Sleep no more guide4/18/2023 The audience can control how they explore, what they look for, and what trail they are following. The excitement of wondering “is this part of the show” reframes and animates the regular world inside and outside of the frame, This is an exciting kind of work for a participatory audience. Zuppa Theatre Co’s This is Nowhere functions this way, as an audience roams around downtown Halifax constructing a blueprint for the future. Some artists we have studied categorize their work as “ambient performance,” work that exists inside a worldA that is visible and continues to turn outside of the narrative. On Gawker one can learn “How to Find All the Nudity in Sleep No More ” In a Buzzfeed expose about Sleep No More, actors detail abuse they experienced from audience members during the show. On the subreddit r/sleepnomore, there are fanatics who detail potential tracks to guarantee a one-on-one with an actor. I wrote to Sleep No More detailing this experience but no one got back to me. “Be bold,” the man in the elevator tells players. In her book Performing Ground, Laura Levin says at her first time at Sleep No More, she was “less disconcerted by the eerie music, taxidermied animals, and bloody bodies than finding myself in a room alone with a bunch of masked men given license to do whatever they wanted” (Levin, 84). My experience was spoiled in a particularly sinister way because this audience member preyed on me when I was told to follow my nose and explore dark corners. Suddenly embarrassed, uncomfortable, and unsafe, I leave Sleep No More 45 minutes early. Then, he blows through a door that was clearly a backstage door and because of the reaction of the folks in black, who promptly eject him back out again, it dawns on me. He waves at me as I chase him through crowds, up and down stairs, and into closed rooms. For the rest of the night, I lose him and then find him again, staring at me from across the room under his audience mask. He touches the middle of her back, doubling her over her knees. He takes a lab coat off the wall, puts it on the shoulders of the woman I am with, and sits her in a chair. Myself, the incognito actor, and the other woman enter a small study. He’s an actor, posing as an audience member. Not only have I found an actor to follow, but he’s incognito. Then he gestures for me and the woman to follow him and he slides his mask back on, concealing his face. He emerges from under the bed with his white audience mask on backwards revealing his face. I’m joined by another curious woman and because we can’t see his face or his mask, we wait and watch. I notice that under one bed, there is a man doing a stylized movement sequence. I wander all the way to the top floor and find myself in a room that looks like a hospital ward with 12 or so beds in two rows. About fifteen minutes in, I still haven’t seen any actors. I wander around some rooms, poking through drawers, dipping my hands in tepid bathtubs and daring myself to open every door I find. I’m giddy at this point, ready to explore and happen upon a secret. He then encourages players to “be bold,” and kicks us off the elevator, free to independently roam the sprawling 6 floor hotel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |