Those giant red lips were up on the screen, and below them was a room full of people who had come out on Halloween to be part of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Hats, wigs, faces turned toward the movie. I’m Harry Hayman, and somewhere between that screen and the live performers at City Winery Philadelphia, my mind went back to a Playbill my parents brought home when I was a kid. I put it on my wall at home. I couldn’t have explained everything that fascinated me about it then. I just knew I loved something wonderfully strange. On Halloween night, with the film playing and the shadow cast performing, I was thinking about Tim Curry again. I hadn’t written anything when we lost him in August. Apparently I still had something to say.

Halloween at City Winery Philadelphia

The night was Saturday, October 31, 2026. City Winery’s listing for the Halloween performance names the live shadow cast as Transylvanian Nipple Productions and places the show on its Philadelphia Main Stage. The listing also makes clear that this Halloween gathering was a celebration of Curry’s life and the character he gave us. That matters to me. My own thoughts about him had company before I even wrote them down.

In one photograph, a gold curtain hangs behind a red framed stage prop while performers act beside the film. In another, the audience is on its feet. The screen and the people in front of it give you two versions of the same scene to watch, and my eye keeps moving between them. Somebody in this room is doing the work now, with the movie there beside them.

A shadow cast performs along with the film. That simple description leaves room for a great deal of effort. The official Rocky Horror fan site’s participation pages include instructions for starting a cast, costuming, audience etiquette and learning the Time Warp. I like seeing all that practical knowledge sitting together. Somebody has to learn the steps, make the clothes and work out how to share a room. On Halloween, I got to enjoy the result.

Back to the TLA in the Eighties

I started seeing Rocky Horror at the TLA in the 1980s. Anyone else still alive remember that? I try to go at least once a year, and Halloween was this year’s occasion. I don’t have a precise date for my first screening to give you. I do remember that the music, the outrageousness and Curry himself were reason enough to keep coming back.

The TLA is the Theatre of Living Arts on South Street. The venue’s recorded history describes its earlier life as a repertory cinema and says Rocky Horror arrived there in 1976, followed by weekly screenings with audiences dressing as characters and returning. My own eighties memories belong to that cinema chapter of the building’s life.

There’s something funny about going back to a movie for years. You know what is coming, and you still want to be there when it happens. The familiarity makes space to notice the other people. Looking at my Halloween photographs now, I see the crowd almost as much as the screen. That is where my old TLA habit and this night meet. I keep buying another ticket because I want another evening inside it.

The Playbill on My Wall

My parents came home from Broadway with a Rocky Horror Playbill. I was a kid, fascinated by something I didn’t quite understand. The program ended up on my wall at home, where something meant to accompany one evening at the theatre became something I kept looking at.

The Broadway record gives that memory some context. The Internet Broadway Database’s original production entry places The Rocky Horror Show at the Belasco Theatre in 1975, opening on March 10, with Tim Curry as Frank ‘N’ Furter. Richard O’Brien wrote the book, music and lyrics. That is the Broadway production in the archive. At home, what mattered to me was the program itself: something from an evening my parents had experienced, now within reach of a kid trying to figure it out.

The names need a little care. The stage musical is The Rocky Horror Show; the movie is The Rocky Horror Picture Show. MPR News’s account of Curry’s career follows him from the London stage production to Broadway and the 1975 film. That is the route behind the program, the movie and the performer I came to admire.

A parent brings a theatre program home, a kid sticks it on a wall, and years later that kid is still turning up for the movie. I doubt anybody could have planned that. It’s one reason I pay attention to the things people bring home from an evening out. You don’t get to decide in advance what somebody else will keep.

Tim Curry, and the Permission I Felt

Curry died in late August 2026, at 80, and NPR’s remembrance ran on August 26. His passing hit me harder than I expected. In a strange way, that man helped shape who I became, even though he had no idea I existed.

Then came Curry as Frank. Fishnets and heels. That face. The extraordinary confidence of the performance. The film’s credits and history identify Curry in that role in the 1975 movie, but a credit can’t tell you what an individual viewer will take from it. What I took was permission to be curious, irreverent and a little less worried about fitting neatly into a box.

I don’t mean that a character supplies a complete set of instructions for living. I’m talking about the effect a performance had on me. Here was someone being so thoroughly himself in the role that my own weirdness felt a little easier to carry. That’s a personal debt, and Halloween brought it back into focus.

The line I keep coming back to is “Don’t dream it, be it,” from the show’s floor sequence. I’ve pretty much made it my motto. The dreaming part comes easily enough; the doing still asks something of me. Showing up for a night like this is one small way of answering.

Dinner With the Movie Still in View

The hospitality part of my brain was there too. In one photograph, a green bottle of sparkling water, a water glass and an amber drink with a long citrus peel fill the foreground. The stage and screen are still visible behind the table. Another frame has a wine glass with City Winery printed on it. Later there’s a dessert plate beside a menu clearly headed City Winery Philadelphia.

City Winery’s concert dining page describes food and drinks served to the table before and during the show. My photographs show that arrangement in use. I can look past the glassware toward the performance, then turn back to the plate without leaving the evening behind.

I have spent enough of my life in hospitality to notice those ordinary details. The table is part of the night. So is the bar, with its barrel fronts and taps under the big City Winery lettering. The photographs move between performance, audience, food and drink because that is how I experienced the place. All of those things were in the same room with Rocky Horror, and I wanted to remember them.

Harry Hayman, Still Trying

I wrote that I always wanted to be the best me, and that I’m still trying. I stand by the parenthesis. There’s plenty of trying left.

In the photograph with the audience standing, a broad straw hat rises above the crowd. There are wigs near the stage, a green football jersey among the tables, costumes and ordinary clothes side by side. I can’t tell you what brought every person there. I can tell you what drew me: the music, the madness, Curry, and the pleasure of being around a performance that helped me feel comfortable with difference.

Transylvanian Nipple Productions had living people on that stage doing their version of the work. I want to thank them for that, along with the people who made the evening at City Winery happen. My old Playbill memory got another place to go on Halloween.

And I still want to hear from anybody who remembers those TLA screenings in the eighties. If you want company the next time you go, call me. I’ll try to make it my annual visit.

Rocky Horror on Halloween in Philadelphia, Remembering Tim Curry