The cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one that Shannon Lowrie admits she didn’t understand when her studio first started performing it.
“I thought, ‘I want to see what the deal is about this because I don’t get it,’” Lowrie told the Sun. “I just became obsessed with it.”
A lifelong singer and dancer, Lowrie has been the owner of and director at The Studio of Performing Arts (SOPA) in Grover Beach for 25 years. Making a “complete flip” from teaching jazz, tap, and drama to kids at the studio, Lowrie has taken on Rocky Horror for the past 15 years as both an actor and director.
Travel to Transylvania
The Studio of Performing Arts’ production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show runs on Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 at 10 p.m. and Oct. 24 and Oct. 31 at midnight. Audience members 18 years and older can watch the show at The Studio Black Box Theater, located at 835 W. Grand Ave. in Grover Beach. Buy tickets online at my805tix.com. For information about dance and drama classes at The Studio of Performing Arts, visit thestudioofperformingarts.com.
“This is our adult time,” Lowrie said.
There typically aren’t any auditions for SOPA’s production of Rocky Horror. The first year, Lowrie remembered rounding up some friends to assemble the cast. The method has stuck, with many of the same actors returning year after year to rehearse the show in just a couple of months.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is coming back to The Studio Black Box Theater in Grover Beach on Oct. 24, 25, and 31 and Nov. 1. The story follows naive fiancées, Brad and Janet, who get a flat tire in a storm and end up at Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mysterious mansion for a night of wild adventures.
“A lot of those people that were in the very first production are in the production again, still today,” Lowrie said about SOPA’s show. “It’s super fast now, too.”
Returning actors and new recruits sign up for the roles they want and rehearse once or twice a week, she said. Many of the veteran Rocky Horror actors are playing new characters this year, which throws Lowrie off as the director, but even she’s played a handful of characters over the years.
“It’s really fun to get up and see what happens and just to be wild and be silly and allow ourselves to not be so serious,” Lowrie said. “It’s special that way.”
While performing usually comes naturally to the director, the one character that dragged her out of her comfort zone was mad scientist and transvestite Frank-N-Furter when, one year, nobody signed up for the role. The experience was memorable because she was proud of how she just went for it.
“I don’t even know if it was good,” she said. “It forced me to really study and work and do something different.”
Now Lowrie is playing the criminologist, who’s like the narrator, she described. It gives her the opportunity to focus on directing the rest of the crew.
Lowrie directs a shadow cast, meaning the movie plays on a screen behind the actors who lip sync and follow the movements of the original film’s cast. She’s never heard of another movie that elicits this type of performance—it’s just part of the Rocky Horror phenomenon.
Following traditions, SOPA has two midnight shows to get the audience feeling “more open.”
“It just creates a different atmosphere, a different attitude from everybody when they show up at midnight to walk in the door,” Lowrie said.
The cast has a similar experience. The director encourages the actors to take naps during the day—like she does—so they are rested for their 10:30 p.m. call time. She thinks the pre-show shenanigans are just as exciting as the performance.
“We turn on the loud music and just wake ourselves up and start dancing and laughing,” Lowrie said. “We’re trying to lower our inhibitions and pump each other up.”
The studio also follows other Rocky Horror customs, like a raunchy ceremony before the performance for first-time viewers and audience callbacks when certain characters appear onstage.
It all helps the audience get “revved up and ready” when the actors take the stage at The Studio Black Box Theater, which Lowrie bought a little more than a year ago.
The 50-seat theater is so intimate that it feels like the audience is part of the show.
“Their feet meet our feet,” Lowrie described. “For the actors, you can see the audience smiling, and you feel their energy. It’s just a really cool experience.”
For Lowrie, the theater is her family’s legacy. Simon, her husband, helps build sets, and Lowrie’s three kids grew up performing. This year her son, nephew, and husband are in Rocky Horror. She said even her friends in the show feel like family.
Lowrie joked that the show will continue at the theater until the actors get too old to wear corsets and fishnets.
“I’m super proud that we’re still doing this,” she said, “and that we are so loyal to the tradition of it.”
Send your favorite Rocky Horror lines to Staff Writer Madison White at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 23 – Oct 30, 2025.