Earlier today, the New York immersive theatre show Life and Trust abruptly informed ticketholders that all future performances were cancelled, with refunds processing imminently:
We sincerely regret to inform you that due to unforeseen circumstances, the theatrical run of Life and Trust officially came to an end last night.
This was only a couple of days after ads announced the show would end May 26th, which itself would’ve been both short notice and a very short run given it opened under a year ago. In comparison, the New York production of Sleep No More ran for almost fourteen years.
Life and Trust was very similar to Sleep No More. Audiences explored six storeys of a vast building filled with fantastical sets and mysterious performers, all while wearing masks. Indeed, its producers, Emursive, co-produced Sleep No More NY with Punchdrunk.
It’s far too early to know the reasons for the closure, though it would be fair to say Life and Trust didn’t attract anywhere near the level of critical and popular attention as Sleep No More, and perhaps that translated into poor sales. Here’s what I wrote about my experience at a preview of the show back in June 2024:
I was hopeful it might depart from the “chase performers around a building” formula, and the first ten minutes were promising, with two actors telling us a story of riches and ruin. My hopes were dashed when we were ushered into an empty hallway with stairs leading up and down. Everyone practically sprinted out to explore; I sighed deeply and prepared myself for two hours of wandering through late 19th and early 20th century sets.
Mounting what is effectively “Sleep No More 2” is a safe bet for an American audience that’s never seen Punchdrunk’s other shows, but what was astonishing to me seventeen years ago in the Masque of the Red Death is now tiring and predictable.
I heard the same sentiment from a lot of acquaintances: tiring, exhausting, etc. One immersive theatre fan told me they preferred sitting in a chair. No doubt this is me and my friends simply getting old, but it highlights the physical challenges of promenade “mask” shows. Perhaps Sleep No More’s 5000+ performances literally exhausted the ranks of everyone who wanted to see this kind of thing, and Life and Trust just wasn’t novel enough to attract a financially sustainable audience – certainly not the “safe bet” I imagined.
Punchdrunk clearly had doubts, with artistic director Felix Barrett announcing they would no longer produce new mask shows. In a conversation last year, Barrett told me financial considerations were one reason, and their most recent production, Viola’s Room, is about as far from a traditional mask show as you can imagine, with zero live performers and taking place in a much smaller space.
It’s always sad when a show closes, especially as suddenly as Life and Trust has. This is almost certainly the end of major new mask shows for the foreseeable future. Their enormous space and capital requirements, along with high ongoing costs for performers and replacing all the stuff audiences steal every night, always made them a challenge; I’ve been told the only way they make money is through alcohol sales, so it’s bad for business when young people are drinking less (supposedly this is partly why clubs in New York are closing). Cities also now have fewer and fewer suitable spaces, shifting the market toward smaller immersive experiences like escape rooms, or experiences directly tied to popular IP.
Yet it’s impossible to underestimate the influence of mask shows. I’ve interviewed dozens of artists and creators for my upcoming book about the history and rise of immersive art, and the single most referenced show has been Sleep No More. This doesn’t mean everyone is trying to make mask shows, but when artists react against Punchdrunk by going in a completely different direction, they’re still interacting with their work. For all their faults, shows like Sleep No More, and its ancestors like Tamara from the 1980s, have always excelled in volume: they really packed audiences in. That might not have translated to profit, but it absolutely translated to artistic influence.
Thanks to Michael Andersen for the tip.
mssv 