Night-Dreaming: Thoughts on Sleep No More

Hello Precipice fam! I hope the summer has been treating you kindly. Right now I am slouching ever-deeper into my couch in a sports bra in order to avoid the aggressive balmy heat and impending rain. Before I get started with my irregularly scheduled programming, I wanted to let you know:

1.  the URL of this blog has changed, cuz I thought of a better one. Reach me and my thoughts at https://theprecipiceof.blogspot.com/ from here on out.
2. I've set up a fancy system to let you know when I post next by sending some cute emails straight to your inbox. If you subscribe (click those three sexy lines next to the header) you'll get them.

OK back to business. On a rain-soaked night a couple weeks ago, I grabbed some discount tickets to Sleep No More, and walked (without an umbrella to wait outside the McKittrick Hotel, a venue that offers several events ranging from concerts to boozy brunches. 

First, let me say if you haven't seen the show and plan to, you might want to tune into another blog post. I went into SNM knowing practically nothing about the experience, and I wholeheartedly believe that the show is better when you get to understand it on your own terms. 

Sleep No More (even though you probably know) is an intensely immersive show based on Shakespeare's Macbeth that has a cult following and an even more cult-like feeling. It manifests like a creepy//sexy//bloody choose-your-own-dance-adventure and, unsurprisingly, I loved it. I was admitted into the hotel, told to check my belongings, handed a playing card, and ushered down a dark hall made up of discombobulating twists and turns. Suddenly, I arrived in the Manderley Bar feeling as if I arrived on the set of a dream. The bar was packed, jazz was playing, and drinks were being served. I headed to the bar and (bolstered by the vibe of magic and rule-breaking that seemed integral right away) stole an unattended anise drink off of the counter, and followed it with a glass of prosecco. 

A tall and apparently drunk man was calling out card numbers, and when 7 was called, I was led into a smaller room, handed the iconic mask, and then I was in an elevator. The operator told us that we could return to the bar at any time, stopped the elevator, and I squirmed a little with excitement until he pushed one of the audience members out, shut the door, and continued taking the rest of us to a different floor. Nothing is expected, I thought to myself as we exited the elevator into a graveyard that smelled like sweet smoke. Boy did that ring true. SNM has seven floors, 25 cast members, secret keys, secret rooms, and secret character arcs. Its cult following is so embedded partly because of how easy it is to see the show over and over, and never repeat your experience. 

I wandered around the first floor for only a few minutes before I saw Lady Macbeth in a sparkly shift booking it up a flight of stairs. I followed, and lost her, and found her again, as she joined one of the more incredible scenes in the show, the banquet scene. Time slows as the characters reveal their darker, more animalistic selves, and then the dinner ends as characters slowly leave the last-supper-table. Lady Macbeth stumbled to the lip of the stage, bleeding and reaching out, and inexplicably, I offered my hands to her. She leaned on me as she limped her way to the 5th floor, and for a brief moment, I was a character, however peripheral, in the world I was watching. Then the moment was over, and I watched her exquisite dancing while wandering through forests and towns and hospitals. People stripped, a baby was born, a heart was eaten, orgies were had. The spectacle was beyond anything I have ever been immersed in, and as the three hours flew by, I found more corridors that I had never seen, too many to explore. The show ended and I was brought back to the Manderlay bar in a daze. 

I decided to opt out of more drinks, and I chatted about the show through chattering teeth with my resident theater partner Rachel. Between our gasps of "Oh my god" and "We have to see it again", we discussed whether Sleep No More was immersion for immersion's sake. Neither of us knew a ton about Macbeth going in, and I felt like I knew even less while exiting. 

What I didn't expect was that there was hardly any script involved. I heard no words spoken, save a few that Lady Macbeth whispered to me. I've heard that people get whisked away into tiny rooms and then they hear monologues, but my Sleep No More experience was silent. 

Listen, I love dance as much as the next theater major, but it has always been the least accessible to me of the three "threats". I feel like dance is a nuanced language that I am not fluent in. Maybe I can say "hello," "goodbye", and "where is the bathroom" in dance, but I certainly can not have a jellicle-cat-level conversation. 

**By the way, if ANYONE can explain CATS to me, I am ready to hear about it**

What I am trying to say, is that despite seeing a lot of the storyline, I felt like I only understood snippets of the story. I don't think of that as critique, necessarily, I see it as a language barrier. HOWEVER,  if there's one language I do speak, it's the language of aesthetic, and Sleep No More's aesthetic was impeccable and delish to be a part of. 

So is Sleep No More immersion for immersion's sake? Maybe to some audience members.  Is that so bad though? If every show is different, then sometimes, the show probably carries more meaning. I could have wandered around empty rooms for three hours if I wanted to, and if I spoke dance, maybe my experience would be richer in a different way. Immersion is a type of theater all its own, and while there are probably better and worse shows, Sleep No More's ambition to create a collective and sentient dream, was successful, consistent (a MUST for theater, in my opinion) and awe-inspiring, even in the moments when it didn't make sense to me.

Even after I left the McKittrick, the real world seemed a little more mysterious. Falling asleep in the dark of my room, I half-anticipated a character to appear from underneath my bed and lead me down a secret staircase to another grand dreamscape.

**These are not my pictures! All found from sources on Google**