Time Warp

😁 Time Warp, dir. Allison Berg, 2026, USA, 112 min.
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 3:00 PM, Castro Theatre
🌊 West Coast premiere
(included live performances by SF’s The Bawdy Caste and by Kenny Starling)

Time Warp

Frameline blurb: For 50 years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has brought generations of outcasts together with their celebration of sexual freedom, reckless abandon, and radical counterculture. Through the now-iconic shadow cast performances, the fans have kept the legacy of the film going for decades, creating a unique underground culture that has remained as vivacious and engaged in the 2020s as it was in the 1970s.

Almost exactly half the age of the film, Kenny Starling is about to open the first-ever drag and queer theater company in the small, conservative town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, with a shadow cast performance of Rocky Horror. Surrounded by an eclectic ensemble of committed locals of different age, race, size, and identity, Starling — fully immersed in the iconic role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter — fights to bring this small pocket of America the queer joy it deserves during a time where the LGBTQ+ rights are systemically under attack. Produced by Susan Margolin and Jen Chaiken with Executive Producers John Cameron Mitchell, Billy Porter, and Josh Gad — each of them well-acquainted with the powerful connection between the stage and its audience — Time Warp proves that fighting for freedom and equality never gets old.

My take: The first time I saw Rocky Horror Picture Show, I was in 9th grade, 14 years old, which puts it in 1977–78. I fell asleep. I guess that means that, in Rocky Horror terms, I slept through losing my virginity. At that point, we had audience participation cues, but no shadow cast. Don’t worry, though: I went back, several times, in fact, and some years later saw it with a live cast.

Then, the summer after 10th grade, I went to a national conference for high school math clubs, held at a small state university in northern Alabama. I wound up sharing a room with two kids I didn’t know, who knew each other. They decided to bully me for being a nerd. Seriously. While attending a conference for math geeks, they decided to bully me for being a nerd. 🙄 However, they and a couple dozen kids decided, with absolutely no advance coordination about bringing costumes, to hold a Rocky Horror-themed party while we were there, and they asked me to watch the door. To their shock and amazement, I said, “I see you’ve met my faithful handyman. He’s just a little brought down, because, when you knocked, he thought you were the … candyman.”

So I had some idea of what the shadow cast performance might mean to a bunch of young people (plus a couple of old farts), but the context is important: Rock Springs is the fifth-largest city in Wyoming, with a population of about 23,000, with another 14,000 in the metropolitan area. It’s about a three-hour drive to your choice of Salt Lake City, Jackson Hole, or Laramie (college town), plus another hour to get to Cheyenne (state capital). Politically, the people are overwhelmingly Trumpers, although Wyoming also has a conservative tradition summed up in the motto “Live and let live.”

Time Warp goes into some of the history of Rocky Horror and especially the shadow cast performances, but focuses mainly on the group preparing to put on the show in Rock Springs. Each of the cast members, including Starling, tell us a bit about their lives and what Rocky Horror means to them. It’s an engaging watch, and a welcome reminder that even in a small town in Wyoming, there are people determined not to let queerness be erased. Highly recommended.

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