The flames flickered atop the giant metal sign as the shadows began to draw longer designs on the dirt below. Just beyond, lights sparkled from a nearby circus tent as music began to play in the background. As the night began to pull the daylight completely out of view, it became more evident with every turn that this wasn't going to be an average handful of hours spent in the Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Not that I've ever been to said park, only a few miles outside of downtown Los Angeles. But with each step through the dusty bar area, complete with antique pinball machines, and a stage large enough for each of the thirteen members of house band Vaud and the Villains, I felt like we'd reached the film set for some sort of Hunter S. Thompson-inspired work. Yes, this was it. Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles: The Cirque Berzerk Story.

Cirque Berzerk, the only circus I can think of that features Death as a ringleader, and begins with the suicide of its main character as she falls deep into the Underworld, is certainly not your usual Barnum and Bailey production. "We know that clowns are scary," said Kevin Bourque, who plays Death, and also conceived this nightmarish world beneath the Burning Man Big Top, "and we embrace that. We like it."

It only took a few pre-show margaritas to steady the ship for the journey below, and our photographer Jacopo Campaiola even opted for some Balletine's Whiskey, the finest in all the land. If the land consisted of "Strange Things that Jacopo Can Drink and Somehow Still Function," that is.

The alcohol mixed with this crazy show in our heads as it began to send the synapses firing in all directions. Did a little person just go searching for a place in the theatre to hide a body? Was that the same scary clown that I just saw outside the tent wearing stilts and wielding an axe?

What was I to make of this mad collection of trampoline artists, aerialists, acrobats, strongmen, and contortionists? None of us had been to a circus since childhood, and certainly never anything like this. Generally, my childhood was free of live depictions of suicide and body-hiding.

But isn't that what the circus really is? A place for curiosities and misfits. It's why there's that phrase about "running away to join the circus," isn't it? Sprinkle in a dash of the macabre, some fuel for the fire (in this case, literal helpings of it), and some twisted music that only Death himself could dream up, and you've got Cirque Berzerk.

They say that a visit to Burning Man can change your life, and that you're unable to turn off the dreams and visions once you've pulled away from the campsite and every last matchstick has been removed, leaving no trace behind.

As the big top comes down and Cirque Berzerk returns the dusty park to what it was before, it's hard to forget these images. As the business of daily life returns, it's easy to feel the need to escape once again, though I'll settle for what you see here.

No Ballentine's required.

Story by Alex Storch.

Photos and video by Jacopo Campaiola.