51/50 is a non-realized design for a horror event in the Old LA Zoo in Griffith Park. The project was created in five weeks, as part of Drama 263 Digital Imaging and Drama 255 Sound for Themed Entertainment at University of California, Irvine. I served as the Project Technical Manager, the Show Control Designer, and the Sound Designer for Ward C (Children's Ward/Doll House). As technical manager for the project, I oversaw all technical elements (including drafting standards, creating the walkthrough videos posted below, and compiling and reviewing the paperwork and technical book).
The story of the little known Griffith Asylum begins with the story of Griffith Jenkins Griffith himself. As far as most were concerned, he was a very levelheaded, practical man who cultivated his name and fortune in mining in the 1880’s. However, this image was shattered as the public learned he suffered from paranoid delusions and a severe drinking problem. This dark side of Griffith came to light while on vacation with his wife in Santa Monica in 1903. Griffith shot his wife in the face leaving her disfigured and eliminating her right eye. Griffith would go on to serve two years in prison for the crime and Mrs. Griffith would be granted the quickest divorce of the era. In an effort to save face with the city of Los Angeles, he donated the 3,000 acres of land in Rancho Los Feliz for what would become Griffith Park. Griffith parceled of a portion of land for himself under the guise of developing a zoo within the park. However, this zoo would never become accessible to the public. After years of construction, the project came to a halt as a result of the disappearances of multiple construction workers. Later, the project was abandoned completely. The truly twisted and mysterious ways in which Griffith utilized this plot of land remained a dark Los Angeles secret…
In an attempt to cure his own violent paranoid delusion and his deep seated phobias, Griffith Jenkins Griffith had been developing an asylum to carry out his experiments. Some locals believe that his merciless attack on his wife was a result of his growing anxiety from his intense phobias. Over the course of 20 years Griffith developed a torturous asylum that was developed around treating the phobias that he himself suffered from in an effort to cure his own insanity. Griffith utilized his massive fortune to hide his torturous doings on unsuspecting victims. The gates of the asylum have not been open to the public... until now. The 51/50 horror event allows visitors to enter the park as patients admitted to a mad experimental asylum, where doctors and nurses are performing radical and disturbing exposure therapy tests to uncover the origin of Phobias.
Upon arrival, visitors will purchase timed tickets (or pick up online reserved tickets) for the main Horror Maze. Ticketing kiosks will be located in the roundabout at the end of the parking lot. These visitors, now admitted patients, will continue their journey up the entrance walkway where they will join the other disturbed patients.
As the newly admitted patients ascend up the walkway, they will be flanked by rusted and broken chainlink fencing. Foreshadowing the horrors to come, it will be obvious that some of the previous patients have escaped and are lurking just beyond the fencing. Once the newly admitted patients reach the top of the path they enter through a dilapidated metal gate and are introduced to Dr. Griffith and his ex-wife, Mrs. Mary Agnes Christina "Tina" Mesmer Griffith.
The admitted patients will see a series of 12 different experiments on unwilling victims trapped in different cages. A 13th cage will be empty. Every few minutes, the escapee will return to attempt to free the other victims, unleashing the horrors of the cages on the unwitting audience. Each cage will explore a different specific phobia, under the umbrella of “exposure therapy.” The cages are: Death by a Thousand Cuts, Quarantine Tank, Electroshock Therapy, Drowning, The Human Butcher, The Puppet Maker, The Snake Pit, The Spider Cage, The Suspension Cage, The Human Pincushion, The Blood Cage, The Escaped Patient's Cage, and The Dark Cage.
Patients will be entering Wards B-D based on their timed ticket, their appointment time with a doctor for phobia evaluation and treatment. When it is time for patients to enter the maze, they will follow the queue line where other groups of patients are waiting. Each group is guided and followed by an actor patient, who is dressed as an orderly. The actor patient knocked out an orderly and changed into their uniform in an attempt to escape the asylum. As they came out of the closet where they hid the body of the orderly, they were asked to take this group of new patients to Ward B for psychiatric/phobia evaluation with the doctor.
The maze starts at the cavernous structures (near the event main exit); this beginning section of the overall maze will serve as small introductions to the phobias. It will start off with a taste of claustrophobia evolving into phobias of various animals, then to the fear of heights ending with medical phobias to help transition us into the second part of the maze.
The second part of the maze will continue up the slope to the corrugated metal shanty. This segment of the maze revolves around pediophobia, or the fear of dolls. In the Dolls attraction, patients will tour the pediatrics ward of the Griffith Asylum. Embracing the existing graffiti inside the shanty structure, audience members will be disoriented by dolls and projections.
The tour guide leads the group into the Children’s Ward (Ward C) to get flashlights, but warns the group there are rumors that this Ward is haunted by the ghosts of the children who died here, and that their spirits have been trapped in the dolls they left behind.
The concluding portion of the maze is the basement maze of the asylum at the top of the hill. The Tour Guide leads the group through a basement access type door that goes into a tunnel through the basement of the Asylum. The basement is the crematorium and solitary cells where the most deranged patients are kept. They come across a patient who has been overexposed to the extreme therapy treatments; the patient sits in an alcove in the hallway rocking back and forth and pulling their hair out. The group continues down the tunnel where they find a series of solitary cells on either side where patients reach out to them through small holes in the doors. The cell doors are released and the deranged patients come rushing out of their holding cells and begin to chase the guests deeper into the tunnel. The guests are chased into the crematorium, where furnaces are burning bodies alive. At the end of the maze, the group is ushered into a large cage structure. A large, deformed patient crawls out through a hidden passageway in the back of the cage and begins to encroach on the group, motivating them out of the maze and back to the Yard.
P&R Creative Group
Creative Director:
Morgan Lindsay Price
Technical Manager:
Matt Eckstein
Project Manager:
Matt Terzigni
Shay Garber
Asst: Nate Chase
Department Heads:
Scenic: Leah Ramillano
Costume: Katelin Phillips
Lighting: Ebony Madry
Sound: Andrea Allmond
Technical Directors:
Benjamin Scheff
Travis O. Deck
Design Team:
Andrea Allmond
Benjamin Scheff
Ebony Madry
Katelin Phillips
Leah Ramillano
Travis O. Deck
Abigail Caywood
Beau Hamilton
Darrin Wade
David Hernandez
David Phillips
Fernando Penaloza
Garrett Hood
Jordan Tani
Kelsi Halverson
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer
Sarah Resch
Wes Chew
Matt Eckstein