A trashy success, 'Horror' show seeks a new venue

A crowd of 4,000 customers stands ready to assemble and bring its before-and-after business to any venue ready to have them.

But there's a catch. This crowd makes a mess.

They're fans of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," a participatory event at which attendees dance the time warp, fling rolls of toilet paper, toss buckets of bird seed and shield their heads with newspapers while squirt guns spew.

The Artown event drew 1,500 fans its first year in 1998, but when 3,000 turned out to trample the grass at Wingfield Park, "Rocky Horror" was deemed too big for the venue. The show found a new home at the former Hilton Amphitheater, but the amphitheater now is being demolished by construction at Grand Sierra Resort.

That leaves the event in search of a new home.

Cleanup at the Hilton required mechanized sweepers and filled a 20-yard trash bin, says Steve Trounday, senior vice president of marketing.

The hotel provided a projection screen and projector, staging and lighting, and bought rights to project the DVD. "We turned the building red (with lights) and projected the Rocky Horror logo on the side of the building, he recalls.

Hosting the show cost $10,000, inclusive of cleanup and housing the cast of up to 15 performers, says Tim Jones, associate director of the school of arts at University of Nevada, Reno and chair of the Nevada Arts Council.

On the upside, it brings in business.

"It attracts a lot of people; goofy but also regular people," says Trounday. "Hundreds and hundreds of people came in before the show to eat dinner at the Hilton."

The 32-year-old show, says Natasha Bourlin, Artown marketing manager, comes complete with the Bay Area Bawdy Caste to perform its live antics before a screen.

"You should see the costumes," she says. "All these lingerie-clad gentlemen. And French maids with big hair."

"This is the first time an event outgrew any venue we could find," says Jones, who is grateful the Hilton for two years hosted the largest authentic performance of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in the country. The Reno show combines three components: the movie, actors performing in front of the film and audience participation.

"It's an almost cult-like following," says Bourlin. "We get calls in August from people wanting to book their summer trip here for the following year's July performance. It's consistently the most attended event of Artown."

The venue must be able to support the overall experience for a midnight turnout that's continually growing. That means technical set up, plus space to time warp, tiers of portable toilets, crowd security personnel and, of course, a plan to deal with mountains of soggy trash.

Despite all those French maid costumes, after all, maid service is not included.