"Sleep No More" is based loosely on Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which London based compnay, Punchdrunk, interprets the bard's tale and creates a theatre experience. Known for transforming abandoned buildings into a performance space, Punchdrunk seeks to involve their audiences. Rather than passively watching action, Punchdrunk requires their audience to actively pursue the story and more importantly, make choices. The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) brought Punchdrunk to Boston as part of the Shakespeare Exploded series of A.R.T.'s 2009-2010 Season.
Punchdrunk's latest transformation is the recently abandoned Old Lincoln School in Brookline, making the "Sleep No More" experience part museum, part performance, part haunted house and part create your own adventure. Audience members are released into the school in small groups, with each group beginning in a different place. Some are sent down an empty hallway while others are ushered into certain rooms. Nearly every former classroom in the four story building is an element of the overall set. Audience members are free to wander through empty rooms and riffle through the books, notes and bedsheets lying around, although the low lighting and heavy fogging make extensive reading difficult. The eerie Hitchcook-esque music piped into each room and hallway add to the somewhat sinister nature of the evening, as do the white masks every audience member is asked to don.
What makes "Sleep No More" an amazing theatre experience is the create your own adventure element. I was free to roam empty rooms and revel in the incredible attention to detail, wondering what it all meant. While I roamed through graveyards (or gardens), bedrooms and offices, actors were performing a wordless interpretation of Macbeth elsewhere. When a friend led me into a large room (perhaps a former cafetorium?), I was privy to a slow motion, pantomimed banquet scene. The actors movements are incredibly fluid and mesmerizing, using dance and fight choreography to illustrate Shakespeare's drama fraught with tension. While some audience members followed actors from room to room, trailing specific plot threads; others held steady in a particular room, waiting for the next moment or situation to unfold.
I spent about an hour and a half exploring The Old Lincoln School, knowing I had missed plenty. I left knowing next to nothing about the "plot" of "Sleep No More," except that it certainly is not linear. Walking home, it was clear I will need to return to learn more, take in details I originally missed and create my next adventure.
http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/sleep-no-more
- KER
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