The first time I saw Sleep No More— an immersive, film-noir adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that has been playing at Manhattan’s McKittrick Hotel since 2011— I was two months postpartum with my first child. Still foggy from sleep deprivation and wobbly from childbirth, I was probably not in the best place to be meandering through a 100,000 square-foot building watching a wordless, dance-based interpretation of a play I’d never read. In my postpartum haze I found it hard to get through an entire episode of Gilmore Girls in one sitting, let alone a dense, abstract theatrical production. While there, I found myself distractedly ducking into even-darker corners of the already-dark set to check and see if I needed to run home and pump. After nearly two hours and with no idea what I was supposed to get out of this experience, I decided I needed to get back to my baby. I asked a black-masked steward to guide me out before it was even over.
A few days later, I was taking my infant for a walk in Chelsea. We passed the towering warehouse that is home to the performance. I stared up at the windows, trying to marry what I’d seen in there with the nondescript exterior. The five floors inside had been dream-like—a hotel lobby on one floor, a graveyard on the next, a street with shops on another, a sanitarium somewhere. There was no connective tissue to orient you inside, but there weren’t even any hints about these dreamscapes from the outside.
I suddenly felt a need to get it. The feeling was unusual. For the last two months, every (infrequent) free moment I had went to reading about baby sleep schedules, or researching the best bottles, or trying to find the car seat I liked on sale. My mind, already operating at a reduced capacity due to lack of sleep and birth recovery and constant breastfeeding, had not made much room for any non-parenting related thoughts. As many new parents know, this sudden deluge of new tasks and responsibilities, coupled with a newborn who can’t really interact with you, makes for a pretty monotonous time. One in which it’s hard to find a minute to make a sandwich, let alone develop a new interest.
But I couldn’t shake that the idea of this rabbit hole—completely unrelated to my baby—was appealing. I followed Sleep No More and the McKittrick Hotel on Instagram. I started reading the dedicated subreddit. I learned about the performance’s source material (including not just Macbeth, but Hitchcock’s oeuvre and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca), discovered the characters’ names, read about so-called 1:1s, the private monologues that performers “pull” an audience member for. And then—my nine-week-old baby called to me, ready for another feeding, another diaper change, another nap. I settled right back into my monotonous routine as quickly as I’d briefly snapped out of it.
A year later, emerging from the unrelenting responsibilities of the first year of motherhood, I happened to hear of a Hitchcock-themed Halloween party hosted by the McKittrick. Despite living in Atlanta, my brother, who had accompanied me the first time, loves Hitchcock and Halloween decided to come. We bought tickets to the party and the show.
I wanted to see the show again, honestly, for one reason: in my research I’d learned there was a “secret” sixth floor. A completionist at heart, I had to attempt to see this elusive bonus material. So when the elevator that ushers guests into the set let me off alone on the fifth floor that night, I stayed close to the only performer I found there.
If you’ve ever been on the Sleep No More side of the internet, you know this character isn’t the one who brings you up to the hidden sixth floor experience. But what she did do was shepherd me through a story— just her and me, alone for nearly an hour. She was in control of our every move, and I was completely immersed, my outside life never once crossing my mind. It was the first time since I became a parent where I truly lost myself in something. Unlike during that first visit, I wasn’t thinking about the responsibilities awaiting me, or getting back to my child.
Seeing Sleep No More was not the first thing I’d done “for myself” since having a child, of course. I’d taken sporadic workout classes, scheduled an odd facial, even left town for a few days on a solo getaway to celebrate reaching my breastfeeding goal. But—as any parent likely knows—I always had one foot back in the parenting world, my phone never more than an arm’s length away. Those hours I spent in Sleep No More were the first time that I was fully present in something else.
While you’re in the performance, you’re given a mask to wear, ostensibly to distinguish you from the actors. But many patrons will tell you that the mask does more than that—it provides an escape for the audience member, too. It gives you a freedom, a permission to submit to the world the creators have built for you. And the most shocking part was that none of this made me feel guilty, the way we moms often do after indulging in something just for ourselves, or, god forbid, forgetting about our responsibilities briefly.
After that second trip, my mind felt revitalized—a precious experience since motherhood had reduced so much of my brain to that rote caretaking. People often talk about the importance of getting “back” to yourself after becoming a parent, but I was experiencing something different—discovering a new, yet familiar part of myself.
Sleep No More is often seen as a macabre mystery, but it is also a nesting doll of unending riddles without definitive explanations. That open-endedness became a gift, allowing me to enter a world of critical thinking and analysis after my daughter was in bed each night. My self-guided sessions were a tangible reminder that motherhood was not all there was to me. That I could return to the things that brought me joy.
Soon, I found out I was pregnant with our second child. I plotted how I might visit the hotel while pregnant, noting which characters were too physical to sprint after. I was now up to my sixth show, bringing along an in-utero guest. The pandemic began shortly after, but when I finally went back in July of 2022, I was seven months pregnant with my third child. The experience was different— we wore KN95s under our white masks and it took a lot more logistics and childcare and transit to visit the building than ever before— but it was every bit as electric as I remembered.
I took for granted that Sleep No More would remain a New York institution, accessible as long as there was a train to carry me there. But recently, the show announced it was closing after 13 years and more than 5,000 performances. I am sure I am far from the only person who saw this extraordinary performance and felt reawakened. I still haven’t accepted that after March 31, that magic will never exist again. But I will never forget what I felt when I was inside those walls, and all that I was able to carry with me after.