After missing weeks of rehearsals, having only two days at their venue and losing cast members due to housing insecurity because of Hurricane Helene, the cast of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” stepped on stage the nights of Oct. 19-20 for back-to-back sold out shows at the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country.
As the lights dimmed, cheers filled the air from the fully packed theater, which hosted over 600 attendees each night. The next two hours were filled with fan-favorite callouts and boisterous laughter as cast members lip synced their hearts out.
This is the third year that the App State Theatre Honor Society, Alpha Psi Omega, has put on Rocky Horror with a shadow cast. The event has quickly become a staple for the App State community during the Halloween season. Gathering a loyal following as a safe event, adults are encouraged to attend in costume, dressed up in their finest Rocky Horror attire. Dramatic makeup, corset tops and vintage lingerie are considered high fashion for the night.
In the face of many events being canceled or rescheduled because of Hurricane Helene, the audience, cast and crew were all eager for a taste of fun.
Alpha Psi Omega’s Vice President and director of this year’s Rocky Horror show Georgia Burgess said the production lost seven to nine rehearsals during the two week campus closure which left the cast and crew scrambling in the aftermath.
“It was very, very hard. With the two week gap, we had to come back and do the show in three days,” Burgess said.
The local Rocky Horror production is relatively small. With a budget of only a few hundred dollars and costumes being put together by the show’s costume designer, Avery Edwards, the show is dependent on student effort and creativity. Some props are donated by students who are unaffiliated with the show.
“The table we have during the dinner scenes, it’s just a table that one of the ensemble members had,” said assistant director Trent Rose. “And that’s the beauty of this I think, that it’s just thrown together.”
Compared to past years of the show, which Rose attended as a fan, Rose said the production felt as though the people involved had invested stakes into the show.
Hiedy Almonte, sophomore theatre performance major and choreographer for the show, opened up about how Hurricane Helene impacted her personally,
“I had housing insecurity for a little while and I have a lot of stuff to replace, but this is my nice distraction from all that,” Almonte said.
With many of the cast members being affected by the disaster of Hurricane Helene they expressed their gratitude and love of being able to still perform, not only as a personal escape but also to bring joy to their future audience.
“With the hurricane and all that, I didn’t know if we were gonna be able to do the show, I was just lost with myself,” said Darby Shaw, a junior theatre arts major who starred as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. “And when we found out that we were able to do the show still, I was like I am going to work 200% every single day to bring some smiles to people’s faces.”
