In my reading through the Scalar book, I encountered many students focusing on the novel and interesting form of production that Sleep No More had. They detailed the unique way the story was conveyed to the audience and the things it brought to the table. Each of them enjoyed this strange production, though in separate ways. None of them were opposed to its peculiar nature. The things my classmates enjoyed mostly were the interactive nature of the play and the amount of detail in its creation.

    I remember that the detail is what immediately struck me about the experience. None of the actors broke character from the entrance to the end. It seemed very similar to a haunted house in this way— causing a sense of uneasiness from beginning to end. Each note I read and each object placed anywhere in the experience seemed like it was placed intentionally and thought was put into it being there. Nothing was extraneous or unnatural to the experience. I remember the notes I read all seemed related in some way or another. Nothing seemed out of place. Nic quotes the New York Times, saying,  “Each room has a backstory that has been painstakingly detailed and designed." The detail is the basis that makes the interactive nature succeed so much.

    The entire experience is interactive. It allows the audience to do what they want, when they want. They can choose to follow characters, or focus on the environment. Harmony expands upon this, “Whether you decide to follow a character up four flights of steps of stay in the room they just left, everything that you see is based off of a choice that you made.” Shannon’s description of entering Sleep No More as more of a Role-Playing game conveys precisely this. The audience is tasked with doing much more than that of a movie or play audience. The possibility of missing pieces of story is what drives many of the audience members. It was interesting for me to follow characters, then switch as they interacted with other characters, like pool balls colliding. The interactivity is the most unique characteristic of Sleep No More.

    The fact that I have difficulty finding a word to describe Sleep No More is what makes it so interesting. It is like nothing I have encountered before, but is made up of all experiences I have had— the eeriness of a haunted house, the detail of an RPG, and the narrative aspect of a play. The mixture of these aspects is something that has not been done before and I think it benefits greatly from this.