Sleep No More Program: Colliding Worlds: Shakespeare, Hitchcock and Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk explores the space between the theatrical and cinematic. For us, this building offers a multitude of cinematic framings, each charged with emotion. Exploring the space individually, the audience is given the opportunity to both act in and direct their own film; to revisit, to edit and to indulge themselves as voyeurs. Like a Hitchcock film, the audience is plunged into the world of the unknown and left to piece the puzzle together. Screen dialogues become intense physical duets between characters and the body becomes the site of debate. Spoken words rarely find their way into our world; we are excited by the human body as a primary source of emotive storytelling.

We took Macbeth as a source and fused it with Hitchcock’s aesthetic because for us they are a perfect match. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most fear-filled play; husbands fear for their wives, mothers fear for their children, and children fear for their lives. Hitchcock’s protagonists, like those in Macbeth, hover on the edge of tempestuous instability; in Sleep No More characters from Hitchcock films permeate the world, wandering through Macbeth’s story. The young Mrs. de Winter from Hitchcock’s Rebecca is searching for her lost husband – Shakespeare’s Duncan – and is bullied by the Macbeths’ cruel housekeeper – Hitchcock’s Mrs. Danvers. Shakespeare and Hitchcock collide in Punchdrunk’s world which will, we hope, offer a fresh perspective on these two enigmatic artists.