Punchdrunk International has extended the run of its immersive theatre show Sleep No More after selling a record-breaking 30,000 tickets since it opened on 14 December, 2016. The production, which takes place over five floors of a specially constructed building in Shanghai’s Jing’An district, will now play until at least 31 May 2017.
Sleep No More is a modern take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with the audience able to freely move through the venue as the story unfolds. It makes extensive use of immersive dramatic devices as well as cinematic projections. The essentials of the plot remain the same, although the Chinese production is set in 1930s Shanghai.
It is the first time a large scale immersive show has been presented in China. To create it, Punchdrunk worked with Chinese co-producers SMG Live and placed Chinese artists alongside the original creative team of Felix Barrett (co-director and lighting design), Maxine Doyle (co-director and choreography), Stephen Dobbie (sound design), Israel Reynoso (costume design) and Colin Nightingale (creative producer).
The show previously ran in London, Boston and New York before heading to Shanghai. Sleep No More is also currently running in New York at the The McKittrick Hotel.