Matt (paraphrased) : So I was in my old elementary school. Except it didn’t look like my school anymore. It was a bunch of rooms from another era. Everyone was wearing masks and looked white and ghoulish and the same. A beautiful, unmasked woman pulled me into the old principal’s office and locked the door. She spoke to me in a hushed, eerie voice. I think she wanted to make out with me.

Sounds like a dream? Have you ever seen a ghost? Or maybe felt like YOU were the ghost? Have you ever wandered into someone’s dream to bear witness? This is the surreal experience of going to Sleep No More.

At Christmas, Matt’s parents gave us tickets to see Art Repertory Theatre’s co-production with London’s Punchdrunk Company’s Sleep No More. Set in an unused elementary school, Brookline, MA’s Old Lincoln (where Matt did indeed go to grammar school), the four-story schoolhouse is transformed into a stage you can wander around in. The only resemblance to its roots are the dimly lit locker-lined hallways. You meander in and out of rooms right out of a Dali painting, touching, opening, and investigating. You wear a white mask. You are silent.

Suddenly someone bursts on to the scene. A man, holding a feather, slams it into a locker. He whispers something. You can’t hear what he says. He opens the locker, pulls out the feather, examines it and takes off down the hall. Stunned, you come to your senses and follow him.

You watch him from room to room. He is completely unaware of your presence. A woman joins him. They are silent, passionate, fear filled. She flees. Some follow her. You stay with the man. The man enters a small chamber with an incubator. He is examining something. Suddenly, he looks up. He looks right at you. You feel he can see you under your protective white mask. He walks toward you. Slowly. Gently, he takes your hand an leads you into the chamber. Your friends attempt to follow but he slams the door behind you and locks it. You hear your husband shaking the handle. Your heart is racing…

Sleep No More is Macbeth like it has never been seen before–told through a Hitchcock lenses. Days and nights afterward it stayed with me, permeating my dreams, occupying my thoughts. We knew we had to go back. And I convinced our friends Nichole and Evan to join us to an encore performance, telling them absolutely NOTHING except they had to join us for something that unlike anything they have seen before. With a great sense of trust and adventure, last night they joined us to wander into the unknown abyss.

A theatre experience we will remember forever.