Le Roi Est Mort: Sleep No More Is Closing (Op-Ed)

I found out that Sleep No More was closing in the weirdest way. I was talking with two of my CalArts students, in the class I’ve been teaching this semester about immersive called Centering The Audience. I had thought of this odd place I had been to in Burbank a couple of weeks back and turned to Facebook to find pictures an acquaintance had taken later that week at the same spot.

Before I could find the pics, I saw the latest thing he had posted. Not two minutes before: the news that Sleep No More will be closing in January. Straight from Alexis Soloski, another member of our extended immersive cosmos, in The New York Times.

After 13 years, the undisputed king of immersive theatrical productions, the show that turned so many people into fans and creators, that sparked an entire Renaissance, will close its doors. In New York, at least. The Shanghai version is still up and running, now in its seventh year.

This has been a rough year for immersive as a business, no doubt. Not as rough as it’s been for video games which has seen scores of layoffs or TV & film with hard fought labor battles that shut down the industry for a third of the year, but ended with deserved victories for labor.

Still: Here Lies Love, which had success off Broadway, flopped on Broadway. So did K-Pop before it. Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City closed in a fashion that took many by surprise, so did Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser. Both were beloved by many a fan, with the later developing a whole fan culture unique to it in its closing weeks.

Much in the way that Sleep No More developed a whole fan culture across the 5000 performances and two million tickets that it sold. Which is a staggering success by any measure.

Now I can hear our regular readers & listeners shouting: “NOAH WHY AREN’T YOU PANICKING???? YOU BUILT YOUR LIFE AROUND THIS FIELD AREN’T YOU SCARED?!?!?!?”

No.

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I’m all in on the long term viability of immersive. An off-Broadway show that can run for 13 years and bounce back for a turn after a global pandemic isn’t something to sneeze at. It lasted longer after the pandemic than Phantom of the Opera did. That’s saying something.

The articles point to statement about the cost of the show being no longer sustainable. Which has people thinking that large scale immersive just isn’t sustainable. Buddy, nothing in this society is sustainable right now. That won’t stop theatre people. We’re too stubborn.

There’s also shipboard scuttlebutt about how long was left on the lease on the building and that the physical plant needed some work. Emursive, the company that runs the show in NYC, has been trying to get a new show in a new location off the ground.

Along with all that: the show is OLD. Even Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett isn’t interested in making their signature mask shows, of which Sleep No More was the most successful by a mile, anymore. The world has moved on. Immersive has flourished and gotten more complex. And that’s even before you take into account the innovations in escape games and other parts of the always broadening field that are in conversation with the theatrical side.

Back at CalArts, after sharing the news, I went back to mentoring the students about audience agency and the challenges of scripting for it. When I got home I worked on a talk I’m giving at an industry event next week in Denver, one where creators of all scales — even some whose careers started with Sleep No More — will pitch their work to performing arts centers around the United States.

This year does mark the ending of an era, and what comes next is a grand opportunity for those who are passionate about this form. Because there are a LOT of fans of this work out there who won’t have their go-to comfort show to take in anymore. We already saw what happened when the pandemic shut everything down: there was this explosion of work online and that birthed new companies, forms, and fans.

That we are lucky enough to be the inheritors of Sleep No More’s legacy — as fans and creators — is a glorious thing.

Yes, there are hard problems to solve. A market to build. Real estate mountains to climb and bureaucracies to navigate. All that was true yesterday. What’s new is that come February the title of “can’t miss immersive theatre show in the United States” will be open for the first time since there was a crown.

Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

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