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• 1 2015-11-17T14:19:16-08:00 I Was Really Confused, But That is a Good Thing 29 By Jordan Imp plain 2015-12-09T14:16:07-08:00 Sleep No More was one of the most confusing things I've done. As in I was not sure what was actually going on for about two and half hours of our three hour visit. First off, the elevator guy just dumps you off on whatever floor he feels like it, and its not like you can tell if you are going up or down, or even moving so you get off the elevator and there are just rooms in front of you and no rules to help at all with deciphering what is happening. In the McKittrick Hotel "Fair is foul and foul is fair" as just about any journey through dark and twisted place is good and bad and kind of makes no sense (1.1.11). 
  
  
  This second world that Sleep No More presents is entirely of the players or persons creation. You are viewing your own version of the tale of Macbeth. You can watch forward, backward, inside out, right side up, or just give up because its too hard and just leave the world incomplete. The three hours and three showing don't really serve to help find the play of Macbeth and all the important scenes, but to instead find all of the missing pieces to your story.
  
  Every new run through of Sleep No More will yield a new story, or if you beyond unlucky, you will the exact same thing. When seeing the production again, just as in video game, you are presented with new perspectives as you now know what you are already saw and created and now you crave more. Almost entirely new game or play is seen with every walkthrough since you can never see every action that is happening at the same time.
  
  In this way, Sleep No More is incredibly reminiscent of pretty much every video game, whether you are the player or the character. You are thrown into this entirely new environment where you have to figure what you are doing and what it is you have to do. Where do I go, what is important to the quest and what is just a fun little side quest. The world of Sleep No More also changes up on you, and with new characters that really spice things up since it takes what you know about Macbeth and throws it out window.
  
  All in all, Sleep No More offers up a new and refreshing take on media and entertainment as it tries to have the player, or in the case of this being reality, you the human embark on your adventure piecing together all the little hints and easter eggs to construct what exactly is going in this creepy and dark world. With this, you the human, is able to draw your own conclusions about what is that happens that you do not see the play that Shakespeare presents, but instead you see the play that you see, that is a direct result of your actions because once you pass through the "hell gate," you don't know what you are going to see (2.3.2). 
• 1 2015-11-17T14:07:32-08:00 "Chance May Crown Me King": Enacting Fate and Free Will 24 by Shannon McHugh image_header 2015-11-18T18:31:06-08:00
  You enter Macbeth’s infernal realm through an antiquated hotel elevator. A dapper young man in a tailcoat is your “porter of hell gate” (2.3.1-2). He gazes over your huddled group with playful malevolence, stopping the car at intervals to eject passengers into the misty darkness. He is purposeful in separating loved ones: “This is a journey,” he croons, “best undertaken alone.”
  
  
  What astonishes is not the creators’ adaptation of Shakespeare, but rather their accomplishment in world-building. Sets are intricately detailed; the noir soundtrack is disquieting. The otherworldly effect is enhanced by the donning of full Venetian-style bauta masks and the strict code of silence (even the actors speak only rarely). Guests have the hair-raising sense that, having accepted Macbeth’s offer of diabolical hospitality, they are at nearly as much risk as Duncan. The production allows audiences to cross a threshold into another universe, a thrill that would have resonated with early modern consumers of Dante’s Inferno, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, and Shakespeare’s Tempest.
   
  The deep engagedness engendered by the immersive environment dovetails with one of Macbeth’s central themes: the conflict of fate versus free will. At a more traditional performance, the spectator reflects on who is in control, providence or protagonist, from the safety of her seat, able to judge the debate, perhaps, but not to join it. In Sleep No More (henceforth SNM), she embodies the debate in her every action. Turn left or right? Follow Macbeth or linger in the lobby? The guest is painfully aware that every decision may lead to a delight or a dead end. One of the best features of SNM, then, is its privileging of individual experience, emphasized from the moment the guest is cast out from the elevator solus.
   
  The lucky wanderer may indeed stumble into a happy outcome by relying on fate, hoping, as the Scottish king did, that “chance may crown me / without my stir” (1.3.146-47). But in the end, the McKittrick demands more of the guests whom it hosts. Collaboration is the production’s cost and its great distinguishing success. When participants step into the story of SNM, they find that the rules of this world reward the enactment of will—and a will to play. Indeed, it is best to approach SNM not as theater, but as a different sort of fictional immersion: a role-playing game. (Reviewers at New York Magazine’s Vulture and others have noted the similarity.) In this regard, the many high-culture lovers in attendance find themselves unwitting participants in the most mainstream live action role-playing on offer.
  
  
  
  Those who study LARPing and video games, from new literacy scholars to designers like Ted Talk-er Jane McGonigal, have noted that they teach skills like risk-taking and self-motivation. In its function, SNM encourages its guests to recognize the power of action and free will, much like Shakespeare’s play. In this happy hellscape, to give too much credence to providence is to end up as deluded as Macbeth.