10,000+ nights

I just got back from a book event at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center for a book event celebrating the launch of 10,000+ nights: Theatre Before the Plague by Marvin Carlson.

The book is a sequel to a previous book Carlson wrote recounting 50 years of theatre going and ending in 2010. This noticeably slimmer volume covers 2010 through 2019, with discussions of Sleep No More, Blood Knot, Mr. Burns, An Octoroon, Hamilton, and Great Comet among other plays.

During his talk, Carlson suggested that the movement toward immersive theatre was one of the big trends in New York prior to the shutdown related to Covid. Sadly, there hasn't been as much immersive theatre since, though I did enjoy the immersive Great Gatsby last year. I was surprised at how optimistic Carlson was about the future, predicting that all the social distancing would remind us of the indispensability of live performance.

Tomorrow night, I'll be enjoying a live performance of David Willinger's new play Bring Them Back at Theater for the New City. Then on Saturday I have the first rehearsal for a staged reading of Snip o' the Shears, which will be presented at the Hamilton Grange Library on June 1st at 1:00 pm. I hope you can make it!

Meow Wolf

Today I visited Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If you are not familiar with it, Meow Wolf provides both a massive art installation and a colossal piece of immersive theatre.

Known as The House of Eternal Return, the installation was launched with support from George R.R. Martin, the author of Game of Thrones, so there is definitely a storytelling aspect to it. However, some visitors prefer to simply walk around and take in the aesthetics.

As you enter, you see a two-story house, but an anomaly in space and time his fractured it. A refrigerator opens into another world, you can crawl right through the fireplace like it's a Magritte painting, and if you slide down a shoot in the back of a dryer, you might find out where all those lost socks ended up.

Unlike other works of immersive theatre, such as Sleep No More, there are no performers. There are, however, staff members in white lab coats to ensure people's safety, and they can aid you if you need to get out of the installation and back to normalcy. I overheard one person asking about the audience, and the man in the lab coat clarified that there was no audience here, only participants.

Each participant ultimately makes his or her own experience, but there is a story behind the house, if you want to look for it. My sister told me to look in the mailbox, but when I did, there was nothing in it. When I went to the living room, however, I found a brown envelope with some documents inside. "Do those help?" a woman asked.

I said I didn't know if they helped, but they were interesting, as they did seem to shed some light on the anomaly that had disrupted a seemingly normal house.

Meow Wolf provides worlds to explore, but it also provides a story. You might encounter that story's beginning, middle, and end, though not necessarily in that order. In addition to the documents in the envelope, there are notes left throughout the house, journals you can flip through, even appointment books you can examine. There are also video screens with headphones that supply an interesting narration of at least one version of the events leading to the fracturing of the house.

Children are welcome, and although there are dark aspects to the story, the kids won't necessarily pick up on them. Older people and folks with limited mobility might find it more difficult to navigate the rooms, though. Some spaces are small, but when you squeeze through, there's usually something fascinating waiting for you on the other side.

If you start getting sensory overload, you can always take a break in the café outside the installation, and if you want to go back in later, you can. That means even if you're not sure Meow Wolf is going to be your thing, there is little risk in giving it a try.

Sleep No More

Last night, I finally saw Punchdrunk's Sleep No More. A couple of years ago, I had the good fortune of seeing Woodshed Collective's The Tenant, another immersive theatre experience. At the time, The Tenant rather suffered in the press due to comparisons with the more lavishly produced British import. However, as much as I enjoyed Sleep No More, I find that in retrospect, The Tenant deserved more credit than it got.

Sleep No More, as most theatre-going New Yorkers know by now, is the massive walk-through ambiance drama currently ensconced in the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea. Though based loosely on Macbeth, don't expect a faithful production of Shakespeare. Audience members, referred to as "guests," check in at appointed times and are handed playing cards as their "room keys." This is the first device to split people up, as Sleep No More is a decidedly individual experience.

As guests wait in the ballroom, an announcer calls out numbers. When the number on your card is called, you are invited to the next room where you are given instructions, as well as a Venetian-style mask, which must be worn at all times. Some of the people in the room are invited into an elevator, again splitting people up, while the other guests wait for the next one. The elevator operator then lets people off on various floors. If you were expecting to spend the evening with a friend, forget about it. The producers of the show are determined to separate you.

And why? Because that's the best way to experience the adventure. And adventure really is a better word than "play" or "show." This is a theatre piece that is almost entirely about the design elements. There are actors who wander about, and audience members instinctively follow them, expecting the performers to, well, you know, perform. Many of the performances are decidedly mundane, however, though quite provocative. A man dusts dirt from a human skull. A woman strips with the aid of a nurse and washes herself in a bathtub, trying desperately to remove blood from her hands. A man with an umbrella buries a small parcel in a graveyard. These performances are, as some critics would have it, "post-dramatic."

But ah, what a set! While the non-profit Woodshed Collective did an admirable job with the budget they had for The Tenant, Sleep No More shows what you can do when money is no object. Woodshed offered their performances for free, while tickets to Sleep No More start at a hundred dollars. Once inside, though, you see where your ticket price has gone. A run-down building in Chelsea has been transformed into not just a mid-century British Hotel, but also into a hospital, a brick-paved street of shops, even a whole forest. The taxidermy alone must have cost a fortune. (Oh yes, there will be taxidermy.)

Though there is some muttering of phrases here and there, the performances in Sleep No More are for the most part non-verbal. This was the biggest difference between it and The Tenant. While audience members for The Tenant could overhear a myriad of different conversations, often happening at the same time in different parts of the building, there is little to hear in Sleep No More, other than the intense music and sound effects constantly pumped through the speaker system. Rather than traditional scenes, the characters perform athletic dance numbers, frequently flipping each other's bodies over in movements that are simultaneously violent and sexually suggestive.

Like The Tenant, Sleep No More ultimately guides the entire audience into a large room for the climax of the piece. It is here, and in the ballroom afterward, that guests can reunite with the rest of their party. There are other major scenes as well, such as the murder (which I heard about, but missed) and a wild dance reminiscent of the Hecate scene in Macbeth (which I did catch). The performers tend to gather large groups together for these scenes, so you will probably see some though not all of them. With so much to explore, it really does not matter how many of these "scenes" you catch anyway. While in The Tenant there was a clear plot, in Sleep No More the atmosphere does not merely serve the show--the atmosphere IS the show.

If you're interested in Sleep No More, check out the website here:

SLEEP NO MORE

To find out about Woodshed Collective, which produced The Tenant in 2011, click here:

Woodshed Collective