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skygiants

Ahhh guys, I am so behind on booklogging but I have to take today to talk about MORE THEATER. This weekend

sandrylene and

wickedtrue (and

ms_ntropy but she was at a different time) were in NYC to see Sleep No More, which has just come to Manhattan.

And the frustrating thing is that, as I say, I want to take today to talk about it, but that's actually very difficult to do! Because Sleep No More is a very difficult experience to describe, first of all, and second I am afraid that if I describe too much I will accidentally spoil people who may yet have a chance to see it. But okay, I will try.

Sleep No More is immersive theater based on Macbeth and Rebecca; the whole five-story giant warehouse is part of the show. You are part of the show. You know that you're part of the show because before you're ushered in you are encouraged to be bold, forbidden to speak, and required to put on a mask that looks like this:

So officially you and all the other hordes of people seeing the show have now become very confused ghosts. You're let off somewhere at random in the building - it's different for each group of people - and you wander through the warehouse, which is now a 1930's Hitchcockian hotel, except for when it turns into a psychiatric ward or Birnam Wood. You open drawers and chests and read other people's mail politely thanking the Macbeths for the lovely party and find bloodstains and strange artifacts and hunt for the dead baby room that someone who saw the show before told you to look out for, except when you come across someone who's not wearing a mask walking briskly past you in the other direction and then you chase them the hell down because when you see what they're doing you might be able to figure out who they are and piece together some story, or at the very least see some interesting intepretive dance, or possibly a murder or bacchanalic orgy. You can spend all night chasing actors up and down and around the space, or you can stick to your own pattern of exploring and watch other masked ghosts poking around in likewise confused fashion and wait for bits of story to come to you, scrambling hastily out of the way when Macbeth and Banquo start getting into a knock-down drag-out fight in the place where you used to be sitting. Sometimes actors will collar you and whisper things in your ear; these are the only spoken lines in the whole show.

I saw

wickedtrue get accosted and licked by one of the three witches, and

sandrylene had a close encounter with the same witch. I did not get seduced by anyone, but Macduff did drop his glass in my bag accidentally during a party and sort of sheepishly had to fish it out. (He was understandably distraught at the time, as Mrs. Danvers - as best we could tell - was about to poison his wife.) At another point,

wickedtrue and I found ourselves in an empty hotel room where a gramophone had just started playing swing music; since it seemed the thing to do, we started to dance (although it got a bit undignified when we realized neither of us remembered how to lead.) We were giggling under our masks, but I suspect, thinking about it now, that we might have looked fairly unnerving ourselves to anyone watching from another room.

Some things that they don't seem to say anywhere in the information about the show, and that you should probably know:
- if you are going to have difficulties chasing actors up and down five flights of stairs all the time, there are no accommodations for you
- if you have migraines or anything else that might be triggered by BRIGHT FLASHING STROBE LIGHTS or ENORMOUS ROLLING PILES OF SMOKE, you should know that this may occur without warning
- if you may be triggered by stylized violence, sexual or otherwise, you should know that this may occur without warning
- if you may be triggered by actors suddenly taking off all their clothes in front of you, you should know that this may occur without warning
- seriously, if anything about the phrase 'surprise strobe-lit smoke-filled bacchanalic child-sacrificing orgy' sounds like it may be a problem for you, you really should know that this may occur without warning. And there is an off-chance you will get hit in the face with a dead baby.

ETA: And here is

wickedtrue's review!