I played La Noche de los Muertos on the Friday evening. I'd never taken part in one of the city-wide chase games before, so there was some "always remember the first time" added awe from not knowing what to expect, but it was wonderful.
The Day of the Dead theme was the perfect clothing for the chase structure (which is to navigate from point to point across a city centre while being chased by baddies).
I wouldn't want to understate the pure joy of being chased around by zombies, but what really made it was the thoroughness and detail with which the Day of the Dead theme was carried through, and the care, wit and artistry that had been put into the little theatrical events at each checkpoint.
From the zombie Mariachi band to play us off, to the Zombie Marilyn in her grotto singing Happy Deathday Mr President to the red London bus ride to the cemetery at the end, the amount of effort that had gone into these was fantastic, and each checkpoint really did feel like a reward for getting so far.
At the final checkpoint we all made ourselves skeleton masks so that we could be ancestors of the dead, and this was a nice touch as well, involving our artistry in the making of the event, and making a keepsake, as well as "making" meaning to be there as an audience.I took my god daughter Cherry along, and 14 was a great age to do something like this because she was happy to throw herself into screaming the loudest and running the fastest while keeping up just enough teenage coolness, and that made it even more unselfconsciously fun for me.
The final section was a walk through the very spooky and overgrown Arnos Vale cemetery at night, which was a great location, more of a damp, decaying wood with broken gravestones between the trees than an ordered graveyard, and one that I was glad to have seen just in itself.
Right in the middle of the walk through the cemetery me and Cherry managed a horror film moment so comic-dumb you couldn't have scripted it by slowing down because we thought we'd seen a zombie in the trees, then realising by the light of mobile phones that "it's only a statue" just as two real zombies jumped out from the other side of the track, which had us both screaming so loud (I changed mine into a pretend scream almost straight away of course) that it left everyone, living and undead, rolling around on the floor laughing.The rest of the weekend I spent on Free All Monsters! The igfest base was in a great spot on a busy walkway next to the harbour, which made it very open to passers-by who just happened to be on an afternoon out and looking for something to do. Most of these very warm pictures are from igfest and a good guide to the sunny feel of the whole weekend.
Big thank yous to the Simons and Helen for igfest and Clare Reddington for a space on La Noche de los Muertos at the last minute.
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