On the stage, the graverobber narrates the story. Various characters interact with him and each other, expressing inner dialogues and explaining the story line via costuming and musical diatribe. The screen to the left plays the original movie while the actors and actresses act it out. The audience members scream, clap and take turns throwing out quips in response to the movie.
What movie is this you ask? None other than the cult class, Repo! The Genetic Opera!
Repo! is set in the year 2056, 26 years after an epidemic of organ failures devastated the planet. Out of the tragedy, the biotech company GeneCo, run by Rotti Largo, emerged to provide organ transplants to the needy populace on a financial plan, making it affordable to anyone who needed one. Through his efforts, Rotti also got approval to create the Repo Men, assassins dispatched to deal with customers who default on their payments and made his company become a megacorporation, having influence from politics to fashion. Surgery becomes and obsession and fashion statement and many are hooked on the pain-killing drug Zydrate and the underground version extracted from corpses and peddled on the streets by graverobbers.
It’s become cult classic, a hit with the macabre, with artists and costume-makers, social misfits and nerds alike who come together to form and watch shadow casts.
But what is a shadow cast, exactly?
It’s a group of, usually, amateur actors and actresses that act out a movie in front of the screen showing the film. The cast generally wears pretty good homemade costumes that mirror what the original characters in the film are wearing. This form of entertainment is commonly used for showings of another cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Last night, The Ritz in Ybor City was packed with Repo! Fans dressed in an array of outfits, from Repo! Costumes to lingerie, to watch Tampa’s “Unworthy Heirs” cast perform one of their favorite movies.
The shows co-creators were invited out for the inaugural showing in 2009 of Repo! by the Unworthy Heirs cast and Terrance Zdunich wrote up this sweet blog post about it.
If you’re interested, the Tampa Bay is has a few options to satiate your shadow cast appetite:
- Cheap Little Punks– the live cast for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, CLP plays every weekend at the Tampa Pitcher Show on N. Dale Mabry.
- Unworthy Heirs-the sister cast to the Cheap Little Punks that performs Repo! Check out the Facebook page for events!
- Interchangeable Parts– For those of you in St. Pete, the Rocky Horror Picture Show is played at the St. Pete Beach Theater every Saturday. This is also where I lost my Repo! shadow cast virginity.
Know of any other shadow cast performances in the Tampa Bay? Let us know in the comments below!
More pics!
After the performance, the audience was invited back to meet the cast and tip back a few more zydrate shots at the after party.
Samantha and I dressed up like the zydrate-dealing Graverobber and his zydrate-addicted client, Amber Sweet. Speaking of zydrate….
Sam and I found our respective characters from the cast and posed with them!