sleeper on New York City: Get Tickets Now!

About This Show

From the moment of birth until our last waking breath, humanity’s need for sleep is eternal; a vital force of nature, as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet everyone has an opinion on how we could be sleeping better or should be sleeping less. Born from a desire to quiet this cultural static, sleeper turns up the noise and snuggles inside it.

The play follows Sleeper, a millennial archetype of an every-person, who, from a self-imposed, bedridden exile ponders the imperative of a lived existence. Why wake up? What, or who, do we rise for? Throughout what should be a quick nap, Sleeper encounters a shape-shifting cast of characters, both real and imagined, as they grapple with burnout and self doubt. Will our Sleeper ever escape (or accept) their somnolence? Can they draw back the curtains and let in the light?

Ultimately, the key to Sleeper’s liberation hinges on a visit from their mother and a return to their Indigenous Chickasaw roots, where dreams have the power to unlock the relationship between parent and child, descendant and ancestor, body and earth. sleeper is a manifesto and a circus, a heartfelt appeal to the burnout generation to fall fully, wholeheartedly, and headfirst into sleep.