Evan and Chrsitie Miga, DRIP dance groups art directors, hosted a Haunted MardiGras party at their home. When I arrived there was no mistaking the house which had a huge WELCOME sign above the entry lit with a black light. Dry ice mist was billowing out of the entry and I had to duck in behind a blanket to get to the front door. Visibility was zero but through the mist I could just make out some disembodied masks floating in space. The front door had some satanic symbol painted on it with day glow paint. When I entered the home Strobe lights blinded me once again and I wandered narrow corridors framed loosely with black drip clothes. At times the passage was so narrow that I thought I had made a mistake entering and I considered going back out. At the next turn however I found myself in the kitchen where a small group was assembled. A 6 foot high voodoo doll greeted me and then I recognized Christie as a voodoo priestess.
I was dressed as “Jack the Dripper” better known ad Jackson Pollock. My wife arrived later as Zorro and her friend from Miami was dressed as a cat lady. The party eventually moved outside to the back yard where there was a graveyard with a storage shed that resembled a church. A zombie movie was being projected on the back wall of the house and it was hard to ignore. Periodically a zombie would bite open someones throat or feast on their intestines. This movie used buckets of blood. Then the karaoke began and the highlight for me was when Evan the voodoo doll began making up his own lyrics to songs, looking pitiful and lost in his voodoo doll costume. It was a surreal and unexpected moment.
Much later in the evening the DRIP dancers began to arrive and for a short time I stood behind the singers at the karaoke machine offering my off key renditions of the songs being sung. Theater folks sure know how to party! My wife and her friend left early and I followed soon after, but I knew this party had many more hours in it.
