Inside ‘Sleep No More’ Seoul: How Livi Vaughan turned former cinema into immersive theater

Entering the McKithan Hotel in Chungmuro, Seoul, feels like slipping into a fever dream. Behind its doors, reality fragments into a series of vignettes: A man scrubs blood from his hands in a porcelain basin; a glamorous ball hides secrets and betrayals; a woman in a red dress manipulates a haunting ritual; a maid offers a suspicious milky drink; and a nurse beckons a lone guest to her eerie hut. This is “Sleep No More,” British theater company Punchdrunk’s immersive experience that reimagines Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” through Alfred Hitchcock and film noir, which has finally arrived in Korea after years of anticipation. The show rewrites the rules of traditional theater, trading fixed seats and prosceniums for masked audiences who chart their own paths. “Immersive theater is not just a show, it’s a world, and we plunge the audience into the epicenter of that world,” said Felix Barrett, artistic director of Punchdrunk and creator of “Sleep No More.” “Once they’re in there, it’s a living, breathing environment where a narrative occurs around them and the audienWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times