“A Macbeth-themed haunted house.”

We’re coming to a close on this series, so if you’ve missed the rest of them, I suggest starting from the beginning. The last of my examples, Sleep No More is an intersemiotic (between sign-systems) translation and adaptation of Macbeth. I should note that, in addition to reviews, many of the observations of this performance come from my own experiences having attended it multiple times. Rather than dialogue, Sleep No More presents Macbeth with movement and dance, supported by an extremely  comprehensive set design and evocative score that set the tone for the immersive production, created by UK-based  Punchdrunk theatre company. The show had been running continuously in New York City since 2011 (until, as with many things, COVID said “no thank you”). Because of its lack of dialogue – the element that arguably makes Shakespeare Shakespeare –  this performance is the most emancipated, in Genette’s terms, of the three texts I examined in my thesis. Genette describes  emancipated texts as those that do not openly signal their connection to the source text.[1] An unacknowledged source that is  somewhat difficult to even recognize necessarily complicates a text’s ability to be viewed as an adaptation. Reviewer D.J.  Hopkins comments on this paradox, writing that, “Macbeth is everywhere and nowhere in Sleep No More.”^[2] Genette suggests  what what he calls the “unofficial contract” between hypo- and emancipated hypertext, “has to be deciphered by the reader, but the proper reception of it is dependent on that deciphering, which the author occasionally must help along in devious ways.”[3]  So where might audiences detect the unofficial contract between Macbeth and Sleep No More? What devious hints does the production give as to its origins?

Sleep No More is, of course, linked to Macbeth by its title, which comes from Macbeth’s lines after he murders Duncan: “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more” (II.ii.43-4). Apart from that, though,  a little external investigation might be required to recognize the source text. The characters are not named in any freely available paratextual materials (such as a program or cast list), nor do they necessarily announce themselves within the performance, though Punchdrunk’s website does describe the show as “Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth through a darkly cinematic lens,”^[4] and reviews all seem to agree that the plot comes from the Scottish play. Still, Ben Brantley’s article for the New York Times alerts readers that, “this is not the place to look for insights into Shakespeare.”^[5] Indeed, one will have to  look for Shakespeare himself, let alone insights into his work. Obviously the most remarkable difference from the source text is Sleep No More’s lack of dialogue. It is not wholly absent, however, and there are hints given by the few lines that slip through. A woman can be heard muttering, “out damned spot” (V.i.35) under her breath as she wrings her hands in a gesture that will likely be recognizable even to those only passingly familiar with Macbeth. In another moment, a whispered monologue ends with cries of, “Blood will have blood!” (III.iv.120). These snippets of text can function as the devious hints to which Genette refers, alerting audiences to the palimpsestic doubleness of the text and helping them to receive the performance as knowing  spectators. The hints, however, may not all be heard or seen, and, what’s more, they still rely on a previous knowledge of Shakespeare’s text in order to be recognized.

Like Scotland, PA, Sleep No More also contains textual contamination from other sources, and for this reason, too, Macbeth may not be foregrounded in the spectator’s mind. The design choices regarding sets, costumes, and music suggest the 1930s  and ‘40s. These design elements, along with other, more obvious allusions, are indebted to contamination from the films of Alfred Hitchcock. The McKittrick Hotel, the name of the building – the term theatre doesn’t fully encapsulate the space – where the performance occurs, is a reference to Hitchcock’s Vertigo,[6] and Hopkins notes that, “the site has been given a fictional history featuring Alfred Hitchcock as a hotel guest. This historical intervention is apt, since Hitchcock is the guiding spirit of what might be described as a Macbeth-themed haunted house.”^[7] Thus Hitchcock forms part of both its design and its mythology. The bar in which patrons wait to enter the performance space is called the Manderley, a reference to the main setting of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,[8] which was also famously adapted into a film by Hitchcock.[9] Rebecca, the story of a couple nearly torn apart by a murder committed by the husband, is certainly an appropriate intertext for Macbeth. Added characters, updated settings, and competing intertexts all contribute to the emancipation of this text from Shakespeare’s play, but the introduction of additional source texts also creates different types of knowing audiences. One person may have read Rebecca but have no love for Shakespeare. Another could be a Hitchcock fan who isn’t sure where he got the name Manderley. No two viewers will have the exact same knowledge when they enter the performance, and this amplifies the layers that each receptive concretization could potentially have. Despite Sleep No More’s emancipation, I would argue that, as with Scotland, PA, a knowing audience may be at an advantage here. Certain moments, when witnessed by the knowing spectator, will likely carry greater significance  if they can use their source text knowledge to fill in the performance’s linguistic gaps. For example, they will likely recognize that the man murdering another while he sleeps is our (anti)hero, Macbeth. The woman staring at her hands in horror, murmuring “out damn spot” is his wife (V.i.35). That makes one scene between them – in which they athletically dance through their bedroom – more meaningful because of its link in the knowing spectator’s mind to the scenes in which she convinces him to commit the crime in the original. Likewise, the show’s climax, in which Macbeth is hanged, will feel more poetically justified when the knowing spectator can call to mind Macbeth’s many crimes. The text’s palimpsestic doubleness and resulting gossiping effect once again inform the creation of a more thorough receptive meaning. Even amongst knowing audiences, however, no two spectators will be exactly aligned in their previous knowledge, so receptive concretizations will differ based on which texts participate in their gossiping effect. In addition, Sleep No More complicates its receptive  concretization even further with its formal and structural elements. If Sleep No More were actually a pure dance adaptation of Macbeth, even with its intertextual influences, it would be akin to a ballet version like that created by Francis Patrelle in 2016.^[10] But Sleep No More is a far cry from a ballet presented on a proscenium stage; it goes beyond an intersemiotic translation of Shakespeare’s text and adds formal elements that augment and comment on it. The show is environmental and site-specific. The warehouses that Punchdrunk has taken over and redecorated form a performance space comprised of five floors and countless rooms that mimic bedrooms, apothecary shops, hospital wards, ballrooms, etc.

