Queerios!

When did you first see Rocky Horror?
In the Fall of 1991 during my freshman year at Texas A&M University, the science fiction club ("Cepheid Variable") put on a couple of showings outdoors at the Grove. There was no performing cast of any kind, just a whole bunch of drunk Aggies with Super Soakers, toilet paper, and other props (no rice though... birdseed instead). There were a few people that knew some call lines. It was pandemonium and I went again the very next night... as well as two more times during AggieCon in the spring semester.

When did you join the cast?
In 1993 I saw Rocky Horror with a performing cast at the (now demolished) Central Park Fox theatre in San Antonio. I went regularly but kept to myself for the most part. It was several months before anyone on the cast even knew my name. At some point, someone stuck a flashlight in my hand and asked me to do lighting. Next thing I knew, someone else was saying "Hey you look like Riff Raff" and dragging me onstage to perform. I didn't really join the cast... I was just assimilated. After about a year the San Antonio cast disintegrated completely. Just before this happened though, the Austin cast at Northcross made a road trip to San Antonio to perform at our anniversary show. I visited a few of their shows and was soon joining the Austin cast instead, making the hour and a half drive up from San Antonio every weekend. My first performance in Austin as Riff Raff was on December 2nd, 1994.

What do you do on cast?
I performed primarily as Riff Raff for a full decade. I've been Cast Director and done Special Shows. Since we moved to the Alamo Drafthouse Village, I haven't really performed though. I primarily do photography, and am happy just being in the audience watching now. I'm easy to spot since I'm always in the front row or two taking pictures throughout the show. I also maintain the cast web site, so the vast majority of photos you see here are mine (and conversely, I'm in hardly any of the photos). Towards the end of 2005, I grew sick and tired of all the untrustworthy people we'd elected Treasurer who had lost or just plain stolen our cast funds. I've been elected Treasurer each term since then, and will continue to run as long as I'm able to actually keep the cast funds safe.

Who's sexier, Columbia or Magenta?
Magenta! DUH! It's a well known fact that for most guys who play Riff Raff, a woman wearing a Magenta costume immediately becomes twice as beautiful.

How has Rocky Horror affected your life?
I first moved to Austin because I'd been commuting from San Antonio to Austin Rocky Horror for two and a half years, and had decided that Austin was the city for me. I met both my wife and my ex-wife at Rocky. I lost my virginity to a girl I met at Rocky in San Antonio. Essentially all of my friends are from Rocky. When I first started going to Rocky, I was a shell of a person who could barely interact with people at all. Rocky made me self-confident and assured in social situations. A significant number of vacations I've taken have involved attending Rocky Horror conventions and other functions. I learned to program Java by working on a web site for the Rocky Horror newsgroup - a skill that got me my current job. Rocky Horror has permeated all facets of my life for well over a decade.

Do you have a love/love or a love/hate relationship with Rocky?
It's all about the love.

What do you think of Shock Treatment?
It has significantly better music than Rocky Horror. I didn't care much for it at first, but it grew on me a lot over time. It was way ahead of its time regarding the blurring of boundaries between real life and television.

What do you do when you're not at Rocky?
I do programming for a poker company, primarily working with the Java-based client software but also with PHP/MySQL for the web sites. Apart from that, I spend most of my spare time on my many obsessions...

Besides Rocky, what are your obsessions?
There are so many, I have to choose a couple at a time to concentrate on. My web sites (both AustinRocky.org and RockyMusic.org currently) are constant works in progress. I enjoy digging up new Rocky Horror cast albums, cover songs, and other such for my collection. Photography is certainly a passion, and I've been very lucky to have money I could spend on pursuing it. I've been enthralled by online gaming for years at a time, in Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and Lord of the Rings Online. I greatly enjoy the game of Go (a.k.a. Baduk or Weiqi) and study it often. Maintaining an adequate level of physical activity is often a problem for me, but I do enjoy Hiking, Yoga, and Martial Arts.

What are a few of your favorite things?
Raini, computers, Diet Coke, beef, bread, my house, minivans, cats, reptiles, Corgis, drag queens, Tolkien, Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Dan Simmons, Flash Gordon, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

What's your favorite kind of pie?
Chocolate.

More photo galleries of Shawn McHorse may be found at AllTheCloseFamily.com.