It’s hard to describe the frenzy we experienced from April to June of 2012. It seemed like shortly after Remixed there was an unceasing parade of events at the McKittrick and it was truly the center of the universe. The show was the talk of the town, and at the time, regulars and fans enjoyed a level of access and proximity to the show that simply doesn’t exist anymore. We were very much a part of the family and no one in that family really knew how to process being at the center of a cultural phenomenon, so we were all along for the ride and there were astonishingly few boundaries.
Mayfair was coming and the promise of a heathen bacchanal (“Come Let Me Clutch Thee”) had everyone in a tizzy. In the lead up, there was also a steady trickle of promotional events and brand partnerships. Bowmore Spirits was hosting a whisky party at the Hotel, and was offering a chance at free tickets in exchange for retweets. Team Hard RT aggressively participated, and when the drawing came, the tickets went to a dummy account the brand clearly owned. We called them out on it. Then came the DMs saying if any of us could make it to the Hotel in time, the tickets were ours. Alas, they went unclaimed.
In the meantime, I was suddenly under an NDA.
The reason for this was that I had been invited to test the MIT Media Lab extension to the show, and while I was told I would be allowed to write about it on Scorched, they had offered the story as an exclusive to the New York Times, so I had to wait for that to go out before I could say anything (the post eventually went up here, and was sparse on specifics because for all we knew, this was going to end up live in the show someday soon).
I arrived as normal at the Hotel - and proceeded to Manderley, where this little bit that I wrote in a teaser actually happened:
Amidst the tables and chairs, Calloway stands alone, basked in a spotlight. He appears to be singing to himself softly, slowly turning his hands around, as though weaving his quiet song (in that is-he-touched-in-the-head way that Calloway has).
He looks at me and beckons me toward him. I approach, and he bends down to kiss me on the cheek. When he rises, I look up at him, as he towers over me, and I can see that he’s been crying. My face turns sad. I reach up my hand and cradle his face, wiping away a tear with a sweep of my thumb. He exhales, deliberately, and stares back at me with a look of grief and loss.
I know that somewhere, something dreadful has happened.
Then I was taken in to meet Felix Barrett and Peter Higgin, who fitted me with the enhanced mask. It had antennae sticking out of it and was extremely heavy and uncomfortable – a discomfort that only grew as the night went on. But they didn’t tell me much else and I was brought up to the fifth floor, where the autopsy room had been closed off from the regular show. Inside, I found Alba Albanese, who introduced me to the story of Grace Naismith’s disappearance - and to a ouija board. The board started to move: “G…. E…. T…. O…. U….T…,” and I heard a scraping at the door. I fled out into the corridor.
Regular attendees had noticed strange things were happening. There were signs posted around the show with Grace’s photo, and there were markers to show points of interest (like signs for quest interaction in an MMO). But the very first thing I noticed was that the padded cell was closed off - and occupied. This has long been my favorite unused room in the hotel so I was thrilled. Inside was Ben Thys. The stewards sighted my tech mask and admitted me to the room.
From the 2nd teaser:
We are standing together in the center of the room.
He looks deep into my eyes, smiles, and then…
he smells me.
He draws his face close to mine and moves, slowly and cautiously, in a circle around my face, sniffing at it, clearly seeking some trademark scent.
Then he stops sniffing. He smiles, and pulls me close again. This time he drops his head back and opens his mouth wide, as though to allow me a chance to inspect his teeth. I look and find nothing out of the ordinary. When he finally raises his head again and closes his mouth, his grin has changed into a look of grief.
“You.”
There is a long, painful silence.
“You never came."
It is as though the very life drains out of his face. And with that, he drifts back to where I found him when I entered, slumped in the corner, and buries his face in his hands.
Bewildered, I set out to figure out what was going on. The 4th Floor had various clues - Grace had loved a man named George. I found another previously inaccessible space at the end of the hall to the Rep Bar - the Law Office. Inside was a typewriter (another portal device) that wrote out a message: “SUITCASE” - and there was indeed a suitcase in the room. I took the suitcase and went exploring – I think I may have been under the impression the Porter would help me. I recall making it as far as the lobby when a Steward approached and reclaimed the suitcase, noting to me that I wasn’t supposed to be carrying the props. Oops. Somewhere - and honestly 12 years later I don’t recall where - I found a note detailing Grace’s contract with Hecate, and how she was supposed to make George fall in love with Grace.
From the 3rd teaser:
When I finally return to him I am sweating and shaking.
I have been running and searching for nearly an hour, with hardly anything to show for it. But I know that he must have the answer, if only somehow I can get it out of him.
By now it’s become a ritual, how he greets me. He holds my shoulders and pushes me against each of the walls, laughing, smiling like a young child. Then he smells me and his proximity makes me anxious. He can be gentle one moment and ferocious the next. I hope that maybe this is how he shows me his trust.
And then we sit down and I show him what I’ve brought.
