House of Spirits Interview: Return to Casa Vega – Updated with review & new photos!
Nocturne Theatre’s Justin Meyer on resurrecting and revising the original House of Spirits Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party for 2024. Check out new photos and review after the interview.
“This isn’t a traditional haunted experience with chainsaw scares. We always go for the bizarre, neo-surrealism, avant-garde kind of experience.”
L.A.’s original Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party is back. After rebranding itself as Haunted Soirée: A Macabre Cocktail Party for Halloween 2023, the immersive experience returns to its original name, House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soirée. This year’s presentation resurrects Casa Vega, the original show that Meyer2Meyer Entertainment presented for the event’s 2019 debut, about a painter whose art opens a doorway to the netherworld. The official description reads: After the mysterious death of their child Little Magpie, Francisco and Molly find themselves tormented by a strange entity that haunts the shadows of their home. House of Spirits: Casa Vega is loosely based on real life inspirations, including Spanish painter Francisco Goya, his famous Black Paintings, as well as several other Spanish folktales throughout the centuries.
Los Angeles fans should not expect an exact replay of 2019, however. Not only is the 2024 venue different; the Haunted Halloween cocktail party itself has been altered. Since reopening after the 2020 pandemic, Meyer2Meyer has been refining shows that debuted in L.A. and presenting them in other cities around the country. (Casa Vega is also playing in Dallas. Vaughn Mansion is in Seattle. Volkov Manor is in San Francisco.) It is the revised version of Casa Vega playing at Meyer2Meyer’s Nocturne Theatre in Glendale this Halloween. Not only are there additional scenes but also recreated set pieces and creature costumes – the old ones were lost in a fire at the company’s costume shop earlier this year.
To learn more about the return of Casa Vega, we sat down with Justin Meyer of Meyer2Meyer Entertainment. The discussion covered several topics: resurrecting the House of Spirits brand name, revising storylines for export to other cities, putting on a full-scale Haunted Halloween cocktail party after losing all the essential assets, and reducing the number of cocktails served without reducing the total alcohol content.
Return to Casa Vega’s Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party: Interview with Justin Meyer
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: The original House of Spirits haunted Halloween cocktail party is back after rebranding to Haunted Soirée last Halloween. Explain the switch.
JUSTIN MEYER: Last season, we decided that we needed to retool our agreement with our marketing partner, Fever, so to keep everything copacetic but not lose our fan base, we decided to create Haunted Soirée. This year we’ve reached a better agreement with Fever, so we are shelving Haunted Soirée and going back to House of Spirits, which has a bigger following. I’m glad that we are back in business with them; it’s going to make for a better season all around for everybody.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: In addition to resurrecting the brand, you’re resurrecting Casa Vega, the very first House of Spirits haunted Halloween cocktail party. You’ve reused this theme in other cities, but why bring it back to LA this year.
JUSTIN MEYER: Meyer2Meyers’ warehouse burned down. It housed every single costume, every single prop and scenic piece that we’ve ever owned. It’s gone, 100%. Because of that fire, we had to pick up the pieces and rebuild everything from scratch, including all of Tanya Cyr’s creature suits. That is the major impetus for bringing the first season back and for cutting back the number of cities. Last year, House of Spirits was in seven cities; this year we’re only in four. Still quite ambitious for having lost everything, but we are able to tackle four cities.
Meyer2Meyers’ warehouse burned down. Every single costume, every single prop and scenic piece that we’ve ever owned is gone. We had to rebuild everything from scratch. That is the major impetus for bringing the first season back.
The fire affected the shows we did at the Nocturne Theatre as well. The fire happened in July, literally closing night of Cabaret, and we still managed to somehow pull off The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We’ve been working really hard. We put our heads down, and we moved forward.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: How is Casa Vega different this year, especially in regard to fitting it into the new location. Obviously, we won’t be walking around the grounds of the Beckett Mansion, where the first version was set.
JUSTIN MEYER: Now that we own the Nocturne Theater in Los Angeles, we tailor almost 100% of our programming around this building. That being said, we don’t want to lose the spirit of the show, especially of that season, but the Casa Vega that you saw in 2019 here in Los Angeles is dramatically different from a storyline perspective and from a character perspective. That came from me making edits, cleaning up the storyline, and making it a little more detailed and a little more well-rounded. A lot of the characters interact a little bit differently than in the first iteration. The version that you are getting this season in Los Angeles is the version that we’ve been doing in the other markets. As soon as we started moving it around the country and tailoring it to other houses in other cities, I was able to make those edits and create a couple of new attractions – a couple more zones, if you will, that weren’t in the original.
