An Underworld Journey into 'Sleep No More'

Nic's Path Page

I found the notion of gender arising in multiple of my peers’ Scalar pages, through mentions of Lady Macbeth, with audience members being “unsexed” with masks, and even during the equation of the Manderley bar to a “womb”. Sleep No More addresses its complications with multiple tactics, proving the thoughtfulness and diligence of the company’s actors, writers, and directors. Chris’s page, entitled Claire Underwood and Lady Macbeth, related Shakespeare’s scheming queen to House of Cards’ ruthless first lady. “Who stands behind Macbeth,” writes Chris, “goading him, directing him and convincing him…Lady Macbeth.” Chris goes on to detail how both characters pressure their husbands into power and immorality along the way. Lady Macbeth “convinces her husband to kill by insulting his manliness” with the lines “What beast was ’t, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?” (1.7). Similarly Claire pushes Frank, her husband, beyond the bounds of morality. These portrayals of wives paint these female characters as foolish and devious, as if not more power-hungry than their male partners. Each woman feeds off her husband’s status, making them seem unwilling or unexpected to achieve on their own. Emma’s Scalar page agues that Lady Macbeth’s malice has nothing to do with her gender, linked in no ways. In referring to the infamous “unsex me here” passage, Emma writes “Lady Macbeth asks to have no connection to her gender or sexuality, as it would make her too weak for the evil at hand.” But I would ague that the importance of gender is not lost with a few impassioned words. Emma brings up the obvious fact that Macbeth takes a seat at the head of the banquet table in the final scene. This simple observation shows the contrast between sexes even after Lady Macbeth swears them off. The head of the table is seen as the man’s place, as is the throne, as was for many centuries (and during Shakespeare’s lifetime) the stage. Lady Macbeth’s “unsex me here” revelation, at least to me, does not deconstruct gender but reinforce it. Andrew focuses on the guests’ experience for his Scalar page. “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… a representation of the mind of Macbeth, his own personal underworld, in which every resident is “in some way deficient” (Berger, 36).” This removal of “our former selves” includes gender. With the mask, one is no longer the man or the woman in the audience, but the guest. This gender neutrality reflects the way in which each individuals’ experience is totally different, not hinging on background, class, or gender. The way in which Sleep No More addresses gender within the performance space speaks of Punchdrunk’s attention to detail. Having recognized the grim portrayal of women in Macbeth, Sleep No More removes femininity from the audience, allowing guests to look at the play like a piece of history, unchangeable. Having updated the work with the role of the first male witch, Sleep No More is trying to disassemble essentialist notions.

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