Sleep No More

Wow. This podcast really took me for a whirlwind. When I first started to listen to I thought it was going to be a boring play that I would have to listen to and write a blog about, but then… it started talking about things that were familiar to me like the Stanford prison experiment, and other experiments that I had learned in psychology class. I was so infatuated with this that I couldn’t stop listening.

 Sleep no more is a incarnation of am immerse, interactive work of theater created by British theater company. The production takes place at a block of warehouse in Manhattan, which the company turned into a abandoned hotel called the Mckittrick hotel. Sleep no more is set in a building with 6 floors of all theatrical action, in which many rooms have all different scene some of which are designed in the scene of a hospital, doctors office, children’s bedrooms, a cemetery, a ballroom, a padded cell and so on. 

The play is all hands on with the audience and actors. The production leads the audience on a chase through the different rooms, up and down the staircases. Sleep no more is the story of Macbeth, and the audience nor the actors are allowed to speak and is given no clues as to what is next. The actors wear no masks unlike the actors and perform passionate silent scenes, dance sequences, private and lonely scenes. The audience is instructed to remain silent and keep there masks on at all times, however they may move freely at their own pace for up to three hours. The audience can also follow one or any of the actors throughout the whole performance.

This is so incredible how something like this can make people act the way they do by just putting a mask over someone’s face. In the podcast, the actress that plays lady Macbeth said that once she was dancing in a glass box and a women came up to the glass and started throwing anything that she could possibly find at the glass where lady Macbeth was dancing. After a safeguard came up to her and asked her to stop she simply replied with “I didn’t know what I was doing”. The mask totally hides one identity, which I think is so incredible. At the end of the podcast they said that next time you walk into an elevator think about how you’re acting. Are you acting the way you are because your surrounding’s are acting that way or just because. When things are put in that perspective it makes me think about everything that I do. Do I do the things I do because of my surrounds and the society that I’m in or do I do them because I’m trained this way to do them. Another thing I think about is what if everyone wore masks and no one knew who anyone was… I wonder if people would still act the way they do. Sleep no more really made me think about these certain questions, and also made me curious to check out the sleep no more play. I will definitely be going to this play very soon.