Abstract
Punchdrunk’s immersive theater project Sleep No More (SNM) is a loose combination of Macbeth and Hitchcock’s films Vertigo and Rebecca; lacking substantial dialogue, it is art installation meets dance meets video game, with audiences free to wander anywhere and touch anything, as long as they do not speak and wear a mask. But is this amalgamation Shakespeare? This essay uses both academic and popular responses to SNM to argue that while the production is not substantively Shakespeare, it uses one-on-one experiences to prompt participants to reach back to the Shakespearean text, to analyze their experiences, to consider what makes them Shakespearean, and to ponder Shakespeare’s status in their own lives.
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McHugh, C. (2017). “Thou Hast It Now”: One-on-Ones and the Online Community of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More . In: Desmet, C., Loper, N., Casey, J. (eds) Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare. Reproducing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63300-8_10
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