its rabid following can get together and participate in the film. When I say participate, I mean participate. Over the years Rocky Horror aficionados have created an elaborate system of give and take. Actors stand up at the front of the theatre, below the screen, and act out the movie as it plays above them, often prompting the audience to yell out certain phrases or chants, based on events in the movie.

Shawn Mrowiec and Pat Delford had been attending these freak fests and invited me along. There were a lot of people wandering into the theatre, wearing pancake make-up and dressed in little more than underwear. That turned me off more than anything, but once the movie started it seemed as though it were a frenzied free for all, and the energy was contagious.

We began frequenting the Rocky Horror venues on a regular basis, and got to know the casts who acted out the movie, in miniature, below the screen. Eventually, the Rocky Horror director of the Neptune Theatre lost a couple of his cast members and gave me a call. Of course, I couldn’t resist a piece of the spotlight; especially when I could exhibit my most obnoxious traits and tendencies and be lauded for them. I persuaded Shawn Mrowiec to fill in the other missing spot in the cast.

At first I practiced along with a bootleg video. As was my habit when something interested me, I made it my obsession. I watched the film over and over again, so that I knew all my lines and most everyone else’s by heart. I got to the point where I could act out the entire movie without evening looking up to the screen for a reference point. I would cue off lines, sounds, and movements. When there was a gap in between these reference points, I would know exactly how many seconds it was before I said my next line or made my next stage movement. To keep track I would tap my finger in succession, the appropriate number of times.

I played the part of Riff Raff, the decrepit old butler with a hump. I would wear a lot of white grease paint with dark makeup around the eyes. Later on in the movie, I would switch from my standard butler suit, to a skimpy space outfit, which basically consisted of underwear and a sort of pull over yellow suit with black wings sprouting from it- not to mention the pantyhose. It was a small price to pay for the rowdy brand of utter obnoxiousness in which I was able to indulge.

For Shawn and I, our favorite part of the Rocky Horror experience was the pre-show warm-up. This is the part of the show in which we got to yell loud obscenities at the audience as they entered the theatre. We’d find out who hadn’t seen the show before and ridicule them, call them, "virgins." Then we’d auction them off, or have a ‘Wheel of Virgin’ give away; whatever we came up with at the time. We’d have spontaneous skits, and improvise in front of the audience- or just ridicule them. I was quite good at the latter.

Shawn and I traveled to Renton to see a showing of Rocky Horror and we ran into Robert Anderson, who had been involved in a previous, and ultra-popular,cast at the Neptune. Everyone had just loved this group, but eventually they had a falling out and broke up.

Robert had also played Riff Raff and so this gave us something more in common than the average Rocky Horror viewer. However, every time that I saw him, he made some back handed comment about how everybody considered the cast he had been involved with, the ‘ultimate cast’ and how his production had been superior to our current Neptune Theatre run. It was as though he expected everyone to fall down and worship at his feet every time he made an appearance at Rocky Horror.

Though he had done a decent job playing Riff Raff, my own humble opinion was that I blew him off the stage. I couldn’t say much though, because his cast truly was revered by the Rocky Horror aficionados in the area as being the supreme ensemble. As Shawn and I were enduring Robert’s presence in the lobby, a group of the Renton cast members came through the theatre door and spotted us.