The month of September for the Imagine Nation has been a busy one, no doubt. It started with Nocturnal Wonderland. Nocturnal was a little different than usual as it was the first time we built a stage that had it’s own lineup… as opposed to the “secret” stage at Electric Forest. We were also building an entire theme zone filled with rooms, characters, and go-go dancers.

We wanted to give the zone a feeling of a castle, which the king/queen was perched on a high balcony overlooking their patrons. This was the DJ booth, a center “balcony” with three lower “balconies” on either side of it…which were window areas for performers to dance, run skits, and allow a few lucky participants to come up and get a little wild (which happened a fair bit over the weekend).

The rest of the zone was enclosed with five mag-arches…which gave the feeling of walking into a private area within the festival grounds. The center mag-arch was the main entrance and was made to look like a rabbit-hole, with the entrance getting tighter as you walked through. On either side of the rabbit-hole were two more entrances, lined with red flowing fabric, as if entering a lavish castle.

Top view of DJ booth and go-go dance balconies.

The other two mag-arches were our play rooms. The one to the left of the entrance being a tea-party room, decked out with a long tea table covered in fine silverware and tea cups. This area is where our male and female Mad-Hatters would run around wildly having faux-tea parties and enticing the people sitting around to join in. People would let loose, involve themselves in the ruckus and leave with smiling faces.

The opposite room was our creme-de-la-creme, so to speak. Since our area was named “the upside-down room” we decided to actually build a room that was upside-down. So we screwed some tables and chairs to a carpeted piece of particle board and hung it, along with a door for “entry” into this upside room, and some pictures hanging upside-down…just for good measure.

The Upside-Down Room at Nocturnal Wonderland.

It was a thrill to see the response to these areas, as people had a place where they could sit and interact and not have the music blaring at them. Watching people walk into the upside-down room and crank their necks up while spinning around was a personal joy of mine. The stage was pumping house music all weekend, and there was a happy vibe every time you stepped in through one of the entrances.

A big thank you to Insomniac Events for allowing us the ability to create, and to all the people that showed up over the two weekends with their amazing smiles and awesome energy, with shuffling dance moves to boot! We look forward to bringing you more interactive zones in the future. Until next time. Imaginator out.

-Kirill Simenchik