Tucked away in a small corner on the fourth floor of DePaul’s Theatre School, a cast of 13 students gather for 16 hours a week to learn the 1975 cult classic, “The Rocky Horror Show.” With a couple weeks left to prepare, the cast is nailing down their final touches before the show runs on Halloweekend. The Richard O’Brien show is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals, on behalf of Samuel French.
Kyle M. Stafford, a junior studying theatre management in the theatre school, is directing the show. This will be the first mainstage performance for Musical Theatre Players, a new student-run musical theater company housed within the Theatre School, for which Stafford is the artistic director as well as one of the founders.
When it comes to Halloween shows, Stafford says there’s only so many options. Sweeney Todd and Carrie are typical, but he wanted to go big with his own take on “Rocky Horror.”
“I told myself I should do Rocky Horror so I can remix it and make it my own,” Stafford said.
“My big thing with this show has been taking what’s there, honoring it, respecting it, but kind of throwing it out the door and into the dumpster and putting it on fire, so that I can then make my own take on it.”
Musical Theatre Players cast students inside and outside of the theatre school, welcoming any student to audition. The option was important to Stafford when casting “Rocky Horror.” He feels strongly about giving performers outside of the theatre school an opportunity to get involved. Other than Blue Demon Theatre, there aren’t many on campus opportunities for musical and acting experience.
“I think it’s really exciting when we get to bring people in,” Stafford said. “Finding and creating a company that we can use the stuff here and bring it outside to the people was a really big goal of mine.”
Not only was the show open to different colleges, but all years and experience levels. The cast ended up primarily freshmen, an outcome Elijah Islam, a junior playing Frank-N-Furter, was pleasantly surprised by. He is one of three upperclassmen in the cast and working with the beginners has become his favorite part about the musical.
“It’s really interesting coming in, one, to work with people I haven’t worked with before and two, to get to sprinkle wisdom and brain washing on all of the newcomers,” Islam said. “It’s refreshing getting to work out of the pool of people I’m used to.”
Islam knew he wanted to be Frank-N-Furter since he auditioned. He said he loves the “evil individual” to bits. Frank has been a dream role for years, projected onto him from his mom. Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, his mom saw all the original showings and was as excited about the role as he was. Islam is also on the advisory board for Musical Theatre Players and was one of the first people to find out about the project.
Matt Glosson, who plays Rocky, is one of the many freshmen in the show. Despite starting “incredibly” nervous about the show, he now thinks of it as a learning experience. He describes his Rocky as a “seven hour old walking sex hazard.”
“This is probably my most adventurous role, it’s a lot of new things with being on stage in such little clothing,” Glosson said. “It’s so many new things just flying at you at once, but I love every second of it.”
The show will run without edits or censorship from the school despite its, commonly considered “raunchy” nature and costumes. The cast also plans on doing a lot of crowd interaction and prepares to use colored wristbands to gauge the audience’s consent.
Stafford explained that viewers will have the choice between a red, yellow or green band. Red indicates that the person does not consent to crowd interaction, while green gives the go ahead for all interaction such as direct singing, physical touch or dancing.
Almost none of the cast is complaining about the crazy demands of their characters or the show, and they are all thrilled to show off what they’re working on, which they’ll no doubt have an audience for. Freshman Nina Dumbacher said it would be “a war” to get tickets. This proved to be true, as tickets sold out for the three showings in less than half an hour.
Despite being sold out, there’s a waiting list interested guests are still able to join. The show will have a first come, first serve walk up waitlist that will open 1 hour before performances begin. This will be 5 p.m. on Thursday, October 30 and Friday, October 31 as well as 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 1. Additional information can be found soon on the Musical Theatre Players instagram.
Ryan Holmes, a music education and piano major at DePaul University’s School of Music, is the music director for the show as well as a founder of Musical Theatre Players. Two years ago, Holmes, Stafford and Madison Wendel, who is cast as Janet, came up with the idea for the club. He has “fallen in love” with working on “Rocky Horror.”
“It is so funny, and ridiculous and people love it … that’s the kind of theater that I love,” Holmes said. “If we weren’t sold out, I’d tell you to line right up.”
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