Story by Eric Modrovich
Photos by Carlee Hite
On Sunday, Feb. 8, the honor society fraternity Alpha Psi Omega (APO) hosted auditions for the Teen Beach Movie Shadowcast. Senior Annie Sanders, a theatre major and vice president of APO, said the Shadowcast will be held on April 17.
Senior Chandler Morris, president of APO from Louisville, said that APO is something between a group and a fraternity on the Hill.
“It’s not quite like the Greek organizations that you’ll see down frat row,” Morris said. “But it’s not quite like the honors organizations. We do theater and dance. We have fun, and we also have Greek letters.”
Junior APO member Elizabeth Grant from LaGrange, Kentucky, said that onstage actors don’t say dialogue in shadowcasting. She said the movie plays behind them while they perform on the stage.
Grant said that Teen Beach Movie draws inspiration from Romeo and Juliet as well as the 1960s musical “West Side Story”. She said Romeo and Juliet was adapted for West Side Story, which was made into Teen Beach Movie.
“It’s really cool because you get to have your actors work with movies that they’ve grown up with,” Grant said. “[They] get to put their own spin on that while still making it palatable for an audience who’s really familiar with the original material.”
Every October, Morris said that the “Rocky Picture Horror Show” is also a shadowcast. However, it is a common tradition for other theater companies to also do it.
“We’re very much encouraged to make the characters our own and make our own choices,” Morris said. “We want people to know that it’s silly and fun.”
Morris said shadowcasting involves a lot of physical acting. He said the actors recreate the movies while they’re happening.
“We’re very much encouraged to make the characters our own and make our own choices,” Morris said. “We want people to know that it’s silly and fun.”
Sanders said shadowcasting performances differ from regular plays because people act out the shadowcasting ones while a movie plays right behind everyone.
Sanders said APO has been planning this Teen Beach Movie performance since October or November of 2025. She said that they wanted to seize the opportunity to perform shadowcasting again.
Grant said that APO has a lot of history when it comes to performing the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” shadowcast before COVID-19 happened.
“Last year, it was brought back by the APO exec,” Grant said. “It’s kind of started to become a new tradition again, because it was an original tradition.”
Grant said that the current APO executive preferred to make it more family friendly and bring theater life to the community in Bowling Green.
“A shadowcast is a good way of doing that by bringing a movie that a lot of us grew up with to an audience of people,” Grant said. “[They] probably also grew up with it, and it’ll be a really cool way to experience that movie again.”
Morris said that APO wants to ensure the theatre is accessible. He said that some stage stress is limited because there is a movie playing behind them.
Sanders said that APO wanted to host the auditions last Sunday after having hosted two successful shadowcasts last fall.
“We wanted to continue our relationship with The Capitol Theater,” Sanders said. “[We wanted to] provide more performance opportunities for theatre students and APO members.”
Grant said the final performance in April will be held at The Capitol Theater in downtown Bowling Green.
“We want the community to really get inspired,” Grant said. “[The theater community] is there. It is vibrant, and it is a lot of fun. We want more people in the community to see that.”
Morris said APO’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” had a positive reception back in October, and so they planned another show.
Morris said that last Sunday, auditionees performed their own versions of dancing and also spoke monologues from the original Teen Beach Movie.
“We started off by following a dance tutorial that was originally on Disney Channel back in the day,” Morris said. “We followed a dance tutorial to one of the songs from the movie ‘Surf’s Up.’”
The auditionees, whom Morris said he let be themselves, interpreted the scenes in their own way. He said they were given props without any context to begin with.
“I just wanted to see how they interpreted it,” Morris said. “It doesn’t matter if your choices make sense. You’re having fun. You’re willing to be silly.”
Morris said he never told the auditionees any information about the audition. He said that he just told everybody it would have a dance call and monologue readings.
“They didn’t know what the dancing would be,” Morris said. “They didn’t know the monologues. They didn’t know that I’d be giving them random props and different random scenarios to act in.”
Morris said he just wanted them to audition, be prepared, and have fun.
“I really just kind of threw them off the deep end [to] see how they did,” Morris said. “They all did phenomenally.”
Morris said that the severely inclement snow and ice weather last month necessitated frequent rescheduling. He said the delay in auditions was an inconvenience, because nothing else was planned for that weekend.
“Suddenly, we had to schedule on top of everything else going on in this department,” Morris said. “But I’m so glad people still showed up, and that [they] were still interested.”