Sleep no more tickets new york4/14/2023 ![]() ![]() The irony of watching dance succeed in a theatrical environment, while it struggles so often on its own, is not lost on Doyle. In addition to choreographing “Sleep No More,” she directed it with Barrett. As his prize, the organizers paired him with Maxine Doyle, who had run her own dance company and is now a regular Punchdrunk collaborator. All Barrett needed was a choreographer.īarrett entered his idea of mixing theater and dance into a contest to fund a new dance production and won. Intense physical duets would replace language. Henceforth, movement, rather than words, became “the core ethos” of Punchdrunk. “Her physicality in the space was just so beautiful. The solution landed in a production of “The Tempest” Barrett had hired a dancer to portray the spirits. With all the dreamlike fantasy and mystery he so loved creating - especially through sound, his conceptual starting point - he found that hearing actors speak was “a letdown.” It broke the spell. He launched site-specific performances of such works as Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” one production wormed through abandoned tunnels under London’s Waterloo train station.īut as the projects grew larger - inhabiting warehouses and old distilleries - Barrett realized something surprising: Language was getting in the way. If you’re bored with a scene, leave and find another. People move through the set just as the actors do, spurred on by the thrill of discovery. He founded Punchdrunk in 2000 to goose the whole notion of theater. An oily-voiced man in a tux appeared and led our group into an elevator, where he admonished us not to speak to one another throughout our stay. Cool, right? As long as I didn’t get lost. This place promised to be like an enormous, haunted Dunsinane - a stylized, Britishy “Macbeth” theme park. With the crowd an anonymous, expressionless blur, you focus more on the performers and on your experience.Īt the moment, mine was one of guarded anticipation. With this production, slated through June 25, Punchdrunk is making its long-awaited New York debut.Īs we filed through the passageways, we were told to keep our masks on at all times to intensify the event. Chances are, you’ll walk away from “Sleep No More” obsessing over its myriad details, chewing over your peculiarly intoxicating trip in a way no traditional theatergoing can match.Ī hit in London, “Sleep No More” enjoyed a sold-out run in an old Boston school in 2009. It’s a fully functional feedback loop, customized by you, perfect for Twitter-age attention spans. Occasionally performers will burst into a room to enact a scene you can follow them or poke about in the vast labyrinth at your own pace. The London-based company has taken over three adjacent warehouses in Chelsea and decorated more than 100 antique-cluttered, dimly lit rooms inside for its production called “Sleep No More,” an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” The idea is, the audience wanders at will through the rooms and corridors, piecing together a narrative from the scattered personal effects and hints of lives lived there. Ghosts, darkness, shades of anxiety - welcome to the immersive experience of Punchdrunk Theatre. White and hollow-eyed, they made us look like ghost birds. ![]() So would I, I thought, glad we were trailing about a dozen others, all of us a bit disoriented in our masquerade masks with protruding beaks. NEW YORK - Geez, I would hate to go through this alone,” said my friend John as we made our way in the dark down a winding corridor.
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