Josh Rivera Puts on Rocky’s Singlet

“The foundation I gave myself during the rehearsal process,” says Josh Rivera, “is, Okay, I’m technically a baby, my dad is also my husband, I don’t know who any of these people are, I’m really horny all the time, and it’s really stressful.”

Eight times a week, the actor is born again as the titular himbo in The Rocky Horror Show, the proudly trashy sci-fi musical currently in performance at Studio 54. It’s a campy departure for Rivera, who made his professional debut a little under a decade ago, fresh out of college, in the first touring cast of Hamilton and has since played Chino in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake and the lead of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez. Near the end of its first act, after a straight-laced straight couple is taken in by a coven of gender-bending aliens, their mad scientist leader, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, played by Luke Evans, brings down the lever and unveils his horniest creation yet: the singlet-wearing, oiled-up Rocky. “I don’t think I’ve ever shook my ass in a circle the way that I do in this show,” Rivera quips. “I’m finding out a lot about how my body moves.”

That scene, the centerpiece in a parade full of them, was also the 31-year-old’s entry to the production, having performed it for director Sam Pinkleton at his audition last November. After his first go, Pinkleton reminded him that the number was not just a character introduction, but a full birth. So Rivera “got behind the curtain and screamed as loud as I could, came out, and spat.” Very well. Pinkleton’s next test: “Experiment with gender fluidity—you’re just finding your body, you don’t know if you’re masculine or feminine, and you were made for sex.” Striking several poses, ogling his nipples, Rivera let loose. The thrill of that audition stayed with him, and he didn’t think about anything else until the offer finally came in: “I can’t remember the last time I wanted something so bad.”

Rocky Horror wasn’t always on Rivera’s rotation. It wasn’t until someone on the Hamilton tour suggested a company-wide shadow cast of the cult 1975 movie adaptation that his world was rose-tinted to its excesses. That idea fell through, and they wound up doing a smaller, cabaret-style viewing, but it left its mark on the actor. Three days before this revival’s Broadway opening, he remembers thinking, “This is such a ridiculous movie. But maybe two-thirds of the way through, I realized I was really moved? By the time they were doing the floor show, I was extremely touched by the sentiment of—I don’t know, a lack of rigidity? A lack of binary, in terms of what it means to be a person.”

Rivera thinks the show’s satire of fifties sci-fi movies “lowers people’s defenses so that they can take in a very specific message about gender fluidity and identity and family structures and what is considered to be the right way of living and existing completely outside of that.” Because of this, much like Frank-N-Furter, its devoted fans are fiercely protective over their left-of-center baby. Pinkleton’s staging, like the 2000 revival that preceded it, was under intense scrutiny long before its first curtain.

“Everybody has a very specific, special relationship to the show,” Rivera explains. “It’s something we addressed really early on in the room, that most people have a Rocky Horror story or some way it intrinsically connects them, or helps them connect to their own identity somehow.”

Elaborate costumes are de rigueur for some audience members, though the callouts that are staples of midnight movie screenings have become somewhat of a cultural lightning rod. In a culture proud for its bucking of convention, what are the ethics when live performers are onstage trying to keep a show pushing? “They’re rowdier than I expected them to be,” Rivera says. “Sometimes there’s callouts that only work with the timing of the movie, so they become a little bit strange, but our cast is doing a really good job at finding a way to respond to those in a way that everybody still thinks is fun and inviting.” He’s almost broken onstage a couple of times, laughing at some of their cleverness. (One that did crack him up happened after Frank-N-Furter, panicked, begged to explain himself. “This better be good,” someone yelled, “because you got shot last night!”) Rivera thinks Rachel Dratch, who narrates the proceedings, is a natural. He’ll often hang around backstage, even when not singing in the chorus or waiting for his cue, just to hear her volley their (sometimes abusive) jeers right back.

“I do wonder, when people come up to me and say they don’t know anything about the show,” Rivera muses. “Like, did you know what was happening? The energy behind, at least, the movie is that it requires the audience to lean into the bit. So I get curious about people’s experiences, especially when you have audience members yelling, ‘Asshole! Slut!’ It must be pretty jarring to be new to that and think, It’s kind of rude, but everybody seems to like it.”

Pinkleton’s production, while faithful to Rocky Horror’s ripped-fishnet drag æsthetics, is not a replica of any previous iterations. So while Peter Hinwood’s clean-shaven, Physique Pictorial Rocky was immortalized onscreen in tight, gold shorts, Rivera’s take is more grizzled: a bearded boxer in a corset, with knee-pads that probably aren’t just for the ring.

“It’s very precious and personal to a lot of people, so we have to be sensitive to that, but we’re also putting on our version of the show,” Rivera says. “It needs to have its own identity. There’s only so much we can—” he pauses. “How do you honor something that somebody’s used to, and is really important to them, but change it so that it can be a new thing?”

Broadway’s current Rocky seems to have a similar kind of relationship to the movie. Seeing the chameleonic Tim Curry as the film’s Frank-N-Furter unlocked something in Rivera, who notes the role is unlike any other the English actor has played. Still, familiarity is shifting and oh so personal. He re-watched the movie during rehearsals and discovered, “Man, it’s kind of crazy, but I think I’d rather watch our show,” Rivera says. “I’m so used to loving all of the things that everybody in our cast is doing with their characters.”

While the audition was a liberating experience, the path to Rivera’s Rocky was—well, you get the point—even though he knew Pinkleton, who won a Tony last year for his work on another ridiculous queer pastiche, Oh, Mary!, was a perfect fit. The director, he says, gives heart and intention to “even the silly throwaways” that further endear people to these types of projects. The actor felt intimidated by his castmates—a who’s who including Evans, Juliette Lewis, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez—all of whom he says came in “with a really, really specific vision for their character.” He was still trying to play around, unsure of how his own would fit into the broader picture.

Ani Taj, their choreographer, was a big help to Rivera, in ways both intentional and happily accidental: “She is very much a choreographer: when she can’t find a word, she’ll move it.” What better way to articulate an ineloquent newborn? One of Rivera’s particularly racy moves—a high point of the production, honestly—during the song “Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me,” where Rocky is seduced by one half of the story’s turned-out couple, came from a practical impulse. Seeing Stephanie Hsu’s Janet pine so ferociously for him, while he discovers his sexual identity free from his creator, the actor winds up in a lip-biting frog pose: “I’m running around a lot, so at least I get a good stretch in.”

The Rocky Horror Show is now playing at Studio 54, New York. Be the first to read this story and many more in print by preordering your copy of our eleventh issue here.