Sleep No More

Sleep No More is an immersive theatre production created by British theatre company Punchdrunk. Based on Punchdrunk's original 2003 London production, the company reinvented Sleep No More in a co-production with the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), which opened at the Old Lincoln School in Brookline, Massachusetts on October 8, 2009. It won Punchdrunk the Elliot Norton Award for Best Theatrical Experience 2010. Overview The production was a new and expanded version of Punchdrunk's 2003 production of the same name which was performed in the Beaufoy Building, London, a disused Victorian school. Unlike a conventional stage play, Sleep No More is an immersive experience in which audiences are free to explore the world of the performance at will. It combined plot and characters of Shakespeare's Macbeth with characters, narrative, and aesthetic elements inspired by the films of Hitchcock, in particular Rebecca, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by English author Daphne du Maurier. Relationship to Macbeth Assistant director Paul Stacey says that "every line of Shakespeare's Macbeth is embedded in the multiple languages—sound, light, design, and dance—of Sleep No More." Characters There were 18 characters in the 2009 production of Sleep No More, most of them taken directly from Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy, Macbeth.