Photo courtesy of Nerd Nation Magazine
Story by Stephanie Hall | Contributing Writer
“A long, long, time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, God said, ‘Let there be lips!’ And there were. And they were good.”
Middle Tennessee State University students showed up to the Student Union Ballroom in fishnets, corsets, glittery vests and dark eyeshadow for the midnight viewing of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” with the cast from Little Morals, a Nashville based “Rocky Horror” shadow cast.
It’s been almost two years since Rocky Horror has been seen at Middle Tennessee State University. However, it has finally returned, with safety regulations in place.
For most of the audience, it was their first time ever going to see “Rocky Horror Picture Show” with a cast and audience. They were marked with red crosses on their head and red balloons in their hands. Before the show started, the balloons were popped while the audience and cast cheered them on.
“I had a lot of fun. It was my first time going to see it live. I liked the guy behind us who was yelling things out” Jada Edwards said.
One important part of the show is the audience participation. Along with the Shadow Cast, the show involves audience members yelling things at the characters (like telling Janet to “Buy an umbrella you cheap bitch”) and throwing things (like toilet paper when Brad says “Great Scott”).
The conductor of the yelling was Michael Compton, a super fan of “Rocky Horror” and Little Morals. He, among others. added a lot of humor to the night. And rightly so as he has seen the show many times.
“I’m in the triple digits of (seeing it) live. I’ve seen it in New York, Cincinnati, Florida, all over the place. But this cast, I come and support mostly at The Belcourt, but this year I was able to come down here because I know they’ve been doing it for a while,” Compton said, “We go back to when they were doing the Franklin cinema in the early nineties. I usually do three to four shows in a year.”
He is glad that the shows are back after the pandemic.
“It’s just one of those things where I was 15 when I discovered this and it’s such a great with everything going on in the world today. It’s great to just be in a room with a lot of people and just say what you want to say, have fun, and not worry about anything. That’s kind of what Rocky represents,” Compton said.
He hopes that he can encourage more people to fall in love with “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“I’ve been doing this since ’86. In fact, my son who’s 20. I took him to his first show when he was like 14 and he’s now a junior at LSU and he’s going to shows doing (callbacks). So, we’re kind of expanding it to the next generation, just from the callbacks. And I’ve tried to work on the callbacks and make them as current as possible,” Compton said.
The annual MTSU “Rocky Horror Picture Show” was a rousing success among the student community and beyond.