He looks at the paper then up at me. I point at him intently.
“Yes,” he says, “that’s me. I’m George.”
My heart skips a beat. Now I feel like I’m getting somewhere.
“…I do not know why I’m in here.”
Poor Ben. He told me later he was ad libbing all of it, they hadn’t really anticipated that I’d keep going back to him with pretty much any prop I found trying to get him to explain any of it. I obviously went to Hecate (Careena), who presented me with a vial of salt, but I wasn’t getting it yet. I wandered the 5th floor, hearing voices through my mask in the bathroom hall. I found the closet in the forest maze, and groped for a light switch - in the process, pulling the microphone off the wall. Oops again.
I was feeling fairly exasperated as I’d figured out who was who, but it wasn’t clear if I was supposed to try to find Grace or what. Also, the mask was absolute murder so I went back to Manderley to see Pete and see if he could adjust it. I told him what I’d seen, showed him the vial of salt, and he said, “I don’t know what that’s about, that’s Careena doing her own thing I guess.” It was chaos and I kind of loved every second of it. Matt Downs, my dear friend who I had only really met shortly before all of this, watched all of the mask drama unfolding with keen interest, knowing full well something insane was happening.
I had sort of run out of ideas and the third loop was well underway, so Pete said they’d try to get me up to 4 to see the big showpiece that had been set up to conclude the experience. To do this, it needed to be made plain to Careena to depart from her regular Hecate track. So Calloway was asked to escort me from Manderley up to the Rep Bar. It was a crowded night at the show, and William patiently but urgently pushed me through the crowd, taking me to the front so Careena would see me and understand. Then he took me to Agnes’ apartment and I waited.
Eventually - the show was very near its end at this point - Hecate emerged from the bedroom. I don’t remember any of the text, but this led to the reveal of the salt hands, the evidence of Grace’s fate. This 1:1 is depicted in the photo the New York Times ran with their coverage.
After all of this, we all gathered in the ballroom for a debrief. Only one other test participant had remained. They had brought me, a frequent visitor; this other fellow, who had been once before; and a walk-in who had no idea what the show even was - and that person had bolted almost immediately. Over beers, we had a great conversation for the next hour or so with the graduate students who had been working on the project. I told them how envious I was – they were doing more interesting work with narrative than I ever had in my own literature Ph.D. program. I got to see the ballroom with all the lights up - gross, honestly, and far more colorful a space than I had ever realized. Afterwards, as we walked back up to a nearly empty Manderley, Felix Barrett asked if I could answer something for him. Sure, I said. “Why is your Tumblr avatar a picture of Gabe Forestieri?” Definitely not what I thought he might ask. “Well, have you seen him? He’s gorgeous.”
The teaser posts were the best I could do in the run-up to Mayfair. Questions poured in and utter silence would have added fuel to the fire. The trolls came out and attacked me for teasing a recap (which, truthfully, was a ridiculous thing to do). So it led to the creation of what I think is one of the most absurd examples of fan art in the long run of the show, the Recap Teaser Trailer:
For some backstory on this: we did it in just about 3 hours of effort. I wrote some of the gags at my office on 7th Ave before heading to my apartment to do the video editing. Kevin Cafferty asked his friend Liam to film his daughter eager for a recap. My sister in law sent a clip, Frances Koncan sent her clip. Jordan Morley asked to help and offered the clip in the original goat mask. Matt went to the McKittrick and asked random audience in line to play along. The result is... a real time capsule from a very different era of the fandom.
I haven’t been on Tumblr in many years, but have been going down an SNM rabbit hole this weekend, for obvious reasons. That’s me in the New York Times photo with Careena, and the MIT media lab happened about a month after I started working at the show. I was still in grad school, still enamored with that building and its inhabitants. Getting assigned to help with the MIT project was truly one of the coolest experiences and also gave me an opportunity to get to know both cast and crew of the show itself better.
I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about my time at Sleep No More. Maybe I’ll write them down someday (maybe that tell-all, “Behind the Mask” we’ve been joking about for over a decade will actually happen.) I left the show eight years ago, and in the intervening time have worked in the immersive space both in the US and abroad, have worked on multiple SNM alum companies/projects, and have written my own immersive piece (and have three more in the planning and research stages) which will be getting a workshop reading in April. Sleep No More affected me in ways I’m still untangling in therapy, but it also gave me a new way to tell stories, something for which I am forever grateful.
imagine you're some guy and you're going through the woods one day and you stumble upon a house and the people who live there just give you free food and eventually let you inside and it's like nothing you've ever seen before and the people are so nice and loving towards you and then one day they decide to never let you leave again, steal your balls, and give you a stupid fucking hair cut
Reblogging this too for folks with anxiety like myself who feel bad when they say they’re too busy but they don’t have every second accounted for doing something so they feel almost like they’re lying. Self-care goes on your schedule too, lovelies.
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