our only concern.

Every Rocky cast member spent the week with the radio faithfully tuned to WSHE, and it was both thrilling and bizarre to hear the various DJs talking up the show on the air.

“
This Saturday night at midnight at the Ultravision Theatre in Deerfield, your hosts, WSHE radio personalities Nancy G. and Joe St. Peter, will be live and in-person at
‘
The Rocky Horror Picture Sho
w’
! Get your tickets now for this soon-to-be sold-out show this Saturday night only. Prizes will be distributed to the winners of the Time Warp dance contest, so pull on your fishnets and come on down and do the Time Warp again!
”

It was as if they were promoting a rock concert, they gave it so much air time. We could
n’
t believe how much they were pushing this event.

Russ, by all appearances, had performed a Rocky promotional miracle. Whether it would pay off remained to be seen.