The Casa Vega that you saw in 2019 is dramatically different. The version that you are getting this season in Los Angeles is the version that we’ve been doing in other markets. As soon as we started moving it around the country and tailoring it to other cities, I was able to make edits and create new attractions that weren’t in the original.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Can you tell us a little about the new stuff without giving too much away?
JUSTIN MEYER: If you recall the first season, you’ll definitely see one very famous scene coming back with a slight change, mostly aesthetically, but then there’s a new thing we’re calling “The Ceremony.” There’s a séance activation that’s a little bit different than what people have seen in the past. How we’ve laid out and designed the creature zone is a little bit different as well. There are updates to the roaming characters, to all the costuming and the creature design. The fire was not good for us, but it did allow for Tanya to basically rebuild everything. She was able to implement some new designs that she’s been wanting to do, so there’s some silver lining. There will be a lot of new visual content as well. Every season we incorporate specialty acts; those will be different. There’s something in the main room that we call “The Nest” that is going to be completely new to this season as well. I think you’re going to like the revamp of season one; it’s cool.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: House of Spirits has had several interesting stories, but Casa Vega‘s premise of art opening a doorway to the other world is fascinating, at least to me.
JUSTIN MEYER: That theme is strong, so we’re keeping that in there for sure.
Probably next year, we will introduce a fifth and final season that ties all the past seasons together. The intention was to do that this year; however, with the fire, we just physically couldn’t do it.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Now that you’re in a permanent location in L.A., has there been any thought that, since this venue is going to be haunted every Halloween, there should be some overarching theme – as if the Nocturne Theatre is like Brigadoon except it’s once a year. Are you going to tie all the hauntings together into a House of Spirits Universe?
JUSTIN MEYER: Well, thematically the story lines do all connect with one another season after season, which is a very deep track. If you’re following the story lines that deep, then awesome -you’re a Die Hard. I’m thinking probably next year, if I’m ambitious enough, we will introduce a fifth and final season that does tie all the past seasons together. The intention was to do that this year; however, with the fire, we just physically couldn’t do it.
Return to Casa Vega’s Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party: Dividing Six Cocktails into Five
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: There’s are many aspects that make House of Spirits interesting, including cocktails, which I think you’ve slightly trimmed back. The first year of Casa Vega there were six; now it’s four or five depending on which ticket you buy. What’s interesting is they’re small, so you don’t think they will have much effect, but by the end of the evening you you do feel the impact. I’m wondering if that had something to do with cutting back.
JUSTIN MEYER: Melissa [Meyer] wants to jump in and answer that.
MELISSA MEYER: The biggest reasoning for that one was watching Season One and seeing people waiting in lines at a bar to get six drinks. So what we did is, though they are small, they’re actually slightly larger, so it’s the same amount from a quantity standpoint as it was in Season One but [divided into five drinks instead of six] for a slightly larger cocktail tasting. That reduced the amount of time people are waiting to get a drink.
Melissa Meyer on cutting back the number of cocktails:
They’re actually slightly larger, so it’s the same amount from a quantity standpoint as it was in Season One but [divided into five drinks instead of six]. That reduced the amount of time people wait in line at the bars.
Return to Casa Vega: Getting Too Close to the Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party Spirits
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Another feature of House of Spirits is personal contact between audience and actors. That happens in interactive theater, but even there you’re limited by the narrative. In House of Spirits, it seems there’s nothing stopping someone from hanging out all night with a character. I’m wondering how you prepare for situations where people either overstep bounds or monopolize a character or simply do not want to move on.
JUSTIN MEYER: The actors are trained to have an out – basically, a hard stop, like some kind of exit line that allows them to wrap it up and move on. That has happened. Someone really likes a character; they’re interested in its backstory, and so they have a tendency to ask questions and stick with that person for a while, so my actor does have to implement that safe word, essentially, to get out of the conversation. It also encourages the guests to move on and find out more about the show. That’s another thing that they are trained to do: “Hey, if you like me and you like this conversation, there’s a lot of more interesting characters out there as well.”
Some characters have been asked out on dates. Someone is attracted to that creature or that character on the show floor, and the guest would wait around afterwards to see if they could meet the character – and then realize there’s an actor underneath the mask.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: I’ve probably mentioned this before, I’m interested in the potential for what they call Parasocial Relationships – people in the audience thinking they’ve made a connection with a character an actor. The interactive format seems almost tailor made to ferment that kind of thing, so I wonder about people hanging around after the show who want to continue interacting.
