My original Red Queen's Night idea
The original idea I had for Red Queen's Night was a sort of dance party.
The evening would start off with subdued music and colors. Classical music (or something soft), and blues/purple lighting. Tables scattered here and there, cocktail party style. Costumes encouraged, Halloween-style, but leave the gore out of it. Think more ghosts, and haunting, rather than monsters lurking in the dark.
As the evening progressed, every hour, on the hour, the lights would drop -- the more abrupt the better -- and a spotlight would shine on an analogue clock, which would chime the hour in (play audio so that you didn't have to worry about getting the actual timing just right).
When the lights come up, the lighting would be different. Ramp up the music and change the lighting. Jazz or something a bit more lively at first, and change to green lighting. Then dance/pop in yellow. Punk and harder music in orange. Then red would be death metal or otherwise very intense music. Then at midnight, hard drop to black, one more spotlight and a full 12 chimes.
The turn on the full lights back on and the party is over. A hard stop, though maybe mediated by a switch back to soft lighting and music to give people a chance to cool off. But the dancing is over.
Timing would be:
Before 8 - blue/purple, classical
8 to 9 - green, jazz/pop
9 to 10 - yellow, dance/techno
10 to 11 - orange, punk
11 to 12 - red, hard music
You're aiming to build up the atmosphere and a sense of emotional catharsis with theater and all that.
If you like it, share it around. I'd *love* to see pictures of people celebrating!