Updated: Oct. 27, 2025, at 12:22 a.m.

A student theater organization has been filling the stage with leather, lingerie and lace every Halloween weekend since 1994.

GW student theater group Forbidden Planet Productions puts on “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a musical inspired by the movie and known for themes of sexual freedom and self-expression, the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of every Halloween weekend. Fifty years after the release of the cult-classic movie and 30 productions after the first show at GW, the group continues to welcome audiences to a show filled with onlooker participation and traditions. 

Former and current cast and crew members said the show remains one of their most formative college experiences and brings together a collective of students from across the University to join together in countless hours of rehearsals and performances.

Jennifer Rellis, FPP’s founder, who graduated from GW in December 1996, said she and a few other students started FPP in 1994 just to put on a production of Rocky. She said the group wanted a space to express themselves and be involved in theater without the “trappings” of the theater major itself.

She said when the group decided to go forward with the production for the first time in 1994, FPP put up signs across campus and took out ads in The Hatchet, encouraging people to audition and come see the show. 

“I really enjoyed the non-conforming message of the movie, the fun of it, the excitement of kind of an entertainment of shouting lines back at the screen, making up new lines,” Rellis said. 

Rellis said she held multiple roles throughout the years of putting on Rocky Horror at GW, including Magenta and Janet and later on becoming the show’s director. 

“We didn’t kind of have ownership over ‘I’m always this role’ but kind of what people have different opportunities to play different things, but we’ve probably all started out with the role that either spoke to us the most because of who the character was, or ‘I physically resemble this person,’” Rellis said.

She said the group got “scrappy” with costumes and props for the first production, going to local thrift stores and lingerie stores in Dupont Circle and putting out advertisements in local businesses for donations and financial support.

Rellis said she is “tremendously proud” of FPP for continuing the legacy of putting on Rocky Horror at GW for 30 years. She said having a space for people to be themselves without being judged is needed more than ever today. 

“The ideas in Rocky were really before their time,” Rellis said. “Seeing different performances of sexuality and gender, seeing different expressions of it and knowing that it’s okay to not be heteronormative, I think that’s a message that really resonates with young people as they’re figuring out who they are and who they want to love.”

Paige Garvin, co-director of publicity for FPP, said even though the show officially started in 1994, this year mark’s the production’s 30th anniversary because the group took a year off during the COVID-19 pandemic.

First-year Maxwell Roberson, who plays Frank-N-Furter in this year’s production, said he originally auditioned for Brad Majors, the wholesome hero who winds up at Frank’s castle with his fiancee Janet, but he said the FPP directors envisioned him as Frank.  

“I actually, really played it up, the straight guy sort of,” Roberson said. “I pretended to not know what the show was about, not know what a drag queen was. I said I didn’t even know what ‘Glee’ was, and they got really offended at that. But they saw something I didn’t, and so I’m doing Frank now.”

Roberson said Rocky Horror is a cultural piece of art and a healing experience for many queer people and having the opportunity to play Frank in the anniversary show is an honor for him. He said the cast has made his experience enjoyable, especially with melting his fear when practicing “uncomfortable” intimacy scenes.

“The cast is so wonderful to work with because we do a lot of very uncomfortable things,” Roberson said. “I owe a lot of it to them, they’re just so chill and relaxed and understanding and easy to work with.”

Sophomore Harper Hazlitt said she was asked to direct this year’s production of Rocky Horror after playing Riff Raff her freshman year. She said she decided to audition for Rocky Horror after hearing about it at a FPP general body meeting, immediately reminded of the Rocky Horror Picture Show episode of “Glee.”

She said during her freshman year show she said she remembered being “shocked” when a fellow cast member told her she would be “virtually naked” on stage, but FPP made the experience comfortable, reminding members that creative costuming choices are up to them. 

“Rocky’s what you make it,” Hazlitt said. “If you want to go out there in little nipple covers and underwear, that’s all you, but we have plenty of options for people who might not be as comfortable, especially as a freshman going into that show was a lot, but I definitely enjoyed it.”

She said now in her role as a director of the show, she has found the experience both “exciting and scary,” especially with the added attention of the 30th anniversary celebrations. Hazlitt said she wants to make Rocky Horror cast members from the past 30 years proud, representing the long history of the show before her.

“I think Rocky is so provocative in nature, and so I definitely think that as long as people are having fun and being safe and feeling welcomed, I think that’s what Rocky should be,” Hazlitt said.

Rox Neems, who graduated from GW in 2007, said she joined FPP “pretty much immediately” her freshman year and was in Rocky’s ensemble. During her sophomore year, she said she played Columbia and was the artistic director her junior year. Neems said although she wasn’t in the show her senior year, she continued to hang around the production.

“I couldn’t stay away because it was the lifeblood of everything,” Neems said. “It was so fun.”

She said after her first Rocky Horror experience, she continued to promote the show as an experience for newcomers to try out theater or simply be a part of an organization.

“It’s just a great way to be yourself and be expressive and meet people who are also willing to just kind of be ‘out there’ a little bit,” she said.

Neems said while helping out with a production, she played the audience in rehearsals, who typically shout lines to the cast, being as “obnoxious as possible,” and yelling profanities from the audience. She said she also recalled dying her hair red while playing Columbia, which she said looked “so awful” on her dark brown hair. 

“I didn’t care,” Neems said. I just thought it was so funny. It’s just an opportunity to try something that you would not do in any other context, I guess, is the moral of the story.”

She said the recognition of the longevity of the show running each year is a “testament” to the students who have been involved with the production and how it has been given respect.

“I’m really impressed by all that, and I’m just glad that it’s still giving people the opportunity to express themselves and to have this kind of unique experience because there’s so much that’s part of the experience that, it’s just really is unique, there’s just things that you can do, say and act that are just like, that just don’t really translate easily to anything else,” Neems said.

First-year Justin Tomljanovich said after seeing the show for the first time at his friend’s production at George Mason University, he was hooked. 

Tomljanovich, who plays Brad, said he studied the movie to understand his part, noticing small details like Brad’s reactions to other characters speaking or how he interacts with his fiancee. Tomljanovich said rehearsals have ended with some late nights, but he was able to get a community he was looking for, meeting students he would not come across in his classes.

“I only know so many people, and it’s also just such a different space,” Tomljanovich said. “I feel like you really get to know people.”

This article was updated to correct the following:

Forbidden Planet Productions was founded in 1994 when the first production of Rocky Horror took place. The organization put on its 30th staging this year because they paused productions during the COVID-19 pandemic.