Friday, February 07, 2025
Sleep No More, Soon to Be Put to Rest, Will Live On in Its Dancers
Dance Magazine: The award-winning immersive-theater experience Sleep No More, which has haunted Manhattan’s McKittrick Hotel since 2011, will welcome its last guests in January 2025, after initially scheduling its closure for January 2024 and repeatedly extending performance dates. Created by British theater company Punchdrunk and produced by Emursive, the show uses dance and minimal dialogue to shape its interwoven narratives, primarily the story of Macbeth, in a film-noir setting.
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4 comments:
This show sounds incredible, immersive theatre is so cool! I loved the point they made about it being the individual dancers’ responsibility to preserve the show’s integrity. I imagine that gives the dancers a sense of agency that might not be present in many other shows. I also wonder about the security for the performers since the audience roams around the performance space and interacts with the dancers. The article mentioned the hiring of intimacy coordinators in 2019, but I’d like to know more about what steps were taken to ensure the performers’ safety. Those concerns aside, this concept seems fascinating and I love that it has sprouted a whole new genre of dance theatre. I also found Ida Saki’s comment about dance and storytelling being inextricable so beautiful, because it’s true. Dancers are storytellers, and dance demands for stories to be told. I hope to be able to experience one of its descendants in the future!
I adore immersive theater! Can your career be in immersive theater? ( I guess I'll find out!) I've always been drawn to theater and found spaces. Mayhaps in part to the fact that my high school didn't really have a theater. There's something about the timelessness of spaces that melds so nicely with the ephemeralness of theater. All shows coming to the theaters, for the most part, stay. Sets are built, lights are focused, Actors come and go, countless people interact and work within these spaces. When all is said and done, they leave. I suppose what's so interesting about theater and found spaces is the spaces also gain an ephemeral nature. an old creepy basement becomes a backdrop for a story that happens for one night, an old steel mill becomes a set of Hamlet. Found faces add a whole other level of realness and connection to its theatrical work. It comes with its own set difficulties, I highly recommend being a part of an immersive theater piece and a theater and/or in work in found spaces at some point in your career!
I have sadly never seen Sleep No More but I know a lot about it. My theater director in high school spent some time working on it, and we have put on many immersive productions inspired by it. I love immersive theater and it holds a very special place in my heart. I love the problem solving that immersive theater forces you to do. It’s very much like a real life video game and I love that aspect of it. You have to approach it in a way you might approach programming a game. There will inevitably be someone who tries to “break the game”, how do you prevent that? How do you hide your speakers so they don’t ruin the immersion? Are the signs clear? Everyone experiences the production differently and it’s different every time you go. The performers involved in it are incredibly talented and it takes an immense amount of skill and commitment to be an actor/dancer for Sleep No More. I wish I was able to have seen Sleep No More while it was up, I tried and was unsuccessful, but Punchdrunk will put on more shows that I’ll see in the future.
I have never really heard of immersive theatre until a couple of weeks ago and this article came at basically the perfect time for me to read. I am super sad to hear that Sleep No More is going to be put to rest soon because I would have really enjoyed attending and seeing what immersive theatre has to offer. I wonder if immersive theatre will pick up a lot of traction and become the new big thing and that’s how theatre and the entertainment industry stays alive and blooming. I wonder what designing for immersive theatre is like because the audience is literally in the play with you and not sitting 6 feet away in the audience of the theatre. They are basically choosing their own path and their own story to follow which just seems like a completely new and different challenge to design for. I wonder if CMU will ever do an immersive theatre show.
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