JUSTIN MEYER: That has happened, bizarrely enough. I haven’t experienced it myself, but some of the actors have. Some characters have been asked out on dates, specifically the character. Someone is attracted to that creature or that certain character on the show floor, and the guest would wait around afterwards to see if they could meet the character – and then realize there’s an actor underneath the mask who’s not quite the person they thought they were talking to all night long.
Return to Casa Vega: Looking Back House of Spirits’ Best Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party Favors
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Okay, let’s make the rest of this interview a little bit more fun. I’m going to throw out some memorable moments I think worked really well, and maybe you could comment on them. Starting with the first Casa Vega, Beckett Mansion was a great location. How far did that go to making the first year work?
JUSTIN MEYER: It did a lot for us, especially that first season when people didn’t know the brand yet. People are hesitant to spend a lot of money on something that they aren’t really sure of when there’s a lot of options for Halloween, especially in Los Angeles. We knew we needed to give the audience something dramatically different. Bringing them into an intimate setting like the Beckett Mansion [was part of that], and let’s say the luck factor of that was when you pulled up in front of that building, it looked like a haunted mansion from a movie. It was literally one of the best first impressions you could make with the audience. Then of course we designed the show around the layout of that house, and that established This House of Spirits experience for years after. All of this is based on that original mansion’s layout: how and why we did things was because we had to, and now that’s become Canon for the show.
That is the difference [between immersive theatre and] House of Spirits: you get to decide where you want to go and when you want to do it, and you don’t have to go anywhere. You can stay in one room all night long if you really wanted to.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Something new to me – maybe other people had experienced this kind of thing before – was the open-world approach. That was revelatory.
JUSTIN MEYER: There’s a lot of other versions of immersive theater experiences. A lot of it is driven by narrative, and though it has the illusion of being free to roam, you do have to follow a trail if you’re going to stay with the story or even just keep up, because they need you to move on. That is the difference from our House of Spirits experience: you get to decide where you want to go and when you want to do it, and you don’t have to go anywhere; you can stay in one room all night long if you really wanted to. For us, I think the biggest thing Melissa and I have decided over the years of doing this – as important as we love the story lines, as exciting as we love having all the character interaction and all those backstories, that deep track stuff – at the end of the day, we want to make sure that everybody knows this is just a fun Halloween cocktail party, and like a party, you’re not confined to one room at any given moment for any reason unless you’re choosing to participate in something. That’s been the M.O. of this project since the beginning, and that’s something we want to continue to push now as we move forward with the brand.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: All the scenes were good that first year, but the one that stands out for me, maybe for simple personal reasons, is the creepy puppet show. It was the last thing we did, and at that point, after six cocktails, we really needed to be sitting down, but it was a great fun. It was great that that option was there.
JUSTIN MEYER: Good. We’ve done variants of that puppet show in other years. It won’t be in this particular season, but it is developed for other seasons, so that may come back. We used it in Dallas, and it was one of Dallas’s favorite scenes.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Moving on to Volkov Manor…I’ve always enjoyed the scavenger hunt, the creature challenge, aspect of House of Spirits, but for reasons I can’t quite pin down, that year might be my favorite version of it. Maybe it was interaction with the creatures.
JUSTIN MEYER: From a creature standpoint and character standpoint, that that season gave us a lot of rich folklore to play with, so our creature designs were among our favorites. That location also presented us with a unique challenge of having to split that creature zone into two spaces, separate from one another. Not really convenient for us but an interesting layout that we that we had to design. Those rooms were also intimate and small; they weren’t big vast massive giant cavernous rooms. That makes the monsters feel larger than life when they’re in there with you. That was a thing that venue allowed for, and this year in Los Angeles is going to feel very similar.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Vaughan Hall at Vertigo. I liked that location – obviously quite different from Beckett Mansion. It was big; you had to do a lot of walking. How did that work out?
JUSTIN MEYER: We bounced around for a few years trying to find a spot. The goal is always to hunker down. Once you know a location, you can really dig your heels into it and develop around that location quite well. That place was such a large event space that its biggest challenge for us was making sure that we filled the space so that it didn’t feel cavernous with nothing in it. I really enjoy the content of that season. That was the Irish Mythos season. We built it around a medieval storyline, which was a challenge because then you have to go look for medieval decor, and that’s not quite as easy to find as, you know, turn of the century antiques. That presented its own challenges, but the vast space felt like a castle, and I felt like it served the show well. But for me personally, I felt like that season lost a little of the intimacy that this experience is known for. This isn’t a massive 50,000 person haunt from a studio; this is a smaller boutique haunted experience. We want to maintain that in the future.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Another aspect I liked – and maybe you needed this to fill up the space – there were a lot of little side quests that were down to even one-on-one interaction.
