Sweet Translucent Dreams
Few cult films are as well-known as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975’s musical science-fiction horror-comedy about an innocent young couple caught up in the creepy carnival of Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mansion. Watch a screening in the Lehigh Valley and you might see Sweet Translucent Dreams (STD), a shadow cast of characters in front of the film bringing the show into 3D.
Now in its 15th year, STD was co-founded by Kyle Defina mostly because a local shadow cast didn’t yet exist. Something about the zany, campy film has conjured traditions like throwing rice, toast and toilet paper at certain cues, yelling out jibes in between lines (which have evolved to play on current events) and dressing up like the characters. A professional pantomime fits right in to the party atmosphere, and includes well-timed improv interludes.
“No two shows are the same,” Defina says. “There’s a little bit of everything in the entertainment game. It encompasses all your senses.” It’s easy to get involved since STD sells all the necessary throwables in a handy $1 pack.
Drawing more than 50 cast members from New York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and, of course, Pennsylvania, the shadow cast has sold out shows in independent theaters, such as the Berwick alongside the Susquehanna and the Sherman in Stroudsburg (where their show drummed up business for what was then a newly revived enterprise), and appears regularly at the Emmaus Theatre and SteelStacks’s Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema.
“We like making people laugh,” Defina says, but there’s another inspiration to keep bringing fun-loving followers to screenings. Small independent one- and two-screen theaters raise a lot of money on these shows. “Doing something unique to bring in people and allowing something like that to survive, that’s as important as the movie.”
