saki After Hours Halloween Carnival
Hosted by: Bob Dey’s Tank Engine Man
Saturday October 29, 2011 8 pm
The concept for our October saki After Hours performance is appropriately Halloween themed. The night will see the audience arriving to find an array of booths forming the midway of a Halloween Carnival that will feature various forms of entertainment and games. The outline of the night has already been designed, however there is still a great deal of room for development and creativity. Our hope now is to find artists and musicians who want to help design, develop, build, and run the booths, and other activities, and be a part of making this into and extraordinary Halloween.
Below is a list of the roles which need to be filled. Take a look and see if there is anything you’d like to work on or take charge of.
It is likely that each booth will need a small team to complete. You can request to either be a leader (which would suggest that you have a team in mind) or you can ask to work on someone else’s team.
Each team will be responsible for building their own booth and utilizing their own resources. saki and Bob Dey's Tank Engine Man will provide support and guidance, but they will be busy with their own aspects of the show. It is important that each person/team take ownership and responsibility for their part. That means a fair amount of work, but it also means total creative freedom in a public forum. If we all pull together, we can make an exceptionally entertaining night!
When you contact us, please give us:
Your name and contact information
Your desired project
Your desired role (leader, part of a team, etc.)
Questions you may have regarding your project or the night in general
Roles: Who We Need
Booths
We have already decided upon the booth concepts, and we have even started the development each booth. However, the details are up to you. We have simply given you a starting point, these ideas need more development. You may ollow our guidelines or start from scratch. You may even suggest your own idea in place of another, though all new booth ideas must be approved by saki before implementation.
Oddity Shop / Freak Show
You will have a booth in which to show off some strange wares of your choosing. Make them up, find real things…etc. Each item should have an intriguing description to arouse the imagination.
You will also be responsible for the freaks. On 3 occasions throughout the night, you will lead a different freak on a sort of march though the store. Your shop will contain dramatized advertisements for the freaks.
Photobooth -or- Mirror of Truth
There is a choice between two ideas for this one, as the first of the two seems like it may be difficult to pull off.
Photobooth: Either this is an actual booth in which the patron sits and has their picture taken automatically, or a curtained off area in which they have their portrait taken by a photographer. In either case, something will frighten the patron just as the picture is being taken (someone will jump out, something will fall on them, etc.) We discussed the possibilities of using smart phones so that the picture can be sent immediately and directly to the patron, but, of course, the means to this end is completely up to you.
-or-
Mirror of Truth: This is much simpler, but could also be very interesting. It is simply a mirror which an individual patron steps in front of to find someone else's face staring back at them (mimicking everything the patron is doing). Something like "See what you soul looks like…"
Confessional Booth
This is an actual sit-in booth that is designed to look like a real confessional booth. It should seem that the patron is going in to confess their sins, but when they get in there, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned…" they find that they are the priest hearing confessions to terrible crimes.
Fortune Teller / Medium
This will be a curtained off corner of the room (it should feel rather like it's own room) with a small table and crystal ball (we have a crystal ball). Our idea was that the medium pretends to be mechanical, but this is not required.
Depending on how many people are in the tent at any given time, the medium would either be telling fortunes or holding a short seance. We ask that you write a few scripts for both scenarios, or in some other way try to keep each session down to 3 minutes.
Hypnosis Box
A walk in box that bombards the viewer with images, sounds, lights, and anything else which can "induce hypnotism." This is really an opportunity for making something very bizarre and surreal.
Gruesome Nickelodeon
A small enclave of some sort in which people must peer through curtains or into a box (or something similar) to see a television screen which is looping a series of faux-disgusting images. Nothing real or graphic, it should just seem graphic. Normal things shot in a way that makes them unrecognizable and a little disgusting looking. Think: food coloring on a pile of mango slices.
We had thought that pulling apart a small curtain and peering into a hole in a tree would be a neat way of doing it.
Zombie Conductor
A man dressed as a zombie gets his own corner of the room. He is standing in front of a toy train set, conducting them around the track intoning "Traaaaiiinss." He does this the whole night, eventually conducting the bands as they play.
More
It's not over yet! Here are a few more things we need.
Haunted Hallway
In the back area of the building, we would like to build a "haunted hallway" (because of it's scale, this will be the only thing that requires an admission fee (though it should be mentioned that each booth can sell art or leave out a tip/donations jar)). Because of the specific layout of the space, the hallway has already been designed. We just need someone to be in charge of making sure it is built and runs smoothly. (Once again, there is plenty of room for more development.)
This is a very ambitious part of the night, but may end up being the best part. Whoever takes this on would be doing a great thing. Contact us for more details on the design.
You will most likely need a 7 person team.
Campfire
Just outside the exit from the haunted hallway, patrons will find themselves at a late night campfire around which stories of ghosts and the paranormal will be told. This requires a fake campfire (created with up-lighting), someone to tell scripted ghost stories, and someone to encourage others to tell of strange events they have either witnessed or been told of.
Game Room
On the way to the haunted hallway, there will be a special game room with a few (3 at the most?) carnival games. They should be themed according to the night and can either be borrowed from actual games or made up; just as long as they are fun.
Set Designer
Someone to be in charge of / keep track of the overall aesthetics of the night: Lighting, layout, stage design, mood, atmosphere, etc.
A few things we had in mind:
-Christmas lights strung across the ceiling (like a fair)
-ghost books and other relevant literature
-short ghost stories typed out and laid around on single sheets of paper...
-dark room, just a little lighting for each booth, then a very bright, sharp spotlight hanging from the center of the room, pointing down.
-Aside from the booths, there will be tables for the audience to sit, enjoy a drink, and engage in other theme related activities.
Cocktail Waiters / Food Preparation
Though drinks are BYOB, we will have costumed-cocktail waitresses passing out creepy hors d’ouerves. We will need 1 or 2 people for this.
Also, anyone interested in providing some creative snacks is welcome to bring them by.
Project Manager
We will need someone who can help us keep all of this organized. We are putting in a great deal of legwork on this project and we need someone who can keep track of progress, keep everyone in communication, and relay needs back and forth between saki and artists.
Sound
Someone to run the sound for the band. What a nice thing to do.
Videographer
It would be a shame to do such an exciting thing without properly documenting it.
Promotional Team
Someone to help spread the word. Organize a campaign and drum up some buzz, if you would.
Budget
We understand that this will cost you money and time, yet there is no promise of compensation. We would like to have it understood that we are in the same boat. As with all the saki After Hours performances, Bob Dey’s Tank Engine Man is running this show independently from saki and is not receiving any compensation for their efforts. This is all being done on their own time, saki is merely providing the space. However, if we can pull this off, we will have accomplished something far more valuable than any kind of compensation or recouping would provide.
The idea of this project is to use creativity and collaboration to build something real, elaborate, and complex that, when all put together, outshines anything with a big budget. Use your wits. Get creative in your search for resources. We don’t need money to make great things.
Deadlines
Finally, we get to the deadlines. We have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time in which to do it so we have to be strict. Below are the important dates to remember. Reminders will be sent; use this as a reference.
-weekly email check-in (every Friday)
October 1: Artists respond with a role request
October 10: All roles and duties are confirmed -and- meeting at saki with everyone who will be involved
October 22: final check-in (last chance for changes, requests for help, etc.)
October 26: all projects are finished and dropped off at saki
October 28: preliminary set up for Haunted Hallway, lighting, stage, etc. (no booths yet)
October 29 (be at saki by 6:30 pm): final set up and show night
