I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. We are talking THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW with special guest Greg Bell! Rocky Horror was originally a U.K. stage show that fused what was going on in the glam rock scene with old science fiction b-movies. The show was written by Richard O’Brien and was enough of a stage success that it was then adapted into what’s probably the most successful cult movie of all time - midnight showings have been running somewhere every weekend since the late 70s and there’s a robust fan culture around the whole thing. "Shadowcasts" dress up like the characters and act out the movie in front of the screen while the audience shouts out what’s become an evolving dialogue with the film in the form of callbacks. There are props and dancing and and people running around in their underwear and dirty jokes and it's a whole lot of fun.

Greg discusses his long tenure in the fan culture, what has changed about the experience over the years, and where he sees things going as Rocky prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary as a film. Naturally, it wouldn't be an episode about Rocky Horror without several shout-outs to our mutual friend Arthur Levesque,too. So get your squirt guns and your toast and your cell phone flashlights (lighters aren't allowed anymore) as we head over to the Frankenstein place. It's just a jump to the left.

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We're joined by Cash the Composer to talk about their new immersive/interactive musical Fantasmagoriana! What’s Fantasmagoriana about? In the summer of 1816, at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron, his personal physician John Polidori, his friend Percy Shelley, Shelley's fiancée Mary Godwin, their infant son William, and Godwin's stepsister Claire Clairmont, gather together on holiday. After a drunken night of exchanging ghost stories, Lord Byron challenges his contemporaries to write their own. And indeed, throughout a flurry of love and betrayal, sleepless nights and near death experiences, duels and an unending storm, every person in attendance walks away with their own ghost. Some, a great story, the likes of the Vampyre and Frankenstein. Others, the untimely deaths of their loved ones, or the specter of their own end.

We discuss the show, the inspirations behind it, accessibility issues in immersive theater, Sondheim and - naturally - whether or not Mary Shelley would have liked Rocky Horror.

You can get tickets to Fantasmagoriana at Cash's website: https://cashcomposer.dudaone.com/fantasmagoriana

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Doctor Who first aired on November 23, 1963, making its debut on BBC One. Initially conceived as a children’s show with educational elements, it quickly evolved into a groundbreaking science fiction series that captivated audiences of all ages. The story revolves around the Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, who travels through time and space in the TARDIS, a time machine that looks like a British police box on the outside but is much larger on the inside.

Over the years, the Doctor has been portrayed by a variety of actors, thanks to the unique ability of Time Lords to regenerate into new forms. This concept has allowed the show to reinvent itself while maintaining a core sense of continuity. The series was originally canceled in 1989 but it never really went away - there were books and a tv movie in the 1990s and then the show returned in 2005. It had always had a cult following in the US but the new series really seemed to strike a chord in the fandom. I liked the show as a kid and think the 2005 revival is a lot of fun, too, and I was excited to talk to two of the biggest Doctor Who enthusiasts I know for this episode, writer and musician Andre Salles and the Mayor of Chickentwon herself, Felicity Kusinitz from The Flopcast!

You can find Andre's music at andresalles.bandcamp.com

You can find Andre's music blog at tm3am.com

Felicity is affiliated with great podcast The Flopcast!

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