With its various rooms housing elaborate performances, Trinity Arts Festival’s “Dark Side of the Rainbow” transformed the GMB into a trippy Wizard of Oz-themed experience tonight. After following the crowds from the fire show in Front Square, guests were confronted with a barrage of coloured lights and glitter, and were given a small ticket with a character from the Wizard of Oz on it. This determined which room we entered further along “the yellow brick road”.
Conceptual and cool, managing to unite so many different societies for a totally unique event, it’s easy to see why Trinity Art Festival continually sweeps up at the Society of the Year Awards.
Each room contained a different installation, performance, or activity associated with each of the 19 societies involved. The rooms were meant to represent the different lands from the fictional world. Munchkinland provided the scary experience while Fashion Soc’s room covered the effortlessly cool, black-clad revellers in glitter of various colours.
As we maneuvered around the different scenes from the movie, people dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West passed and flying monkeys screeched and cackled as we ascended the stairs. The performance aspect of the night set it apart from most other society nights, managing to more than reward those who arrived on time. As someone who arrived late, I joined the crowd of confused bodies wandering from room to room, trying to figure out how to play the elaborate game.
Near the top of the building people cashed in their character slips to play a game in order to gain their wristbands to the afterparty. My slip told me I was the Tin Man and that I had to “search for a heart”, meaning I had to try to find the answer to a riddle written on the other half of a paper heart. Confused – and perhaps intoxicated – people were met with kind society members who guided them towards the right section of the pool table of paper hearts. When we were successful, we were granted a Dorothy-inspired gingham wristband, allowing us to unlock the wonders of Oz.
Ghosts from Law Soc posed riddles to those trying to enter the upstairs, and even more flying monkeys lined the staircase up to “Oz”. For the purposes of this event, “Oz” was the top room in the GMB, filled with green light and music from DUDJ members. The room felt like the attic of an impossibly cool loft party.
The night presented an almost-overwhelming plethora of Trinity societies and their alternative and creative take on activities linked with the Wizard of Oz theme, but our collective confusion only added to the mysticism and enjoyment of the night. The colours, theatricality, and glitter added up to a night that brought together a diverse range of societies and lived up to the aesthetic, and slightly intimidatingly cool, reputation of a Trinity Arts Festival event.
