Lost Flamingo Company celebrates its 13th anniversary as 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' turns 40.
The stars have aligned for Kelly Bergenstein.
Not only is this year the 13th anniversary of the student theater group Lost Flamingo Company’s annual production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it’s also the 40th anniversary of the cult classic musical and satirical science-fiction film.
“If there’s any year you need to see Rocky, it’s LFC’s 13th year,” Bergenstein, the director of the show and a junior studying sociology pre-law, said. “I do think that this is one of the best quality productions of Rocky we’ll have in awhile. Every year, I think it gets better but something about this particular cast and this mix of people. It’s just good chemistry.”
Ian George, who is playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter for the second year in a row, said it’s the love among the cast members that he enjoys most about doing the show.
“Everyone in their own unique way has gotten me to just find out new things about myself and I love how supportive everyone is here,” George, a senior studying middle childhood education math and science, said. “We’re a bunch of weird people, but it’s a good weird.”
New this year, LFC is organizing a “safety patrol” of at least two to three people, Bergenstein said, to keep an eye out for excessive drinking or assault.
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Also new this year is the venue for Rocky Horror Picture Show. Previously, the Union Bar and Grill housed the production all 12 years but did not reopen in time this year after it had burned in the West Union Street fire in November 2014. This year, the show will be performed at Jackie O’s Pub and Brewery, 22 W. Union St.
Though Bergenstein said she is grateful for the space, there have been communication problems. Up until the day before the show opened, LFC believed Jackie O’s was placing a cap of 25 on the number of underage attendees allowed in the venue each night. However, Luar Romero, a general manager of Jackie O’s, said that is not the case.
The 25 cap on underage attendees is “normal” for any show at Jackie O’s, Romero said, but Jackie O’s is giving Rocky Horror an “exception.”
“We have two of the main bartenders that used to work at The Union working for us, so they were used to that crowd," Romero said. "What they explained to me that it is a more behaved crowd. (The crowd wants) to come to the bar to see the show and not for underage assumption so that’s why we’re saying OK.”
Romero added that the bar wants to try to help LFC because the staff knows that the show draws a large underage crowd.
“We want to balance it," he said. "We don’t want to fill the whole bar with underage and not people that are drinking because the business we are is a bar and that’s how we’re going to make money is selling alcohol."
Jackie O’s staff will man the door and keep a head count, and Romero said he would ideally like to have the audience be 60 percent of age and 40 percent underage, though no specific cap has been set.
The cap had been a major point of concern for the cast.
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Tess Plona, who is playing Janet for the second year in a row, said it went against the show’s policy of being “inclusive of everyone,” meaning not only sexual identity but also age.
Despite the miscommunication, Bergenstein and the cast are excited to see “organic” and “authentic” audience that only occurs at Rocky Horror shows.
“There’ll be chills. There’ll be thrills, shocks and horror, and you might come out a new person,” George said. “You should let go of any pre-notion of what you thought before, if you have any, and just immerse yourself in the experience. … Scar (from The Lion King) said it best: ‘Be prepared.’ ”
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