On an October night near the airport, a group of actors assemble for rehearsals while a plane idles in the distance.
They are preparing to stage a production of the “Rocky Horror Show” at the Doc hangar.
Written by Richard O’Brien and first staged in 1973, the rock musical went on to become the cult classic 1975 film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Annika Wooton and her husband, Jesse Burke, along with Brian McNulty are producers on this new local production. Wooton said the show is a whole different experience on the stage.
“Any version of live theater brings a totally different energy,” she said. “And our show specifically has an incredible local cast. The full team is local here to Wichita, so it's just really a labor of love to continue a multi-decades-long tradition in the Halloween era.”
The cast includes Steve Hitchcock as Frank-N-Furter, Sisilia Shaffer as Janet Weiss, Lyle Valentine as Brad Majors, Monte Wheeler as the Narrator, Zoë Reitz as Riff Raff, Briley Meek as Magenta and Justin Noel Hall as Rocky. The show will be directed by Ryan Schafer.
Some of the castmates, like Briley Meek, treat it like visiting an old friend.
“I think she's unpredictable,” Meek said of her character Magenta. “She's capricious, and she has a lot of moxie.”
Other cast members, like Lyle Valentine, try to add complexity to their characters.
“I want to bring a little more fun to him,” Valentine said of Brad, “that way, when he has his turn in the second half of the show, it's a little more meaningful and has more depth to it.”
Like many Wichitans, Wooton and Burke attended the show for many years at the Crown Uptown Theater. They decided to produce this show to keep an annual tradition alive.
“We loved that as our Halloween tradition, as we courted each other and ended up getting married, and so we really wanted to bring that back," Wooton said. "Jesse realized that nobody had the rights this year, so [he] decided to take it on. It's an incredibly romantic gesture that he decided to stage an entire musical to continue our Halloween tradition.”
This year’s production will be flying high in a whole new space. McNulty, who has staged a number of ballets at the Doc hangar, decided to team up with Wooton and Burke to bring the show to the home of Wichita’s Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Doc.
“We're really pushing it to its limits as far as creatively transforming this space,” Wooton said. “We don't want it to feel like this is 'Rocky Horror' in an airplane hangar. We want it to feel like you happen to be in a hangar, but you're still transformed and transported to Transylvania.”
The hanger, in a way, is a monument to an icon of the 40s and 50s. To some, it might feel fitting that a rock musical spoofing B-movies of that era is being staged there.
Costume designer Abby Strutt said the crew works hard to make use of the space.
“It does add an extra element to it, having to make sure it pops, because the plane itself that lives here is as monumental as it is,” Strutt said, “and so doing a show this vibrant, you have to give it an extra energy just to make it pop in the space as well.”
Live productions of "The Rocky Horror Show" mean a lot to people in Wichita’s theater community. Wooton said more than 90 people auditioned for the Doc production. For many, it’s an opportunity to continue a yearly tradition.
Wooton said she doesn’t take putting on a production like this lightly.
“I do feel an incredible responsibility to carry the torch for our community,” she said, “[for] both Wichita and the theater community, as well as the legacy of ‘Rocky Horror,’ and also, [it] goes without saying, the legacy of Tim Curry.”
Hair and makeup designer Dex O’Neal said the show is more important now than ever.
“I feel like the current political climate has been kind of moving backwards recently,” O’Neal said, “especially when it comes to gay liberation and queer joy, and a show like this is so very important to put on annually, even when it's not through … a professional theater. So the fact that we've got this group of very passionate, very creative people still able to put this on for the community, so they can still come and show up and get dressed and you know have a good time. It's very special.”
