"Rocky Rocks!

You will get wet, you will dance
and you will have fun...

It's part rock concert, part parody, part theater,
and, dare I say, part art." *

A modest design budget was the catalyst for overall approach artistically to this production of Rocky Horror. What could have been seen as a challenge was an asset that successfully drove this production.

Given pieces of stock scenery, theater maintenance scaffolding, a trunk, and Chinese take-out menus you've got a show. Rocky’s all-encompassing environment design was to present the show as if it were being staged “out of trunk” in a theater long ago destined for demolition. And it worked wonderfully.

Another goal was that since Rocky Horror is participation theater, the audience was to witness everything on and off stage. Open, towering, vibrant red scaffolding inhabited the stage leaving nearly all aspects of the production exposed; actor entrances, exits, and the backstage cross-over were fully visible. The onstage band itself was also visible to the audience, positioned under one of the tall scaffold towers.

Framing the stage was a custom-made-for-this Rocky Horror; a proscenium compiled of refuse. The stage framing garbage painted in metallic gold; a nod to the fanciful, gilt gold prosceniums of grand movie palaces long since demolished. Shoes, plates, juice cartons, DVDs, abandoned and broken household items and even clothing, all painted gold, framed the stage, creating a dramatic, textured encasement for the on-stage action. On occasion props, used in the production, were taken from the proscenium when needed.

And the Chinese take-out menus? Shredded. The tapered remains pasted to paper plates on curtain rods was implemented as hair for shadow puppets. Of which these Lo-Mien muppets became one of the production’s many highlights as they engaged in silhouetted behavior far beyond what can be viewed on the Spice channel.

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