Masks

As I mentioned in my description of Sleep No More, the entire audience is asked to don white plastic masks that cover the face fully and told to keep the masks on at ALL times.

The masks were my favorite device at work in the show, and I think it's because they were so simple, but multifunctional.

Who's Who
The first, and most utilitarian use of the masks is to separate actor from audience visually. In crowded dark hallways it is easy to find the characters, because they are unmasked. The rest of us fade into a non distracting (and dream like) backdrop of white faces.

The Audience as Aesthetic
The value of the backdrop of white masks goes further when you consider how eerie a constant presence of inexpressive faces really is. It's seriously creepy. What are those faces in the context of the scenes? We are the classical Greek chorus watching a tragedy but not stopping it. We are one lone character's invisible friend in a time of need. We are the demons pursing the tortured characters in their own nightmares. Or their guardian angels. Or maybe we're just part of the wall. The masks no longer simply delineate actor from audience but they blur the line between us at the same time. The masks are our own costumes and we become a tangible part of the show through them.

Anonymity
The masks also empower the audience to behave more boldly. With our faces (and by extension our identities) shrouded we were more free to follow, run, touch and explore, all of which was essential to the success of the play as a whole. Nobody has to look foolish. Because we're all Nobody. It similarly prevented anyone from actively disengaging (or cracking jokes or trying to "break" the actors) due to anxiety, which can often ruin intimate, interactive theater experiences. With their masks on, audience members are free to step closer or step back without self consciousness.

Sensory Deprivation and ASC
Our ability to sense air moving near our face an an important cue for sensing others near us in the dark, is restricted by the mask. So is peripheral vision, causing people to have to turn their necks further, and to focus more on what's directly in front of them. Loss of peripheral vision also makes a dimly room lit dimmer when the light source is beyond sight lines. Additionally, an altered state of consciousness (ASC) can be induced through the manipulation of sensory input, which in this case is achieved in a minimal way, through the masks. We feel different with the masks on because our brain is receiving information in a new way, and is sending signals back to our body that something strange is going on. In this state we are more susceptible to suggestion, creating a richer theatrical experience.

Isolation
Every person, because of his mask, gets to react to the show as if he is seeing it alone. You could also say every person because of his masks has to react to the show as if he is seeing it alone.
Making the audience wear masks ensures that at any given moment individual members are reacting only to the deliberate cues within the show. Whether it's an entire scene or just a smell, no one can accidentally affect how anyone else perceives it.
Every person behind his or her own mask remains isolated, unable to seek information on anyone's face and equally unable to easily convey emotion to anyone else.

With our most effortless means of silent communication stripped away there is a loss of community, and of connectivity. But the same masks which taketh away also giveth. And in this instance what the masks provide is protection from the vulnerability that comes from losing your safety net. You're alone in the crowd, but the crowd will never know how you feel about that.

It's incredible what a plain white mask can do. The more I think about it, the more I am certain that the entire show would have been different, (and might not have even worked) without the very small addition of masking the audience.

I'm in awe of the enormous impact of such a simple thing.

Sleep No More

As a child, at haunted houses or at Plymouth Plantation, or at theme parks my mind could fill in any details that were decidedly lacking. My imagination was always willing to overlook the zipper on the back of the monster. But the older I've gotten, the fewer interactive theater experiences I've had that didn't let me down in some way or another.

Sleep No More not only didn't let me down, it far exceeded every expectation I had. It was meant to transport us fully and it did. I feel like I lucid-dreamed someone else's nightmare.

The audience enters through a swanky 1930s bar called Manderlay*. John and I took seats near the stage, but the Annie Darcy Band was on break. Soon our playing card numbers were called, and we entered a dark hallway. We were asked to be silent and to keep our masks on. What masks? Oh, just the blank white masks that they were handing out to everyone. Masks on? Good.
Annnd Goodnight.

Sleep No More is a Punchdrunk and A.R.T collaboration. It's defined most accurately as "immersion theater." Every room in the Old Lincoln School in Brookline has been transformed carefully and deliberately into a different fantasy set. The audience is invited and encouraged to touch anything they want. (In an office, I pawed through a drawer and found a notebook full of frantic scribbling and sentence fragments; in another room a school room desk was full of hay and human hair.) The audience follows actors through dimly lit hallways, bearing witness to the characters' interactions. Lights, sounds and even cleverly layered smells guide emotional reactions in every room.

The story is Macbeth, but through a Hitchcock lens, and most of the scenes are completely non vocal. The success of the scenes relies on the ability of the actors to communicate relationship and intent through facial expressions and body language. And they do not disappoint. Each and every actor is fully committed to moving honestly through a world we're just trespassing in.

You can also read John's account of the evening. But we had very different nights. Every audience member has a potentially completely different experience depending on which characters they chose to follow, when to leave a scene or stay and what rooms to explore next. In the end everyone finds their way to the same location for the final scene of the play, a shocking and visually impressive climax.

John and I followed the second Mrs. de Winters as she ran through the hotel lobby and into an office two floors below us. She was startled out of a reverie induced by a photograph she found by a man who approached her from behind. As we stood by the anger in his eyes turned to desire, they embraced and kissed. When she fled, I ran after her leaving John with the man.

After a following her for some time I found myself alone with her. She beckoned me into a small bedroom, locked the door and bid me to sit down. I sat. She took my mask off and suddenly the room became very, very real. She leaned in and told me a story. As she told me the story we held hands. Slowly we were getting closer until we were embracing. The story was sad. I was comforting her. I had been told not to speak, and I didn't. Not even when she kissed my forehead. She put the mask back on my face and led me to the hall.

I entered chapels and bedrooms. I watched couples dancing in a misty forest that intoxicated me with the smell of pine. Later in the evening, left on my own, I accidentally walked in on Duncan's murder. I followed Macbeth back to his room, watched his wife wash the blood of his face, hands and chest. When he left, I stayed silently watching her private journey from anxiety to agony to outright hysteria.

Like a dream, some details are hazy - was that a knife or a playing card? And others are firmly impressed in my memory - I remember, as an example, the chapter that the Bible was open to in de Winter's bedroom.

The last scene left me unable to speak for a little while, and I still felt the effects of the dream like state as I pushed my way out of Manderlay, which had become impossibly crowded. When John and I finally met up outside we compared notes. Together we pieced together more of the show than we would have seen had we come just alone or had tried (as some people did) to stay as a unit.

Sleep No More was one of the most satisfying audience experiences I've had in a very long time because it created an entire world of make believe to invest myself in without fear of interruption by logic or reason. It was permission to explore and process in new ways. It was a collective experience, but it was also a solitary one. Occasionally my mind poked me with "I wish I could be in a show like this," but otherwise it obeyed the reality of my/the dream world. Although it was nightmarish at times I emerged at the end feeling more refreshed and well rested than before. Amazing.

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* Manderlay is fictitious in that it had been built as a set piece for the show, but also completely functional as it's being run by nearby La Morra.