![]() I never thought I would have that reaction to art as an adult.” “The only thing I can compare it to is listening to punk rock for the first time when I was 13. “It was like my brain exploded,” said Cafferty. He revisited the production another 19 times. Kevin Cafferty, a filmmaker and web designer, first saw Sleep No More in its earlier pre-Emursive incarnation in Boston in 2009. Some went so far as getting tattoos of the McKittrick’s emblem, a thistle. A subculture of superfans grew up around the production with some going to see Sleep No More over 70 times. That’s very much what happened except that it happened a lot faster than perhaps we would have imagined.” “It was really about hoping that two people would come and their minds would be blown and then those people would tell two people and they would come and it would build very organically - audience member by audience member. “For us there was just the thrill of seeing that come to life and believing right from the beginning that it would be about word of mouth as opposed to the traditional thing in New York which would be to advertise heavily and create hype.” “New York is filled with people who want to embrace things that might be avant garde or out of the box,” says Hochwald. They’re big numbers and we knew it was going to take a lot of people to operate it and to be a part of it.”Įmursive relied solely on word of mouth to get audience members through the door. “Obviously you’re dealing with Manhattan real estate - and a lot of Manhattan real estate - because this is 100,000 square feet in Chelsea. Hochwald says they knew that it was going to be expensive. “But we just believed that it would be remarkable enough and outstanding enough and different enough that it would capture the fancy and attention of really creative people, which the city is full of.” “It was really uncharted territory,” he says. It was “definitely too out-of-the-box to go down the traditional fundraising route,” says Hochwald. The trio won’t talk specifics about fundraising, but do say they raised a friends-and-family round with some extra cash coming from a few private investors and theatre producers. “Then it was an extraordinarily long and complicated and expensive build.” “It was quite a long exhaustive three year search for the right building and a cool landlord that would be willing to let us do this and embrace this,” says Hochwald. It was a great combination.”įinding a space was a long and difficult road. ![]() And then you add, obviously, Felix and Punchdrunk and the sort of creative geniuses that came from London and had perfected this new art form. “In fact I’m quite certain that we couldn’t have - it required that three-faced approach to pulling it off. “I don’t think any one of us could have done this on our own,” says Hochwald. Hochwald and Weiner teamed up with New York real estate impresario Arthur Karpati to find a Manhattan home for Sleep No More, following the concept of London immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, directed by Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle. Randy Weiner was best known for producing The Box, the obscenely decadent (or decadently obscene, depending on your point of view) burlesque-infused nightspot with locations in New York and London. Hochwald was the executive producer of Madison Square Gardens, putting on huge shows like the Christmas Spectacular. Hochwald says that the summer will see the McKittrick reach its zenith with “the whole building in bloom.”īefore founding Emursive to back Sleep No More, the co-founding trio knew each other and were friends. Now the company has made it first foray into the New York dining scene with The Heath, a wood-paneled jazz bar and restaurant complete with dining carriages that look like they’ve sprung fully-formed from the 1920s. ![]() First came the parties, followed by verdant rooftop bar Gallow Green. Ticket sales for 2013 were actually stronger than 2012, says Hochwald.Įmursive has been slowly adding "ancillary attractions" to Sleep No More’s fictional home - the McKittrick Hotel, a sprawling 100,000 square foot building in Chelsea which used to be three warehouses. But in the three years since its opening, demand for Sleep No More has surged without letup. One might think that such an unusual production, where audience members wear plastic Venetian masks and follow the actors around a vast and detailed set, would meet a quick end as a passing fad or historical curiosity. Jonathan Hochwald, Randy Weiner and Arthur Karpati formed production company Emursive with the goal of bringing Macbeth-inspired immersive-theatre-dance mash up Sleep No More to New York City.
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