I09: Since March, Punchdrunk theater company's immersive Shakespeare adaptation Sleep No More has converted an entire Manhattan loft building into a 100-room abandoned hotel from the 1940s.
During this almost three-hour performance, audience members must wander through six floors of bugfuck creepiness wearing Venetian masks and following dancers who wordlessly reenact scenes from Macbeth, which star bellhops, bartenders, guys, dolls, and copious amounts of interpretative dance.
5 comments:
This sounds like such a great idea. I have to say though the only reason I clicked this article in the first place was because the title was intriguing, and I am glas I did. These more interactive and submersive theatre experiences are becoming more and more popular, and I think with good reason. They give you a different experience than just sitting in a theatre. This one sounds sufficiently creepy and very well thought out. I like that you dont necessarily have to follow the "performance", and can really just explore if you want. I think that would be more fun. The space itself sounds really cool, and would be really interesting to even see in the daylight. I dont know if I would really appreciate the interpretive dance so much but I like that this show is around and hopefully more will continue to follow.
This looks absolutely incredible. I love that some "scenarios," as the write put it, can only be found if you're in the right place at the right time. I want to go just to explore all the rooms and touch EVERYTHING, since normally you can be kicked out for doing something like that. This just seems so unbelievably awesome.
Then again, I'm not so sure I would call this, "theatre." I think these increasingly popular interactive shows should be given their own name. There are so many different ways this performance style could be used to explore new things. I'm getting excited just writing about it. (And making me dream up things for next year's Playground.)
I have to wonder what it would be like to create something like this; How much is scripted? How much is improved? Is there a stage manager? Or are there 6? Who keeps track of the show and how?
FUCKING AWESOME are perhaps the two words that spring to my mind after I read this article. And like Sonia, the only reason I clicked on it in the first place was because the title was too scintillating to pass up.
Lots of theatre companies have done what I've heard referred to as "Wandeltheater" where the audience moves around a space or building or such and sees scenes enacted but it's always in a fairly strict sense of "wandering" since the company still wants to put on a coherent play. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company [woot woot!] down in Baltimore has done this for the past few years in some PHENOMENALLY spooky ruins for their phenomenal Macbeth. But this idea is decades old.
But to see it done like Sleep No More is inspiring. We talk a lot about "engaging" the audience but always with an unspoken desire to keep them separate from us. This blows that idea out of the water entirely. I'm sure something this interactive has it's potential drawbacks, and even dangers, but the mere idea of it is enthralling and if a writer from io9 is this impressed, I can't WAIT to see it.
This sounds SO INCREDIBLY COOL. It makes me wish I had $75, a bus ticket, and a few more days off from school. The description makes it sound like a combination of theatre and installation art, both of which I love. It would be so much fun both experiencing the piece and trying to deduce which part of the show each room represents. I find it fascinating that the author compared “Sleep No More” to a video game. Over break I had a long conversation with my cousin about video games as an art form that can communicate ideas and feeling through graphics and experiences. Both video games and this piece of interactive theatre have an element of personal experience and choice that could make experiencing them that much more powerful and memorable.
I've gone to something somewhat similar to this, and the interactive experience is really much different than traditional theatre. It becomes very interesting when the audience is allowed to participate in such an immersion experience. However, this sounds less like what most people would consider theatre, and more like a live video game. I think it would be amazing to work on a show like this.
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