Actors embrace act of hurling insults
Stratford cast of iconic Rocky Horror Show prep for infamous and rude ‘call-outs’
As a swing — a musical theatre performer who fills in if a member of the ensemble can’t go onstage — Henry Firmston was used to the idea of sitting quietly off to the side observing during rehearsals. And then came “The Rocky Horror Show.”
Not only was Firmston not keeping quiet; he was yelling some very rude things at the other actors.
“The fact I was able to scream profanities at people, it was ridiculous and amazing,” he says.
It was all part of what you might call the Stratford Festival’s Rocky Horror boot camp: preparing the cast for the experience of audience members shouting out during their performances.
“The Rocky Horror Show,” which debuted in London, England, in 1973, is one of two musicals the festival is doing this year. Audience call-outs or callbacks are a tradition believed to have begun with the 1975 movie version of Rocky Horror and then migrated to subsequent theatrical revivals.
They involve everything from pop culture to very specific local references and are often laughout-loud funny.
They can also be very sexual and profane given the play’s subject matter: its lead is a transvestite, mad scientist from outer space who creates a man for his sexual pleasure, and there is bed-hopping among the characters.
Some of the actors had previously done Rocky Horror onstage and experienced call-outs, including Robert Markus, who plays Riff Raff, and Erica Peck, who plays Magenta. Some had seen the movie, including Steve Ross, the Narrator, and Jennifer Rider-Shaw, who plays Janet. But they also did a huge amount of what Rider-Shaw calls “call-out research.”
For Firmston — a self-described “true, true virgin” who had only ever heard a couple of Rocky Horror songs as sung by the cast of TV’s Glee — that involved looking up call-out scripts online and watching bootleg videos of movie and theatre audiences. He was determined to find the “most ridiculous ones.”
“We all agreed we wanted to prepare the actors for the most creative, the most offensive, the most completely offside call-outs we could possibly imagine.”
“It was extremely helpful for us to hear them during rehearsals,” Rider-Shaw says, “because it gave us an opportunity to laugh at them and break character in the hall instead of being surprised by a live audience,” although she notes there is still the odd surprise call-out.
Ross says nothing could wholly prepare the cast for their first preview performance.
“It was like nothing I’ve experienced here, I don’t know if anywhere really,” he says.
“It was like a rock concert … From the first chord of the music, people went nuts. It didn’t stop for the entire preview … I walked onstage not really sure if they really knew who (my character) was at first. Before I said a word they just went nuts.”
As the Narrator, Ross is a particular focus of audience vocalization. He is also the only character allowed to talk back to the audience from time to time, something director Donna Feore says he’s very skilled at.
Rider-Shaw recalls one preview at which an inebriated audience member kept shouting callouts in the wrong places, including over actors’ lines and during songs. “It really threw me in the first scene — I dropped a few lines and missed a cue, but we got it back on track. In the end it was probably good for us to experience that.”
As Janet, Rider-Shaw gets called a “slut” performance after performance, a word that most people consider offensive, but she’s fine with it.
“The dictionary definition that pops up on Google says … a woman who has many casual sexual partners. I don’t see how that is a bad thing. In fact, it’s quite an accurate description of Janet’s behaviour in the second act of the play,” Rider-Shaw says.
She, Ross and Firmston all agree Rocky Horror is like nothing they’ve done before and that they love the audience participation.
“It’s exactly what we hope the audience will do is come and have a great time, and scream and yell at us,” Ross says.
“I think the coolest thing for me has been to watch the Rocky Horror ‘virgins’ get swept up in the show,” Rider-Shaw says. “It has been really encouraging to speak with patrons who have already been to see the show multiple times. The superfans set an example for the virgins and then the virgins return as superfans — all dressed up and ready with their call-outs.”
“The Rocky Horror Show” has its official opening Saturday at the Stratford Festival.