"Chance May Crown Me King": Enacting Fate and Free Will
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.
