An Extension of Family in a New Culture

by Rachel Sather (United States of America)

Making a local connection Sweden

My fiance and I are Rocky Horror people. We've been performing in Rocky shadowcasts for years, and have a huge passion for both performing and watching performances. We saw photos from a very strange looking production of The Rocky Horror Show, and were immediately intrigued. We really wanted to see it, but it was in Sweden. So we went to Sweden. The show was being performed in Linkoping, a small college town about two hours south of Stockholm. It was a huge culture shock. Due to having no phone data, we had to navigate from our bus station to the hotel without internet, in a language we didn't speak. On the way to the hotel, I stopped in to get a haircut at a salon. The woman there spoke no English, and I didn't speak Swedish. But we got the job done. When it was time to go to the show, I got a message from the Swedish Rocky Horror team on Instagram. They said to wait for them in the lobby of the theatre once we got there. So we went, in full cosplay, to the theatre, about half an hour before the show. They were there, waiting for us with bags of goodies. They upgraded our seats for free, and invited us to go backstage after the show! After the show was over, we made our way backstage. The whole cast was waiting for us, and were just as excited to meet us as we were to meet them. They were starstruck by us, saying that we did the "real thing". I gained some great long distance friends through this experience. It goes to show that EVERYONE in the Rocky community is family, whether they're a little shadowcast group in New England, or a big production in Sweden. And while I didn't know the language they were speaking onstage, I knew the story, and I knew the unifying power of this piece. Rocky is family, no matter where you go.