Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
Dec. 28th, 2012 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swagmancer2012 has been a good year for theatre, hooboy.
I have to say that for being a supposedly cursed play, Macbeth sure does get produced a lot. I'd seen... four? Maybe five productions of it before last night. Way more than I've seen of any other Shakespeare, either way. It might be because I've seen so many interpretations (some better than others) that I'm rather fond of it. Or maybe that's the witchcraft.
Anyway, last night John and I went to see - 'experience' might be a better word - a wholly unique adaptation being put on in New York City: Sleep No More. It is truly an adaptation in that almost none of Shakespeare's original text is present, and in that the format is unlike most theatre. The production takes place on several floors of a building, and the audience - given white plastic masks and instructed not to speak - is free to wander around the space, to poke into drawers and around set pieces. You may or may not run into an actor or two at any given time, and you can try to follow a specific character when they leave the space, but... that doesn't always work.
When you add up everything that happens in Sleep No More, there's over 14 hours of material, but each guest only gets about a two-and-a-half hours' worth of experience. Before the experience begins, guests are advised not to 'cling to each other,' and John and I got separated about as early on as you possibly could...
Here follows spoilers, of a sort. Although anyone's experience is guaranteed to be unique, this does give a little bit away about the space and atmosphere.
Guests are released into the space in waves: you get invited in to the building, get a chance to check your coats, sign in, and then are directed up to this old-timey lounge where a man with a haunting voice and undefinable accent eventually directs your group to walk toward the curtained-off area on one side of the lounge. Behind that curtain is a freight elevator, which is how groups are eventually released into the performance space. John and I got in line, but as he passed through the curtain, I was stopped. They'd reached capacity for that trip. After a moment haunting-voice guy comes back out and gets right in my face - imagine someone easily 6 inches taller than you looking down with a thousand-mile stare, putting his hand on your chest and droning, "Let's move back, please."
And that was how my experience began: getting isolated from the only other person I knew there (although I had figured we'd split up eventually) and set free in the space on my own.
Typing up everything that I witnessed in the two and a half hours would take almost as long, so I'll stick to some highlights. First: I learned pretty early on that there were limits to the audience's freedom. Another brief explanation: in addition to the guests and actors, there are people wearing black masks who are there to monitor the space. Early on I found a room filled with witchcraft material, and picked up one of the flickering electric candles in order to examine the shadowier corners of the room. Afterwards, thinking I was being clever, I tried to take one of the candles back out into the hallway with me. A black mask spied me, shook their head and pointed back into the room. So much for being clever.
Next: tiptoeing through a nearly pitch-black graveyard to find a bedroom with a small crowd of white masks gathered around, and an unmasked man sitting in the center. There were papers nearby, I picked one up and read the letter written there. It was signed 'MacBeth.' I looked up to the man, feeling oddly proud that I'd managed to find him.
The asylum. One floor of the building is set up as a very appropriately creepy mental hospital. Although I found it in some ways disappointing (not enough happened up there, at least not while I was wandering around), the atmosphere was incredible. One of my favorite spaces in the whole place was a room with a wooden slab in the center, a discarded straitjacket, and chalk writing all over the walls. There was also a forest up there, and that was where I witnessed a very cool scene involving a locked gate and a crawl through the brush.
THE WITCHES. The Witches were by far my favorite part. I was so happy the first time I came across them, carousing with whisky shots in a space that looked like a hotel bar. I also had my own little personal moment with one of the witches much later on, where she walked up to me and fondled my tie and put her hands on my shoulders - the idea came up a few times that the witches could see us, the audience, when none of the other characters could. So, so awesome. I scrambled to follow them whenever I could manage it, though I got lost a couple of times on the way.
That's enough for highlights, I think, but man, I'm still remembering all the little things I saw and felt and experienced while I was there. I would definitely go again - so long as the run keeps getting extended into infinity, the way it has been all year.
I have to say that for being a supposedly cursed play, Macbeth sure does get produced a lot. I'd seen... four? Maybe five productions of it before last night. Way more than I've seen of any other Shakespeare, either way. It might be because I've seen so many interpretations (some better than others) that I'm rather fond of it. Or maybe that's the witchcraft.
Anyway, last night John and I went to see - 'experience' might be a better word - a wholly unique adaptation being put on in New York City: Sleep No More. It is truly an adaptation in that almost none of Shakespeare's original text is present, and in that the format is unlike most theatre. The production takes place on several floors of a building, and the audience - given white plastic masks and instructed not to speak - is free to wander around the space, to poke into drawers and around set pieces. You may or may not run into an actor or two at any given time, and you can try to follow a specific character when they leave the space, but... that doesn't always work.
When you add up everything that happens in Sleep No More, there's over 14 hours of material, but each guest only gets about a two-and-a-half hours' worth of experience. Before the experience begins, guests are advised not to 'cling to each other,' and John and I got separated about as early on as you possibly could...
Here follows spoilers, of a sort. Although anyone's experience is guaranteed to be unique, this does give a little bit away about the space and atmosphere.
Guests are released into the space in waves: you get invited in to the building, get a chance to check your coats, sign in, and then are directed up to this old-timey lounge where a man with a haunting voice and undefinable accent eventually directs your group to walk toward the curtained-off area on one side of the lounge. Behind that curtain is a freight elevator, which is how groups are eventually released into the performance space. John and I got in line, but as he passed through the curtain, I was stopped. They'd reached capacity for that trip. After a moment haunting-voice guy comes back out and gets right in my face - imagine someone easily 6 inches taller than you looking down with a thousand-mile stare, putting his hand on your chest and droning, "Let's move back, please."
And that was how my experience began: getting isolated from the only other person I knew there (although I had figured we'd split up eventually) and set free in the space on my own.
Typing up everything that I witnessed in the two and a half hours would take almost as long, so I'll stick to some highlights. First: I learned pretty early on that there were limits to the audience's freedom. Another brief explanation: in addition to the guests and actors, there are people wearing black masks who are there to monitor the space. Early on I found a room filled with witchcraft material, and picked up one of the flickering electric candles in order to examine the shadowier corners of the room. Afterwards, thinking I was being clever, I tried to take one of the candles back out into the hallway with me. A black mask spied me, shook their head and pointed back into the room. So much for being clever.
Next: tiptoeing through a nearly pitch-black graveyard to find a bedroom with a small crowd of white masks gathered around, and an unmasked man sitting in the center. There were papers nearby, I picked one up and read the letter written there. It was signed 'MacBeth.' I looked up to the man, feeling oddly proud that I'd managed to find him.
The asylum. One floor of the building is set up as a very appropriately creepy mental hospital. Although I found it in some ways disappointing (not enough happened up there, at least not while I was wandering around), the atmosphere was incredible. One of my favorite spaces in the whole place was a room with a wooden slab in the center, a discarded straitjacket, and chalk writing all over the walls. There was also a forest up there, and that was where I witnessed a very cool scene involving a locked gate and a crawl through the brush.
THE WITCHES. The Witches were by far my favorite part. I was so happy the first time I came across them, carousing with whisky shots in a space that looked like a hotel bar. I also had my own little personal moment with one of the witches much later on, where she walked up to me and fondled my tie and put her hands on my shoulders - the idea came up a few times that the witches could see us, the audience, when none of the other characters could. So, so awesome. I scrambled to follow them whenever I could manage it, though I got lost a couple of times on the way.
That's enough for highlights, I think, but man, I'm still remembering all the little things I saw and felt and experienced while I was there. I would definitely go again - so long as the run keeps getting extended into infinity, the way it has been all year.
