Theatre Bizarre - Detroit, MI. - Haunted Attractions on Waymarking.com

Theatre Bizarre is a place, a community, a hallucination held in common by a group of people dedicated to its survival. They stage a few other events on the grounds, but most of the year is spent gearing up for the biggest, most imaginatively themed, "underground" Halloween party in southeastern Michigan -- if you can call something that sold out at 2,200 tickets this year "underground."

Technically it's a Halloween party, not just any Halloween party, mind you, but the most creatively elaborate, macabre, over-the-top Halloween party you can imagine. It's also a place, a half-a-city-block of houses where the contiguous alleys and vacant lots have been re-imagined as a replica of an abandoned amusement park.

Theatre Bizarre was conceived as an abandoned circus carnival and every stage, marquee and banner is made to look slightly decayed. Volunteers spend the weeks leading up to Halloween dragging in scrub trees gleaned from neighborhood alleys to give the impression that nature has had years to overgrow the midway and sideshows. They black-wash every piece of lumber to look aged and burned. Anything painted gets a wash of patina. Costumes, elaborately detailed and appliqued, are just as painstakingly abraded and dirtied to look like their wearers have been recently dug from their graves.

First, the main stage went up with Zombo the Clown presiding over the proscenium. Successive additions brought satellite stages like the Scaredy Cat Club. Revelers enter the grounds on party night through one of the houses facing State Fair. It is, of course, a haunted house. It's the home of Edgar J. Torrent, a fictitious serial killer, and it's stuffed with more body parts and gore than a full season of CSI. Partiers are forced to go through the houseful of hanging bagged bodies and down into the dungeon-like cellar and through a seemingly subterranean tunnel before emerging through transformational light and fog onto the Midway.

According to the elaborate back-story concocted by Dunivant, the tunnel was built by Torrent as an escape route to evade the police. When visitors emerge from the tunnel they metaphorically enter the imagination of the killer who, like Dunivant himself, is fascinated with all things carnie.

The entertainment reinforces the illusion with lurid burlesques and a group known as Pend Suspension, whose work involves a lot of dangling from hooks pierced through their skin. Then there's lots of fire: fire eating, fire juggling, fire hoop dancing and just plain fire shooting.

On the night of the party -- always the Saturday before Halloween -- Theatre Bizarre seems not so much a place, as an alternate reality. Costumes are de rigueur and their variety and elaborateness can be breathtaking. Siamese twins, Rubber Chicken Man and demented clowns cavort with beheaded brides and queens of the night. It's as if the cast of a Fellini movie took up residence on the midway of a defunct Coney Island.

Dates of Operation: From: 10/31/2010 To: 11/01/2010 Regular Hours of Operation: From: 8:00 AM To: 5:00 AM Entry Fee: 25.00 (listed in local currency) Minimum Age: 21 Physical Address: State Fair Avenue Detroit, MI USA 480 Type of Attraction: Haunted House Phone Number: Not listed Web Address: Not listed

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