Last night we experienced “Sleep No More”. What is “Sleep No More”? Well I’m glad you asked. Wiki says: Sleep No More is an immersive theatre installation created by British theatre company Punchdrunk based on Punchdrunk’s original 2003 London production and their 2009 collaboration with Boston’s American Repertory Theatre. The company reinvented Sleep No More in a co-production with EMURSIVE, which began performances at The McKittrick Hotel in Manhattan on March 7, 2011.
To put into my own words? It’s a interactive theater experience. Everyone who attends is required to wear a mask the entire time, the only people not wearing the mask are the characters. The storyline is based around Macbeth, with characters appearing in the fictitious McKittrick Hotel at random times. It is a 3 hour experience of walking around 5 stories and opening every drawer, closet you can possibly find to put clues together, or just be nosy. There’s rules: You can never take your mask off, you can never talk. The only people allowed to talk are the characters who appear and act out scenes as the audience surrounds them and then chases them throughout the hotel to see where they end up next. There’s multiple floors so there’s many characters and scenes happening at the same time which eventually ties them all together, but I found it fun to just explore for the sake of exploring. I was sitting on beds going through documents in someone’s briefcase, turning jars upside down, trying to find keys to unlock lockboxes, stuffing my face with candy in the candy store that is left unattended to.
If you’re in NYC, you must go. It ends very soon and tickets are $75 a piece, but it’s a experience you won’t forget. Afterwards for the next few hours we felt like we were still in the hotel, it messes with your mind. We found ourselves watching a tag football game after leaving with our masks in hand forgetting that the players weren’t actors and we are in “reality” now.
Go see it!
Picture of us afterwards:
And pictures I found online as using a phone/camera is strictly prohibited (and fairly so, it ruins the romantic notion if you see someone tweeting in a corner):
