Fortress Party 2010 Retrospective

By this point, the Fortress Party Steering Committee (FoPSeC) was fully operational. Lots of creative and construction help meant the rooms were getting more sophisticated. 

Pompeii Prom was a delightful mash-up between ancient Roman cataclysm and a high school dance.

The balloon arch made for some classy prom pictures. Note the easel to the left. This was a signboard, where people wrote things like "Seniors RVLE!" and "II Good II be IV-gotten."  

This is the image on the signboard that rests on the easel shown  Note that the lack of apostrophe... this is the high school class of 79 AD.

Mount Vesuvius appears to be erupting right next to the high school gymnasium, but it didn't stop people from dancing. 

Well, at least for a while. 

The prison-themed area was called Up the River. It started with a photo station. Guests had to stand against a sheet that showed how tall they are and hold up a dry-erase sign saying their name and crime. We had a photo printer, and by the end of the night we had hundreds of mug shots pinned to a dry erase board. Here are a few samples.

My favorite if tiny Scarlett, stone faced as she's booked for "General Crime."

Inside the prison, there were a number of inmates, such as Fievel, hard at work making license plates. Note the sexy photo of Minnie Mouse on the wall. 

We had one Death Row inmate, who happened to have to have an uncanny resemblance to Lady Gaga. We had a strobe light attached to a giant switch, so anyone could turn on the electric chair. Morbid stuff. 

Lady Gaga's head was leftover from Festifools, an annual Ann Arbor parade of of papier-mâché sculptures.

We also got a Pinocchio head, and Skippy helped build a functioning marionette on the second story balcony. 

The pulley controls were on the first floor. Guests could watch a video of the marionette from below, so they could see what they were doing. 

The rest of the Festifools heads were mounted on the wall of the notorious British gentleman hunter/explorer, Nigel Barth. 

About an hour west of Ann Arbor, there are some massage parlors/truck stops of questionable legitamacy. Tokyo Health Spa was a bit of a throwaway. 

This was a lot of fun to make. A couple months before the party, we drove around Ann Arbor with a a camera phones pointing forwards and to each side. We synced the videos and projected them from the outside on the three walls of the room.  

This Beatles had a famous concert at Shea Stadium in New York in 1965. We reimagined this as The Beatles Live at Che Stadium, in which the concert actually takes place in Cuba, and all of the lyrics had to be changed to reflect Cuban culture and Communist values. Here are a few excerpts from the redacted lyric sheets we distributed:

"Eight Days a Week"

"Can't Buy Me Love"

"Help!"

With warmest regards,

Zach