Sleep No More

(Note: This artifact review is based on what I was able to read online.)

Sleep No More is an immersive theatrical experience in New York City, created and produced by Punchdrunk, a British theatre company. The experience a guest has is not typical of a theatrical performance. Instead of a performance on a single stage, Sleep No More is performed in a five story renovated factory with around a hundred intricately designed rooms.

One takeaway from what I was able to read about Sleep No More is the lack of “spoken dialogue.” From what I understand, characters do not have spoken lines that you would expect of a play and instead relies on a character’s body language. A reporter in The New Yorker reviewed the play by saying “Because language is abandoned outside the lounge, we’re forced to imagine it, or to make narrative cohesion of events that are unfolding right before our eyes. We can only watch as the performers reduce theatre to its rudiments: bodies moving in space. Stripped of what we usually expect of a theatrical performance, we’re drawn more and more to the panic the piece incites, and the anxiety that keeps us moving from floor to floor.” Maybe spoken language is not needed in the interactions/experiences I design and instead I can rely on non-spoken language? By doing this, users could be drawn closer to the interactions taking place.

Connection

Sleep No More’s lack of speech, makes me thing that maybe spoken language is not needed in the interactions/experiences I design and instead I can rely on non-spoken language? By doing this, users could be drawn closer to the interactions taking place.

Another thing, I want to point out is Punchdrunk’s use of a maze at the beginning of the experience. Some visitors see the maze as a tool to bring guests to a different time period. A similar type of experience, could be helpful to bring users into a different mind space, an open mind space where they can leave their biases behind them (to some degree).