Characters move throughout the space during the performance. Audience members, who have been given masks to hide their faces and instructed to silently observe, follow actors from room to room at will. Performers intersect, interact, and go their separate ways, and audiences can choose to follow any of them, or randomly wander the minutely decorated space in solitude. The show combines immersive theatre with a choose-your-own-adventure format that makes it almost interactive. This gives its audience members, unlike their counterparts in a more traditional theatrical setting, greater agency regarding what they see. Hopkins suggests that such, “strategies of engagement could go a long way toward reviving a theatre scene that seems moribund in comparison to the popularity of film, television, and new media.”^[11]

As mentioned earlier, strategies or modes of engagement between text and spectator are also an important aspect of Hutcheon’s theory. To telling and showing, she also adds interacting (e.g., a video game).^[12] Sleep No More exists in the liminal space between interacting and showing. Interacting because audience members are not subject to theatre or film’s mediation of what is seen and heard. Showing because, unlike many video games, in which one actively takes a role in the world and shapes the outcome of the gameplay, Sleep No More’s masked spectators are made to voyeuristically watch unfolding events that they are powerless to change. Hutcheon notes that neither the telling nor showing modes are passive, but that the interactive mode is active in a different way.[13] Similarly, I would argue that Sleep No More’s level of activity is distinct from the pure showing mode, but still not that of a first-person, role–playing game. In my view, this pseudo-agency afforded to the spectator parallels Macbeth’s narrative arc; it manifests his inability to shape events despite his attempts to do so. The inevitability of fate is a guiding theme throughout Macbeth, though Macbeth is inconsistent in his reaction to it. We can track this in his response to the witches’ prophecies. Early in the play, after his first meeting with the weird sisters, Macbeth asserts that he’ll allow fate to run its course without actively shaping his destiny: “if chance will have me king, then chance may crown me, I’ll not stir my hand…” (I.iii.146–7). This course of action is soon abandoned when Malcolm is named heir, and Macbeth decides to murder Duncan (after some convincing from his wife). Later, when he returns to speak to  the witches, he receives conflicting prophecies that tell him to fear Macduff, but also that he can be killed by “none of woman born” (IV.i.79). Macbeth reacts to this contradiction:

Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee?
But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live;
That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,
And sleep in spite of thunder (IV.i.81-5).

Macbeth tries to influence events again despite believing himself safe, but his insurance plan to eliminate Macduff is thwarted by Macduff’s flight to England. Then his belief in his invulnerability is shattered when the prophecies are revealed to be cleverly worded traps. Macbeth starts to realize this before the final battle: “I pull in resolution, and begin/ To doubt the equivocation of the fiend/ That lies like truth” (V.v.41-3). He finds confirmation when he learns that “Macduff was from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripp’d” (V.viii.15-6). Despite the many people he has killed and paranoia upon which he acts, the play’s conclusion  ultimately proves the futility of attempting to evade or alter fate. In Sleep No More the viewer, with their ability to choose what they see but not what happens, is, like Macbeth, ultimately powerless even when they possess the illusion of choice.

