In the interactive adaptation of Macbeth, Sleep No More, the Paisley Witch Trials play a key role.  These historical events, unlike Shakespeare's fictional play, were the haunting of eleven year old Christian Shaw.  Shaw, an anxious little girl who had seven of her townspeople tried and killed for being witches, brought about a curse on the town of Green Gallows with her hysterical convictions.  One of the victims of her accusations was the witch Agnes Naismith. The tradition of witchcraft in Scotland explored in Macbeth and the endurance of the dark arts are demonstrated throughout, and especially in a particular one-on-one experience within, Sleep No More.

The character of Agnes Naismith in the play is a smartly dressed woman in her mid to late twenties.  Agnes Naismith was the most vocal of the witches in the trail that ended her life.  Her character within the play is just as bold.  She reads damning letters scattered throughout her town.  The last place she enters is the office of the Mac Crinain & Reid Private Detective Agency, named after other persons in her trial, where she scans the last document left on the desk and her fate is sealed.  She, in the tradition of witches, takes a guest of the Sleep No More experience and ensures the survival of her coven.  She choose me during my visit. 

I was lead into a dark and claustrophobic corridor.  She removed my mask, told me stories of materialistic little girls, and had me sign a document.  She asked, “Do you like to do favors for strangers in the dark?”  I nodded and she passed the document through flames.  It erased my name and left only the words “I sign myself over to her.” I unwittingly signed away my life to the cauldron.  The same witch who supposedly set loose demons on Christian Shaw was adopting sisters. Agnes Naismith cursed her town at the Green Gallows, and now spends her time at Sleep No More inducted witches into her coven for the injustices done to her.  Her coven may even be of the same denomination as the witches of Macbeth. 

It would stand to reason that all Scottish witches believe that "fair is foul, and foul is fair" (I.i.11).  Agnes Naismith did after all have me sign a contract under dubious pretenses and for shadowy reasons.  These witches are all secretive about their motives.  They rely solely on the willingness of their members to unquestioningly act.  The witches of Macbeth never protest their prophecies or misdeeds, as I never debated any of the things Agnes asked me to do.  They follow an unspoken bond of sisterhood.  They share a love of things creepy, dangerous, or foul. They are women who meet in “thunder, lightning, or in rain” and “hover through the fog and filthy air” (I.i.2-12).  Agnes and the witches thrive in the cold murk, and relish in the havoc they inspire in changeable characters such as Macbeth and Christian Shaw. They maintain the coven above all else. They indulge their dark and other-worldly desire for chaos.  The coven is deeply anchored in a magical second world.  Sleep no More is itself an heterotopia, but the band of witches within them is an even more estranged existence.  They follow different rules, and teach different lessons than teachers of humanity.  The witches are a connection to the afterlife, the underworld, and every spirit world transcending any particular religion.  They follow their witches brew and exist beyond earthly limitations. Macbeth’s witches and Agnes offer the audience a window into their world, the world of their dark sisterhood.

Agnes Naismith’s one-on-one invites a member of the audience into the secrecy of a coven.  They become women who do favors for superiors in the dark.  They sign themselves away to the powers greater than them the way the Weird Sisters are indebted to Hecate. The witches of Scotland are banded together and united in fostering trouble.  Agnes Naismith, in this adaptation, takes an anonymous witness and immerses them in the attractive conspiracy of witchcraft.