JUSTIN MEYER: Yeah, I really liked the one-on ones for that season. We have continued to do that, but a lot these one-on-one experiences happen right on the show floor, because we don’t have any extra room after we filled the space wall-to-wall with content. But that season allowed us to explore: you had to go to another place; you were literally taken down a hallway and disappeared from the rest of the crowd.
Vaughan Hall Creatures: Owl & Faery
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: A couple of favorite characters character designs from Vaughn Hall. First, the owl was fabulous.
JUSTIN MEYER: That’s one of my favorite characters. It came about because we did a show – originally it was called Magic Bus Experience, but later we changed it to Kaleidoscope Experience – and we had designed this bizarre owl. It was all different colors, and it handed out lollipops in a in a tree. It was a really weird, bizarre, fun little character. We had this mask lying around. I came upon it one day in the back of our warehouse and thought we should retool this thing and see what we can do with it. We painted it black, and we put some eyes in it, and all of a sudden it was this spooky bizarre, weird-looking creature. In subsequent seasons – L.A. is always my first draft, and then I start to edit myself and move things around – we have developed that owl even further and meshed two characters together to create a more unique kind of character.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Visually the women in corsets with what look liked gossamer wings floating behind were amazing. They had to be large but not too heavy; otherwise, they would bend too much instead of staying upright. It seemed to defy the laws of physics.
JUSTIN MEYER: Those were really amazing costumes that season. We’ve also reinterpreted those again in future seasons. Vaughan Hall is going to be in Seattle this year, and they’re going to get all those cool characters this season.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Also, you had onstage participation at Vaughan Hall, which again to me seems fraught with danger when you’ve got an audience that’s been having lots of cocktails, but I didn’t see anything go terribly wrong. How did that work out?
JUSTIN MEYER: My very good and oldest best friend Josh LaCasse – I’ve known him since we were in sixth grade – is an improv comedian who is excellent at hosting and working with crowds. I developed that sort of experience for the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride and hired him every single year to host that. It was such a hit. It’s like karaoke: people love to jump up on stage and make a fool of themselves. So I thought, let’s try it this season. Josh was the lead actor in that scene, so I thought we’ll tap into his skill set and add that element into the show.
We did it for that season in Los Angeles, but in subsequent seasons we did end up cutting the audience participation part just because it does take a special host who can navigate the audience like that and keep them safe and keep it funny and keep it moving. You don’t want to lose the energy when somebody gets up and just bombs. That’s a very hard thing.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Last year was Haunted Soirée, not House of Spirits but I’ll pick a favorite thing from there. The Neville Seance – limiting it to four people gave it a little bit of a scare element that I liked quite a bit
JUSTIN MEYER: I’m always trying to find some way to push the envelope into reminding us that this is an experience for adults, that you didn’t come to a kids show. You didn’t go to a traditional haunted experience with chainsaw scares. We always go for the bizarre, neo-surrealism, avant-garde kind of experience. We like to make those as unsettling and spooky and weird as possible. Definitely that’s what that scene did for me.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Again, there were a lot of great characters and costumes, but for some reason the character I remember most was very lowkey, a female ghost hanging out in the La Dame Verte bar. It’s nice you can sit down for a minute, and there’s this spooky woman adding to the experience without doing anything overtly shocking.
JUSTIN MEYER: That’s the power of our actors and our actresses. Specifically in Los Angeles, we are lucky with the talent level that we get to play with. This season, having had an entire year at the Nocturne Theater with our musical productions, we’ve been introduced to so many new actors and performers. We are stacked with really talented people.
HOLLYWOOD GOTHIQUE: Those are some of my favorites. Is there anything that stands out for you that I haven’t mentioned?
JUSTIN MEYER: I always think back on the very first season in Beckett Mansion. That was the year when it all seemed, serendipitously, to just flow. I’ve never been in such a positive environment in the Halloween Haunt season when everyone is stressed out and working really hard. I don’t know why, but we were able to work together so well that it inspired us to grow that brand and make this what it is today. Now it’s in a lot of cities and different venues, and we’ve met with a lot of different casts and producers we get along with very well, but there was something really special about that first season. It was almost like a group of friends coming together to make this thing happen, with no expectations. I think that’s why we surprised ourselves the most. We have been chasing that feeling every year since.
