![]() Some artists we have studied categorize their work as “ambient performance,” work that exists inside a worldA that is visible and continues to turn outside of the narrative. On Gawker one can learn “How to Find All the Nudity in Sleep No More ” In a Buzzfeed expose about Sleep No More, actors detail abuse they experienced from audience members during the show. On the subreddit r/sleepnomore, there are fanatics who detail potential tracks to guarantee a one-on-one with an actor. I wrote to Sleep No More detailing this experience but no one got back to me. “Be bold,” the man in the elevator tells players. In her book Performing Ground, Laura Levin says at her first time at Sleep No More, she was “less disconcerted by the eerie music, taxidermied animals, and bloody bodies than finding myself in a room alone with a bunch of masked men given license to do whatever they wanted” (Levin, 84). My experience was spoiled in a particularly sinister way because this audience member preyed on me when I was told to follow my nose and explore dark corners. Suddenly embarrassed, uncomfortable, and unsafe, I leave Sleep No More 45 minutes early. Then, he blows through a door that was clearly a backstage door and because of the reaction of the folks in black, who promptly eject him back out again, it dawns on me. He waves at me as I chase him through crowds, up and down stairs, and into closed rooms. For the rest of the night, I lose him and then find him again, staring at me from across the room under his audience mask. He touches the middle of her back, doubling her over her knees. He takes a lab coat off the wall, puts it on the shoulders of the woman I am with, and sits her in a chair. Myself, the incognito actor, and the other woman enter a small study. ![]() He’s an actor, posing as an audience member. Not only have I found an actor to follow, but he’s incognito. Then he gestures for me and the woman to follow him and he slides his mask back on, concealing his face. He emerges from under the bed with his white audience mask on backwards revealing his face. I’m joined by another curious woman and because we can’t see his face or his mask, we wait and watch. I notice that under one bed, there is a man doing a stylized movement sequence. I wander all the way to the top floor and find myself in a room that looks like a hospital ward with 12 or so beds in two rows. About fifteen minutes in, I still haven’t seen any actors. I wander around some rooms, poking through drawers, dipping my hands in tepid bathtubs and daring myself to open every door I find. I’m giddy at this point, ready to explore and happen upon a secret. He then encourages players to “be bold,” and kicks us off the elevator, free to independently roam the sprawling 6 floor hotel. The folks in black are “stage managers.” Don’t touch them either.Once my number is called, I enter an elevator with twenty or so other players and I meet my first and only explicit guide. While I wait for my number to be called, I am invited to purchase a cocktail. ![]() When I enter the McKittrick Hotel, I am given a white mask and a playing card. I wasn’t afraid of going alone, I was told this was the way I should consume this piece anyways. My friend refused to give me anything besides a reassurance that knowing me, I’d love it. Set in the sprawling McKittrick Hotel in NYC, Sleep No More is an immersive movement-based funhouse adaptation of Macbeth and in fall 2019, this research project finally afforded me the opportunity to catch one of the most commercially successful immersive performance in the world.Īfter dinner and drinks with a friend, I headed to Sleep No More alone. As a self-identified nut for participatory and immersive work, I am floored it took me this long to see Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More.
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