By the Fancy Tie Round Your Wicked Throat

I made another trip to New York and saw 'Sleep No More' for my fifth and sixth times. I'm going to talk about it now, as I previously have done here.

Oh boy. So, I don't know. I feel strangely obsessed with this show. It's such an incredible experience.

I've never seen a piece of theatre like this. There are pieces I likely would have wanted to see time and again ('Brief Encounter', 'Brief Encounter', oh my god, 'Brief Encounter') and I saw 'BoyGroove' four times, which is not too shabby, and 'Les Mis' probably four or five, over the course of my lifetime, and various productions of 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged' that account to no less than four. But I've never made pilgrimage after pilgrimage searching for something like this again and again.



And I'm not even sure why, to be honest. I'm starting to feel bad that I've sunk so much money and time into this show when there's so much I need and want to see.

But it's really wonderful.

It's like a puzzle to figure out. The part of me that just wants to see magic, wants to make theatre that has people go, 'how did she DO that?', is fascinated by this amazing thing that they created. So many cues, such tight movement of actors and audience from place to place. How can they orchestrate this? Where does everyone go?

There's also something so deeply personal about it, it gives you such incredible ownership of your own experience, because you have your own little journey. There's like some sick pride I get from having a good run, from seeing good stuff, from the little accomplishments, like seeing the scenes I want, or getting an interaction from the actors.

And this time around, I got two treasures:



A locket and a charm! Which makes me feel special and lucky and a part of something in a way that isn't really real, I know, because they are given out to countless people several times a night, but still, it is real, because I feel it. Little treasures. For me.

Which brings my haul from the show up to this:



Treasures!

Part of me knows that my attraction to the piece is that it's the kind of work I wish I was cool enough to create. But I would never make this. It doesn't have enough humour for me. It's too sexy, too hip. It allows me a peak into the brain of the artist that I wish I was. If I could ever be in it, I would either play some like wounded little shy librarian being vulnerable all over the place, or I'd play some silly maid who makes fun of the whole thing.

Because I guess I know that the stuff I do is small and dorky and quirky and I have a lot of love for that stuff, and I'm just trying to create the work that I love and want to do. But a part of me hates that I'm the dorky quirky girl, and wishes I created this amazing stuff with people coming out of the ceiling and all the nudity. SO MUCH NUDITY HOORAY!!!! It's nice to live in a world that I normally wouldn't be allowed into.

I haven't, in previous times, got this, but this time, I really did feel like I was hearing the script. I was hearing individual lines, seeing them move through space, back and forth through emotions and energies in the same way an actor works through a monologue. Maybe this is me projecting, but I was definitely seeing a specificity in lots of the dances that I hadn't been able to see before.

It's an incredible achievement, in so many ways, and makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. Or my art. I can't get anything together.

There's some balance between being inspired and feeling hopeless. It happens with things that are wonderful and things that are dreadful, for me, and it's anyone's guess as to how any individual piece sways me.