Katherine's in town this weekend, yay! It's like a mini vacation, we've gone to see shows and eaten at super yummy restaurants and spent about three hours in a bookstore (I may be exaggerating, I'm not sure).
The first night she got here, we went to go see Sleep No More at 10. Words can't describe that very strange experience. It kind of felt like the Tower of Terror, like the McKittrick Hotel is what Tower of Terror was based on. It probably wasn't, but it had the same feel. We walked in and checked in, and then we got a card (from a deck of cards) that was kind of our pass into the hotel. We waited in a lobby/bar area until they called our card numbers and then we headed in.
We got these creepy looking masks (I didn't keep mine but they looked weird) and got onto an elevator, and the elevator operator would stop at different floors and let a few people off before moving onto the next floor and letting more people off there, and so on. He said it was meant to be an "individual experience", which is an idea that didn't sit well with one woman who was there with her boyfriend/fiance/husband. She refused to go without him, and kept clinging to him. The elevator operator tried reasoning with her, saying that other people were waiting for her, because no one else could get off until she did. At this floor, Katherine got off and then the guy put his arm out to stop the rest of us before I could get off, so I knew I was going to be on a different floor. And that was fine, as much as I would've liked to go with Katherine, it was going to be cool to be able to explore on my own. Finally the elevator operator somehow managed to get the guy off and not let the girl off on the same floor, so we were able to get off.
The entire hotel was MacBeth themed, and it was very eerie. I was amazed by the detail--the smell, the feel of everything, and the attention to the littlest details. There was a typewriter on a desk in one of the rooms and I went in and read the letter that was half-typed, and it was actually legible and understandable. At first I was a little shy, just walking around and half-heartedly looking, but after a while I grew bolder and started picking things up and touching things. I went into one room that looked like a child's room, and I turned to look in the mirror and there was this really cool effect that made me look like a ghost, like I was semi-transparent. It was awesome. Before we got into the hotel, Katherine and I agreed upon a gesture that we'd use in the event that we got separated and thought that we had found each other again. After maybe half an hour (I wasn't paying too much attention to time), I heard someone clear their throat behind me and it was Katherine! From that point onward we stuck together, going into the same rooms and stuff but feeling free to explore within the rooms.
After maybe 45 minutes or so, the actors started coming into play. There were different scenes going on in different rooms, which was really cool, and then the scene would usually end with one of the actors exiting to a different room and whoever was watching would go and follow them. It felt weird at first just standing there watching and being so close, but I got over that after a while. We saw quite a few scenes all the way through. There was one scene where it was literally this guy washing and hanging up laundry and we watched the entire thing. It might've seemed silly otherwise but it was so fascinating to see how committed to this action he was, how real it was for him. He had a routine in washing his clothes and it was captivating to watch him wring out the clothes, shake them out, and then hang them over a ledge. He did this so matter-of-factly, as if it were just another day for him. At one point when we were following an actor to another room, we walked by a room that had padded walls and I decided to go inside to take a closer look. Katherine followed me, and while we were walking around and taking a look, someone slammed the door shut behind us. I just about had a heart attack, it was so scary. I thought for sure they'd locked the door, but when I tried it it was unlocked. I think maybe one of the security guards closed it, they were standing around in black masks to "guide" our experience and maybe that's what they were doing. Either way, scary. After that, we hurried to catch up with everyone else. It was interesting, I had no idea what the flow of the rooms were but in our meanderings we always managed to catch up to or find a scene to watch. One time we happened upon a scene in it's very beginning which was cool, we got to see it from start to finish.
At the end of the evening, all of the actors started ushering everyone into the ballroom for the final scene. All the main actors were standing at a long table on a high platform, designed to look like a banquet table. It was very intense, and you could tell something big was going to happen. Sure enough, they ushered everyone back away from the table a few feet to create room, and on the "stage" the actors were taking the guy playing Macbeth and standing him on a chair that they'd placed on the table. An actor placed a noose around his neck and tightened it, and as the music swelled and grew more intense, we could see Macbeth starting to come to and struggle against the noose. The music cut out for a second, and we could hear him scream. Then another actor kicked the chair out from underneath him and we heard a huge crack sound effect as the lights went out. When they started to come back up, we could see Macbeth swinging from the rope and hear the sound of rope creaking. As this all was happening, I couldn't help but think to myself that there must've been a harness rigged to the jacket he was wearing, and that the noose they put around his neck was hooked to a hook on the neck of the jacket to ensure it looked like he was hung by the neck. Even though I was distracted by the technical aspect, it was still very cool. That was the end, and we were all ushered out. It was just a very strange, confusing experience but it was really really cool. I'm very glad I went.
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