Similarly, any experience of the totality of the performance remains inaccessible: as Josephine Machon states, each individual’s experience of the show “would be unrepeatable were they to attend every performance across the entirety of said run” (31). Using Sleep No More as a case study, this paper will explore the ways in which audience engagement with performance in a virtual sphere – using such social media platforms as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to respond to the performance – foregrounds the tension between limits and potential in contemporary performance.įeaturing 100,000 square feet of performance space across five floors, Sleep No More’s McKittrick Hotel is physically immense – comprehending the space in its entirety is an improbable feat for the average spectator. From a practical standpoint, the interplay between the boundless and the boundaried shape the experience of Sleep No More, both in person and online. Worthen describes the production as “an experience that combines sensory overload with sensory deprivation” (87). Black-masked guides usher you down a hallway, but later coldly refuse entry. Doors which are closed are found to be locked, only to become accessible at some later point during the performance. Roaming from floor-to-floor and room-to-room, one can unexpectedly find themselves somewhere they’ve been before – an experience made especially uncanny by the ease and frequency with which it occurs (and recurs). The McKittrick Hotel – the grand-scale setting for Punchdrunk’s performance – possesses a maze-like geography. This darkness has more than a thematic purpose: it exercises control over the audience, limiting their movements and creating a clear division between that which is knowable and that which is not. The work, an immersive adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (with a number of influences from Hitchcock thrown in for good measure) takes to heart Macbeth’s entreaty, “Let not light see my black and deep desires” (I.iv), as darkness and secrecy pervade the performance space. The initial encounter with Sleep No More is of its entrance: a long, pitch-black, labyrinthine hallway, which slowly draws you ineluctably towards some uncertain destination, invisible until it is directly in front of you. “Me thought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
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