BELLOWS FALLS-Having started its zany, twisted life locally in Brattleboro in April, The Ones from the Vaults, a Vermont-style Rocky Horror Picture Show, is now rebooting at the Bellows Falls Opera House.
Directed and managed by Stephanie Abrams of Kinetic Theory Theatre, a company of 12 will offer this monthly event - complete with shadow cast and all its quirky culture - at least until the end of the year.
Abrams said in a recent interview with The Commons that the move to Bellows Falls was prompted by issues beyond their control which had an impact on some cast members and audience members alike.
Last month, the first show in Bellows Falls drew approximately 50 fans, but Abrams is expecting more at the Oct. 26 show - a Halloween special - for which they've already surpassed 50 in pre-sales.
Halloween, she holds, is "Rocky Horror season."
"If people only watch it once a year, they would generally do so at Halloween," she says. "We're trying to draw the crowd by offering a whole experience, as well."
The show itself, Abrams explains, is always immersive, "but this Halloween special offers more.
"At nine o'clock, the doors open, and there will be interactive game booths set up so you can go around and play different games and win little prizes," she says.
There'll be a photo booth with a Halloween-themed backdrop and live music by Nate Olson and other cast members to open the evening's special 50-minute circus cabaret with contortion, juggling, bottle walking, comedy, and crankie puppet theater.
Another musical interlude will follow before "our traditional start of Rocky Horror where we do the Virgin Games and then we go straight into the film which runs a whole other hour and a half: we'll get done around 12:30 or 1 a.m."
Abrams has also put together a vaudeville show to tour to various sites. The Halloween show, she explains, combines that vaudeville experience with that of the Rocky Horror.
The Halloween-themed event includes a costume contest with "some pretty good prizes," Abrams adds and reports that the company now has a collaboration with Ciao Popolo, a restaurant across from the Opera House, where the guests that night "will be like VIPs at the show."
A global cultural phenomenon
Rocky Horror mania first swept the country nearly 50 years ago, and it endures. A 1975 independent musical comedy horror film based on a 1973 stage musical production, The Rocky Horror Picture Show morphs, yet extols, the science fiction and horror B movies of the 1930s through the early 1960s.
The story centers on a couple whose car breaks down in the rain near a castle where they hope to find help.
The castle is occupied by people celebrating in elaborate costumes. The two discover the head of the house is Dr. Frank N. Furter, an apparently mad scientist, who creates a living muscle man named Rocky. Frank seduces the young, engaged couple and we finally see his true colors: He's an alien transvestite from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania (a description in the film that uses the gender terminology of the 1970s).
The film never made it in prime time but soared as a late-night cult favorite, spawning a full ritual of audience participation, interaction with characters on the screen, wild costuming, and shadow casting, where costumed audience members act in sync with the film - all for which devotees repeatedly returned to theaters.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been doing rounds ubiquitously, it seems, for five decades and endures as a global cultural phenomenon. Finding connection and community in the bizarre antics, fans of differing backgrounds, ages, and identities are said to find welcoming, safe haven at such events, as Abrams predicts they will in Bellows Falls.
A unique spin
The Ones from the Vaults, she says, puts a unique spin on the Rocky Horror experience.
Director/producer/cabaret emcee Abrams, a mime and circus performer with decades of creating and performing experience who moved to Brattleboro a year and a half ago, will be joined by Olson and other Brattleboro-area circus performers: Francesca Bonfiglio, Aubrey Clinedinst, Camille Echeverri, Elliot McGary-Walters, Edie Pryll, Kimm Rohberson, Creigh Sillars, Shay Yara, Esther Van de Lagemaat, and John Folmer. Patrick Branstetter and Sean Rohberon assist.
"We have a lot of fun no matter what: That is really just our goal," Abrams says. "I want people to know to just come and have a good time - do not take this too seriously."
In other words: "OK, put on a costume. We don't care what it is," she says. "It doesn't have to be Rocky Horror. And just come and have fun. That's really what this is about."
For more information about the Oct. 26, Nov, 2, and Dec. 7 Rocky Horror events with The Ones from the Vaults - for ages 16 and older - at Bellows Falls Opera House, and to purchase tickets in advance, visit bellowsfallsoperahouse.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.