In December 2011, a woman performer emailed fellow cast members about sexual misconduct by patrons. She said patrons also groped her breasts several times.įormer performers discussed the issue with each other just nine months after the show opened in New York.
Another actor who performed as Boy Witch four years earlier told BuzzFeed News that an audience member tried to insert a finger into his anus in the same scene.Ī former original cast member said she was groped three times over 17 months.Īnd an audience member rubbed his crotch on former steward Jessica Jarvinen while she was guarding an off-limits staircase, Jarvinen said. Regardless, Billy Bell, an actor who played Boy Witch, was grabbed on the genitals by an audience member.
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And part of the training includes role playing, in which someone acts like an unruly audience member and performers and staffers practice how to react and get help. The written policies also include a guide for each scene and character, telling performers where crew members are stationed in case they need assistance. An attorney for the production said that no policy at any entertainment venue can guarantee audience members won’t ever act up, and that the policies try to prevent and address those issues. The policies discuss what employees should do if they experience sexual misconduct, difficult patrons, and other issues. Sleep No More does have extensive written policies concerning employee safety and mandatory employee training programs. And a current performer told BuzzFeed News that she was “shocked" to hear performers were groped, and said she felt safe there. One former staffer said she felt like she was never discouraged from reporting an incident to management. Some former employees said they felt safe at Sleep No More, and they didn’t experience sexual misconduct.
“Once you gave people a mask, it was carte blanche to let them do whatever they wanted,” one former steward, a staffer who directs and assists the audience during the show, told BuzzFeed News. Some former employees who experienced sexual misconduct by audience members added that, while they didn’t feel traumatized or victimized, they felt they needed to speak out because such incidents should not be part of a normal work environment. The off-Broadway production is not unionized, and some former employees say Emursive, at times, failed to adequately protect employees in the workplace. (BuzzFeed News began its reporting after receiving a secure tip.) The employees’ complaints about sexual misconduct span from 2011, when the show opened, until 2017, and are corroborated by either emails, texts, other documents, or interviews with people whom the victims confided in. Four former employees who were groped provided their names. In all, BuzzFeed News spoke with more than 30 current and former employees, but most declined to be identified, citing Sleep No More’s nondisclosure agreements or fear of reprisal from the company and theater community. Sleep No More acknowledged seven of those incidents, and contested the rest. In all, BuzzFeed News confirmed 17 incidents of groping or sexual misconduct by patrons during the show - including of two former performers who were groped multiple times. Performers say it is one of the most exciting productions they could list on a résumé.īut eight former Sleep No More performers and staffers told BuzzFeed News they were groped by audience members during the show. It’s a theatrical phenomenon, attracting celebrities and pop culture cameos. The show is an artistic creation of the British company Punchdrunk - which doesn’t run the New York City show day-to-day - and tickets start around $100. Sleep No More puts on nine performances a week at the McKittrick Hotel, a former warehouse in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood where the production company, Emursive, also runs two bars and a restaurant. And sometimes, former staffers said, audience members just reached out and groped them. Before the performance, an actor usually declares that “fortune favors the bold,” and the 400 or so audience members are instructed to wear - and not remove - ghoulish white masks, fueling a sense of anonymity amid the production’s fantasy setting. The lighting ranges from dim to very dark guests are intentionally separated from the people they arrived with. Audience members wander through dozens of elaborately decorated rooms as dancers perform a blood-and-sex filled adaptation of Macbeth at the immersive theater production Sleep No More.
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