When drag performer Celadon Wood takes the stage in Moscow, Idaho, as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, she makes sure every little move is dripping with the same grandiosity that Tim Curry brought to the screen years ago. Curry played Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 film.
There’s the arched eyebrows, the smug grin, the little lip curl. Even out of costume, there’s no mistaking who plays Frank. Wood, who’s now 40, says that’s because she’s been watching “Rocky Horror” since she was a teenager.
“I just thought it was so fun,” Wood said. “Like, I'm a weirdo, and these are weirdos, in the best possible sense. I often will go around being like, ‘Oh, you're my kind of weirdo.’ That’s what I mean. I felt like I had a place.”
A place to belong
Sarah Baker, who plays Columbia in the Moscow production, said joining the cast helped her find friendship and self-assurance in her body.
“The lack of any type of judgment from anybody, even the audience (helped),” she said. “Going out there the first time in your floor show outfit in nothing but a corset and underwear and everyone is just loving it, eating it up — it really builds that confidence.”
Aquasha DeLusty, another drag performer, has been directing Moscow’s show for 10 years. She remembers seeing “Rocky Horror” for the first time in high school.
“I think I was a freshman,” she said. “It was a group of the seniors that (were) like, ‘You need to see this show.’ And I'm just like, ‘What the hell is this?’ It made no sense to me. But at the same time, it was so fun and wonderful.”
This year, DeLusty plays Janet. But in previous years, returning audience members might have seen her in the high-heeled shoes of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
DeLusty said actors like Curry played their roles unapologetically — and that’s a huge part of "Rocky Horror’s" appeal. Curry died in August.
“Representation with him was just — everybody's story deserved to be told,” she said.
“Rocky Horror” has drawn a wide-ranging audience for generations. For Baker, it was a comfort show she watched with her family growing up. She said to this day, there isn’t any one type of audience member.
“ We've seen a lot of people who you normally wouldn't associate,” Baker said. “A lot of like frat members coming in, a lot of sororities. And it's really nice. And they come and they have a great time and they're always respectful.”
When she was 16, Wood first joined the Moscow shadowcast and played Riff Raff. She grew up, left, came back to Moscow and rejoined the cast a few years ago.
Now that she’s been cast in her “dream role” of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Wood hopes to bring the same magic to this year’s audience that she experienced decades earlier.
“Everyone who sees this for the first time and feels seen, every queer person, everybody that's kinda weird — I wanna do them justice,” she said.
Not everyone sees what she does in "Rocky Horror," Wood said. She remembers being told at 16 that a girl couldn’t play a male character. This year, she was told the same thing when she talked about playing Frank.
But the show’s gender bending was always kind of the point, Wood said.
“ That was one of my absolute favorite things,” she said. “Anybody can be anybody. Anybody can be anything that they want to be.”
Passing down the history
This year’s production of “Rocky Horror” in Moscow has one of the largest casts in the past decade, DeLusty said. Actors range in age from 18 to 45 years old.
“When it comes to queer culture,” she said, “this is actually a really good example of the older generation teaching the next generation so that history isn't lost.”
There’s plenty of learning to be had for audience members, too. Live “Rocky Horror” shows rely on audience participation.
“It's more of a movie for experience,” DeLusty said. “Like, the entertainment is the experience itself.”
That experience includes prop bags with items the audience is encouraged to throw, snap, and wave. It also includes the option — encouragement, even — to shout questions, dirty jokes and irreverent quips that line up with character dialogue. There are dozens of audience callbacks, passed down from one generation to the next, and added upon each year.
One modern addition includes asking Riff Raff his favorite Adele song when he opens the door to Brad and Janet.
Still, cast members say new audience members shouldn’t be intimidated by the ritual-steeped showings.
Andrea Falk plays the criminologist and leads audience callbacks. But she had never seen "Rocky Horror" until she auditioned in 2016.
“It’s OK if you don't know the call-outs,” she said. “It's OK if you don't know the characters.”
The thing that brings people back each year, Falk said, is the experience they get to share with others.
“They're here because they love the movie,” she said. “Because they love the feeling of being with other people who also love it.”
Moscow’s cast will perform at 8 p.m. and midnight this Friday and Saturday at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow.
Read the audio transcript here.