Sleep No More

 Sleep No More.

I am so glad I planned ahead. I looked into buying tickets about a month ago, and the earliest tickets I could get were for last night. It sold out about a day or so later, too, so I count myself incredibly lucky.

Soon to close, this was a thrilling and hair-raising production by Punchdrunk and the American Repertory Theater. It was the story of Shakespeare's Macbeth, but through the "lens of a Hitchcock thriller." AMAZING.

Entering the school was an experience in and of itself- at least once we were in the building. My friend, Jemesii, and I were frantically trying to find our way through this nearly pitch black (tiny candles... tiny...) maze, and we were/ I was actually quite frightened that we were going the wrong way through the dark and into some forbidden part of the school. Or mostly that actors were going to start springing out of the darkness at us, which would have caused a considerable number of bodily reactions... But that was just the introduction, for soon we were through a curtain and into an old-fashioned, lagoon-style bar, with a jazz band and lovely little punch drinks at our service. When our cards were called (literally), we were given the most eerie, beautiful white masks. Each person turned into a ghostly, looming white face in the dark. We explored the various rooms, artifacts, and random dramatic scenes that flowed along with the hyper-suspenseful music.

Through the next several hours, Jemesii and I happened upon so many unbelievably bizarre scenes that every sense in my body ached. There were little metal boxes with dried fruit, or bones, or jars of metal crucifixes, a bathtub full of water with an eel swimming through it, hollow eggs with aged photographs preciously placed within them. I will leave the rest of the details for your own possible experience, if you are fortunate enough to see it for yourself! Which I would suggest.

At the end of the evening, however, the most I could do was walk silently to the car, a small sense of creepiness still lingering, wondering whether to discuss what just happened or to let it live simply in my memory.

(Obviously not, since I am writing about it now.)