Moore, the “ecological regime” of neoliberalism has been insistent on the financialization of nature and the appropriation of new ecological and labor surpluses through accumulation by dispossession and technics of enclosure: “capitalism’s arrogance is to assign value to life-activity within the commodity system (and an alienating value at that) while de-valuing, and simultaneously drawing its lifeblood from, uncommodified life-activity within reach of capitalist power” (Moore 2015, 100). The reinscription of human life as “duration without breaks, defined by a principle of continuous functioning”(8) flexibilizes sleep patterns in order to maximize labor, and spurs military and pharmaceutical research into the elimination of the necessity for sleep. However, this barrier has been increasingly eroded in the era of neoliberal capitalism, as personal and social identities are reorganized to model “the uninterrupted operation of markets, information networks, and other systems” within the 24/7 environment (Crary 2013, loc. Jonathan Crary’s influential 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep argues that “in its profound uselessness and intrinsic passivity” sleep presents a stubborn biological barrier to capitalism’s theft of time (Crary 2013, loc. By comparison, the sleeping body on stage contradicts these arrangements: resisting the contract that exists between the bodies, of audience and actor, wherein one watches and the other responds by performing. Alone on stage the theatre actor replays learned actions, attitudes, and emotions in an attempt to entertain or communicate profound insights and experiences. On the stage however, an enhanced self-consciousness has made it possible for performers to extend the roles and social games that we play in the everyday, to such an extent that they can pretend to be someone that they are not for our entertainment, or perform for the sake of performance itself. The sleeping body is unaware of the demands that a self-conscious body responds to, and remains sentient only in the sense that its faculties and consciousness are turned completely inward. As an absence of responsive action and external awareness it contradicts the paradigms of the theatrical condition. Sleep is the very antithesis of performance. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator, the article proposes that a sleep cultures approach to theatrical performance might challenge the dichotomy between active and sleepy spectatorship, advocating for a ‘sleeping’ spectator, reclaiming sleep from passivity and framing it as political action performed over a long duration. The article also looks beyond the performance itself to trace neoliberal discourses in the production’s online fan communities and potential labor law violations. Sleep No More encourages its spectators to have embodied experiences of the sleeplessness brought about by defining characteristics of neoliberal life, including the deregulation of human biological patterns, the interweaving of ‘real’ life with virtual technology and the experience of intimate relationships as frustrated by a free market logic of scarcity. The article conceives of Sleep No More’s version of neoliberal spectatorship as sleepless spectatorship, modeled on Macbeth’s own insomniac characters, reading Sleep No More’s form of spectatorship in conversation with what Simon Williams terms ‘sleep cultures’ research, including Jonathan Crary’s 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. This promotion of spectatorial choice has drawn critiques from scholars such as Adam Alston, Jen Harvie and Keren Zaiontz for its enthusiastic complicity in neoliberal modes of consumption and labor. Sleep No More’s immersive adaptation of Macbeth has attracted scholarly attention for its insight into spectatorial desires for mobility and interaction.
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