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1 2015-11-23T05:17:47-08:00 Nicolas Runnels b7b3e7822728a6b2b71f37e4c13738691d0e366f 6827 1 plain 2015-11-23T05:17:47-08:00 Nicolas Runnels b7b3e7822728a6b2b71f37e4c13738691d0e366fThis page is referenced by:
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2015-11-17T14:07:24-08:00
An Infinite Stage: The Mckittrick Hotel
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by Nic Runnels
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2015-11-23T05:59:57-08:00
The Mckittrick Hotel is a “stylized mash-up of Shakespearean drama and Hitchcockian noir,” a true New York underworld like Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery or the always traumatizing Penn Station, second worlds where one does not exist as they do outside, heterotopias of the city. Free from constant iPhone notifications, blaring city lights, and the ability to enter and exit at will, the guest is able to simply wander, to rummage through drawers and coats, to just exist like one does in childhood, unconnected and available. It’s lack of outward windows and maze of an entrance trap a bizarre and thrilling world within. The building itself, located on West 27th Street, is indifferentiable from neighboring Chelsea galleries and warehouses, for its focus is what lies within those worn brick walls. Sleep No More is an immersive experience, a journey to a place utterly unknown.
Before descending into Felix Barrett's underworld, my roommate who had been many times before tried to explain the venue to me. And like explaining the underworld to a mere mortal, I arrived at The McKittrick with this abstract idea of what the performance space would be.
I found each aspect of the hotel extremely detailed and thorough, from the handwritten diary on the altar in the towel room to the array of forceps in the hospital. I wondered through, wandering throughout the hotel like a post-apocalyptic looter, how all these objects made sense in the context of Macbeth or rather what they added to the experience. And would Shakespeare approve?
As Shannon pointed out, the lighted pine trees in the ballroom were references to the lines:
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him. (4.1.91-93)
Clearly these pines were deliberately placed, as much a part of the story as the actors. So what other details are nods to Shakespeare's text? Production designers like Alexandra Schaller must scour Macbeth's pages along with Punchdrunk for inspiration. Another example of this comes with the lines:
He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop? (4.3.218-221)
On the fourth floor, in the town of Gallow Green, is a taxidermists office where I spotted a stuffed chicken, perhaps a nod to these lines. “Each room has a back story that has been painstakingly detailed and designed," reported the New York Times in 2011 upon the completion of the space. These backstories, often connections to Macbeth, sometimes not, deepen the plot of Macbeth and build a history behind it that doesn't have to be a true one.
Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughtered. To relate the manner
Were on the quarry of these murdered deer
To add the death of you. (4.3.206-209)
These lines, spoken by Ross to Macduff, are perhaps the reason for the bloody baby dolls in the "Hecate's replica of the Mannerly Bar" on the fourth floor.
Ultimately, the set of Sleep No More enriched the narrative and made for a vastly detailed adaption. Like Conor and later Shannon noted, in the same way that Dante is a combination of Virgil and the Bible (amongst other things) Sleep No More is a mix of Shakespeare and Hitchcock, drawing connections to both as well as veering off beyond the bounds of each. In this way underworlds are all linked, for instance borrowing the idea of a "rabbit hole" and updating it to an elevator ride. Because of this ever-changing sense of what an underworld can be, the concept is never lost in history.
p.s. here's a pretty funny blog of SNM reactions any McKittrick guest will enjoy
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2015-11-17T14:13:08-08:00
If Lady Macbeth Were 6 Stories Tall and Made of Brick, She Would Be the McKittrick Hotel: or How Distinctly Separate Worlds Facilitate Our Actions
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by Andrew Chi
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2015-11-23T20:13:29-08:00
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..."
Walking along 27th street, you stop in front of what seems to be just another Manhattan building. Drab walls, some scaffolding, and some spindly trees are all there is to see. Coming to the entrance, you realize it is a hotel. You are given a playing card which functions as your key and quickly ushered in. Traversing a dark, winding labyrinth to reach the hotel proper, you finally head up a flight of stairs and become enveloped in welcomed light, warmth, and music; you have just entered the Manderley bar.
From pitch black to warm reds, the bar is a welcome sight for a weary traveler such as yourself. While beautiful, the Manderley bar is not the main attraction of the McKittrick hotel. No sooner have you arrived than you are given a mask, told not to speak, and thrust into a dark, rickety elevator operated by a lone figure. The elevator stops.
“Everybody off.”
The first person leaves the elevator. You go to follow only to have the exit blocked by the operator. He chastises you.
"This is a journey best undertaken alone."
"I’ll go no more." (2.2.65)
He lets off the rest of the visitors intermittently at various floors. Finally, he allows you to depart, confused and lost, left alone to explore the ominous and mysterious McKittrick Hotel.
The most striking realization you will immediately notice is how those unimpressive brick walls, indistinguishable from all the other buildings of Manhattan, give no indication of what is to be seen within. Lit only by candles and lamps, the hotel has no distinct floor plan. Rather, the rooms are haphazardly laid out and connected, each intricately detailed and containing its own subtle mysteries. Save for the main members of the event, everyone’s face is obscured by pure white masks, and there is no sound save for an omnipresent foreboding soundtrack. Every patron is free to enjoy the hotel however they would like, but there is one feeling all inside share, that this bizarre world bears no relation to our own.
“This is more strange than such a murder is.” (3.4.98-99)
This reaches one of the central themes of underworlds, that they are separate from “the casual and confused region of everyday existence” (Berger, 12). The McKittrick functions as what Berger refers to as a “heterotopia,” a type of second world we can physically step into and visit, leaving when our time is done. Those brick walls that prevent us from seeing into the world also provide the opposite, they prevent the events in the McKittrick from seeping back into our regular lives.
By entering the hotel, we become separated from the normal world. By donning the masks, we momentarily shed our former selves, losing all our connections to our previous life, enveloped solely in the world of the McKittrick. It is a representation of the mind of Macbeth, his own personal underworld, in which every resident is “in some way deficient” (Berger, 36). While not residents, we are also influenced by the world, allowing it to “pour [its] spirits in [our] ears” (1.5.29).
“O, full of scorpions is my mind.” (3.2.41)
This allows us to enjoy the world unfettered by our daily lives. In the hotel, we are anonymous and lost, and in this anonymity comes freedom. Actions taboo in the real world feel natural in this separate world. We may look through the players’ private belongings, read their letters, and infiltrate their bedrooms. We can stand and observe an orgy, or witness a murder. This barrier preventing cross contamination with our daily lives allows us to indulge in “our black and deep desires” (1.4.58). Rather than punish, the underworld rewards the inquisitive mind.
“I dare do all that may become a man.” (1.7.51)
In a sense we are just like Aeneas, who scoured the Underworld looking for answers to "truth-entangling riddles," or Dante, who journeyed through Inferno to understand the nature of his life and the beyond. Just as in these underworlds, once the production is over, that is to say when the McKittrick has performed its “functions, it becomes inadequate and its creator turns us out” (Berger, 36). We come from the McKittrick having gained more than we have lost. In interacting with the otherworldly McKittrick, some of its power has rubbed off onto our hands, and "these hands [will] ne'er be clean" (5.1.45). While the X drawn on the back of our hands may fade away, the lasting impact of that distinct and separate underworld are unforgettable.