Toast, rice, and Tim Curry
The smell of toast fills the air of the museum today. With 400 slices of bread being toasted, this will last for hours, if not the whole day.
Yes, it is that day - the one day each year that we have volunteers come in to prepare toast to be thrown about with reckless abandon during the screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (on October 30th this year). When they are done with the toast, they will pack bags of rice - lots of rice - 80 lbs of it to be exact!
I often wonder what Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, and the rest of the cast think when they look at what the Rocky Horror Picture Show has become?! Is t his beyond their wildest dreams at the time of filming or did they suspect it would turn into a cultural phenomenon? I mean, when else in Lethbridge can you see men in corsets and heels walking around proudly, winning awards for looking "the best"?!
If you haven't experienced this before, don't be shy - you do not need to dress up and you don't have to know when to throw the rice, or toast, or many other things that are in the prop bags we provide - we give you a handout, we have many "sluts" (the popular word for RHPS fanatics) who will know when to do things and you can follow their lead, plus we have the prompter on the screen that tells you to throw toast, don your party hat, squirt everyone with water, etc.
It's an exciting night at the museum each year - definitely my favourite, EVEN when having to clean up afterwards. Every year I just leave work laughing and smiling for days, because the songs are stuck in my head, the audience's excitement and interactions bring the movie to life in ways that watching it at home cannot (and I doubt you'd throw toast in your home, knowing you'd have to pick it up - here, you can leave and not worry about the mess left behind!).
I just have to say a HUGE thank you to all those volunteers who help me with doing such odd tasks as toasting bread, filling bags with rice and confetti, and more (espeically those who stay to clean up)! I could not do it without them, and the audience appreciates their work. It may not seem like it when we pick it all up at the end of the night but their laughter tells a different story! I feel very fortunate to be the Coordinator of Volunteers at an organization that has the BEST volunteers!
See you October 30th at the Galt!