Review: Casa Vega 2024 - Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party
Rating Scale
0 – Awful
1 – Poor
2 – Mediocre
3 – Good
4 – Great
5 – Excellent
Casa Vega 2024 Review: Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party at Nocturne Theatre
House of Spirits‘ 2024 Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party summons familiar spirits to create what feels like a brand new seance. The Casa Vega storyline is back, but this year’s experience is totally different from the 2019 version at Beckett Mansion.
First, there is the new location. Set within the Nocturne Theater, this Casa Vega feels more like a surreal costume party than a haunted house. The creep factor is diminished in favor of colorfully weird ambiance. Actual decrepit walls have been replaced by artificial foliage, theatrical lighting, and rich tapestries. Basically, it’s more “Masque of the Red Death” than “House of Usher.”
The venue’s layout has a major impact. The large main stage area affords ample room for a parade of aerial artists and demented dancers. You could literally spend all your time here, watching the show and enjoying occasional encounters with Casa Vega’s ghostly inhabitants. But then you would miss the more intimate entertainment upstairs in the cabaret room, along with other experiences tucked away in hidden rooms: a ceremony, a seance, and a scavenger hunt.
Casa Vega 2024 Review: Seance, Ceremony, Scavenger Hunt
The changes are substantive as well as stylish. The focus of the original Casa Vega was the artist whose haunted paintings opened a portal to the netherworld. Since then, the storyline has been revised for presentations in cities outside Los Angeles, adding a menagerie of subsequent owners of Casa Vega, each with his or her own ghostly story to tell. Some are eager to talk; others require prompting, and you may need to find hidden clue to win their confidence.
There is no creepy puppet show this time, nor is there a walk through a haunted basement. In the latter’s place is a substitute scare experience, “Little Magie’s Seance,” which attempts to contact the child whose death drove her artist-father to create his cursed paintings. There’s a blackout, effects, and a cleverly staged surprise.
The “Creature Challenge” scavenger hunt is back. Guests encounter nightmarish beings spung to life from Vega’s paintings, which depict clues to hidden objects that must be collected. “The Ceremony” offers a glimpse into the past when the grieving Vega summoned a creature from beyond. It’s the same idea seen in 2019 but depicted as a surreal nude dance. The lighting, choreography, and body makeup lend a haunting air to something that could have been merely provocative.
Casa Vega 2024 Review: Conclusion
As with previous iterations of House of Spirits, Casa Vega is best enjoyed as haunted Halloween cocktail party, in which you spend your time in the way that best pleases you. One noticeable improvement this year is that the way the entertainments have been incorporated into the Nocturne Theatre’s layout makes it relatively easy to accomplish everything in the allotted time. We definitely miss the sinister haunted house style of the 2019 Casa Vega, but it’s a fair tradeoff in exchange for the opportunity to leisurely mingle with talkative spirits without fear of missing the seance or failing to complete the scavenger hunt.
We also appreciated being able to relax over our cocktails, which are key component of the experience. This year’s offerings were four in number: The Delmont, Little Magpie, Goya’s Ghost, and The Poppet. They’re all good, but if we had to rank them, it would be in the order listed above. Bronze and Gold ticket holders get five cocktails, which menas that after sample all four you can go back and get a second round of your favorite. We opted for The Delmont, which we loved, to our surprise, in spite of the mint included with the gin, elderflower, lime, and simple syrup.
Casa Vega has its share of ethereal encounters, but it is not a scare show, nor despite its theatricality is it truly an interactive play. It’s more a cabaret-style immersive experience, loaded with amazing costumes, creatures, and settings. As always, it is the best way to feel as if you are truly inside a haunted Halloween cocktail party.
House of Spirits: Casa Vega runs Thursday through Sunday from October 4 to November 2, plus the last two Wednesdays of October. Remaining tickets start at $73 for Bronze (admission and four cocktails), $80 for Silver (admission and five cocktails), and $92 for Gold (admission, five cocktails, box of artisanal chocolates, and expedited entry). Prices are higher on peak nights. Nocturne Theatre is located at 324 N Orange Street in Glendale. Get more information at houseofspiritssoiree.com.
Return to Casa Vega: Haunted Halloween Cocktail Party Photographs