The ability to choose your own viewing experience at Sleep No More is somewhat of a double-edged sword for another reason as well. At all times, spectators are aware that while they follow one character, others are elsewhere in the space, and there is always something, somewhere, that they are missing. Like in the medium of film, Sleep No More’s format allows two scenes to occur simultaneously, but unlike film, spectators cannot be in both places at once and each choice the spectator makes  inherently excludes other scenes. Sleep No More carries this underlying sense of exclusion even further with its private scenes, in which an actor will pull aside an audience member, often taking them to an otherwise closed off room to be alone. These scenes vary based on the character performing them, but they are where most of the show’s limited dialogue is spoken. Not every spectator will get to experience a private scene, and unlike the site’s public spaces, spectators cannot enter them at will; they must be chosen. This marks the viewer as special, but also removes some of their control over the viewing experience yet  again. In these private scenes, actors often remove the spectator’s mask. The scenes therefore feel exceedingly intimate and  exclusive, and thanks to the removal of a mask that was to remain on at all times, somewhat transgressive. Of course, for every  spectator experiencing a private scene, there are several more who have been deliberately and consciously left out.

For those prone to fear of missing out, it is therefore convenient that Sleep No More occurs on a loop, offering multiple  opportunities to experience the same scenes. In the performance’s approximately four-hour run time the choreography repeats  several times, and spectators are likely to arrive at the same interaction via a different character’s arc. While this may help to  alleviate the spectator’s sense of having missed parts of the performance, the actual amount of content available to view –  spread across five floors and four hours – is still more than one can see in a single night, and for this reason, spectators will always miss something unless they methodically return to the production to fill in the narrative gaps. This is where Sleep No  More’s status as an adaptation is once again useful. When viewing the performance as an adaptation, spectators benefit from the ability of the source text to fill narrative gaps that may arise because of the inherent differences in the linguistic and  choreographic sign systems and also because of their inability to experience all of the available content within the allotted time frame. Sleep No More is therefore best viewed as an adaptation, but it also structurally embodies adaptation. Its cyclical format is a self-contained example of Hutcheon’s repetition with variation in two different ways. First, the show’s structure  allows spectators to find variation within their viewing experience, even as the action repeats, by following a different character or moving to a different floor. The show’s parameters almost guarantee that no two audience members will experience the same performance, which truly allows Pavis’s receptive concretization to exist in an infinite number of constellations. Second, though the performance loop repeats a set number of times, it is only the final loop that ends with Macbeth’s death. Thus, the show’s format is, in fact, its own self-contained repetition with variation. If we consider this structure alongside the circularity of  Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which I have already discussed, the performance’s repetitive format also creates metatextual parallels to the cycle of ambition and violence implied by Shakespeare’s structural and stylistic choices. 

Sleep No More, therefore, goes beyond a straightforward intersemiotic translation – if such a thing could be said to exist – and utilizes its design, structural, and physical elements to create a viewing experience that is unique both because no two receptive concretizations will be alike and because the show is like nothing else available in New York theatre. Its performance structure creates a wholly individual experience for each of its spectators and embodies both the powerlessness of Macbeth in the face of his destiny and the repetition with variation that characterizes Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation. The show’s scarcity of dialogue  and various intertexts mark it as an emancipated text, but hints contained in the scarce dialogue as well as paratheatrical  indications in the performance’s publicity and reviews can help signal its status as adaptation. For those who do recognize the source text, the viewing experience will be filtered through their recollection of Shakespeare’s play, allowing them to fill in  narrative gaps. Unlike knowing viewers of Scotland, PA, who will benefit from the added humor created by the gossiping effect, Sleep No More instead benefits from its status as adaptation to provide a narrative skeleton for a performance that is  deliberately exclusionary. Despite this, and regardless of the type of audience it attracts, the show has been running to sold out crowds for almost a decade in New York City. Again, it may be that Macbeth is simply so ubiquitous as a text that it needs no introduction. Perhaps people are drawn in by Sleep No More’s incredible design elements rather than its ties to Shakespeare. Maybe the movement is aesthetically pleasing enough to require no backstory. Hutcheon reframes the notion of success (or lack thereof) in adaptation, suggesting that, “Perhaps one way to think about unsuccessful adaptations is not in  terms of infidelity to a prior text, but in terms of a lack of the creativity and skill to make the text one’s own and thus autonomous.”^[14]

Whatever the reason for its success, Sleep No More has certainly achieved autonomy as a work of art. Palimpsestic doubleness or no, it is a beautiful production that immerses its viewer in a richly developed world that engages the senses as much as it  challenges the notions of what theatre can and should be.

 

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