5/7/2023 0 Comments Sleep no more sixth floor![]() Jonathan Martin has seen the show 114 times. Many of the other fans, like Jim and Donna, were inspired by the show to construct their own creative responses to the experience of the show. One of the many artistic projects the Starks have created from their passion for “Sleep No More ,” Jim’s custom 1:1 encounters are perhaps the purest distillation of what he sees as the show’s magic beyond 27th Street: fan fiction-as-immersive-theatre. It’s that intensity - at once deeply transgressive and uncannily reassuring - that Jim Stark has recreated tonight in Bay Ridge. Guests are transported to the 1930s via the immersive experience. Sometimes they might even kiss you, or give you a trinket to keep. They whisper words into your ear: fragments of Du Maurier’s “Rebecca ,” or of “Macbeth ” itself, or some hybrid of the two. They extend a hand, and Lady Macduff, or one of the Witches, or Hecate herself, might take you into a locked room. At certain designated moments in “Sleep No More ,” characters lock eyes with certain audience members - often those who have followed them most faithfully throughout a “loop” of action. The luckiest audience members, by popular fandom consensus, are those who get the “one on ones” (or “1:1s,” as members of the fandom refer to them on Tumblr). ![]() There is more than twenty-seven hours of material in the show, which, combined with the nightly cast rotations, makes it virtually impossible to see the same show twice, and allows superfans to collect vast catalogs of knowledge about the show in its endless possible permutations. They can follow characters, rummage through drawers in search of letters that might illuminate the story, or simply sit in a corner and listen to the eerie, 1930s-style music that weaves its way throughout the building. Masked audience members are free to roam (silently) anywhere in the six-story space, which includes a full-scale mental hospital, a Scottish town high street, a cemetery, a palatial estate, a forest, and the titular hotel itself. Set in a dreamlike, Hitchcockian (by way of Lynch) “McKittrick Hotel,” “Sleep No More,” located in a sprawling warehouse on 27th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan, is equal parts “Macbeth” and “Rebecca,” dance show and art installation, theatre piece and extended role-playing game. They debate which actors they think are strongest, and weakest, and whether or not their fandom has gone downhill since the halcyon days when they first discovered it. They create fan art for the characters they love most. They blog about their obsession on Tumblr. Jim, a forty-five-year-old artist and mixologist, and Donna, a forty-three-year-old substance abuse counselor - and the rest of the attendees of this party - are what you might call “superfans” of “Sleep No More,” an immersive, interactive theatre production by British theatre company Punchdrunk. But in the bedroom, we were in the world of the McKittrick Hotel. Out here in the living room of the Starks’ Brooklyn apartment, we’re at just another house party. The McKittrick Hotel, where “Sleep No More” takes place, is located on 27th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan. ![]() Jim’s wife Donna is sitting in the next room with ten or so of their closest friends. It’s thick with herbs, a torn page of a Bible, and a small vial of perfume so strong I can smell it through the lilac netting. ![]() He kisses me on the cheek and presses a sachet into my hands. One by one, he plucks the petals, repeating, “She loves me,” then “She loves my crown.” We’re standing by an altar strewn with herbs, a rosary, and religious icons. He takes me by the hand, pushes me up against the wall, and looks me in the eye. Jim Stark and I are alone in a bedroom that smells of dried herbs. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |