Brill Building

I was here in Times Square area at the famous Brill Building for the Dream of the Red Chamber: A Performance for a Sleeping Audience exhibit. This was put on by Jim Findlay and it was a featured attraction for a few nights in TS area. I attended on the May 14^th and it was not too crowded. The amount of beds that people could actually use was about 50 but the max number of people in at one time was about 90 people. I was there and got the postion near the back with one bed and a friend of mine right there she had a bed facing the other way. Some other random people are right there next to you as well, #sleepingwithstrangers. I believe I only actually fell asleep for about 20 minutes there were parts of the time when I was falling in and out of sleep but recovered before going into a deep sleep.
Dream of the Red Chamber, a performance for a sleeping audience is a literal dream play performed for an audience that is encouraged to experience the work while they fall in and out of sleep. This durational performance installation invites the audience to take an immersive journey through Cao Xueqin’s 18^th century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber — an epic love story between a stone and a flower, framed by a dizzying series of metaphysical dreams. All night dream sequences were there for you to listen to or just lay comfortablely in the bed. If you were there on May 10^th or May 17^th and were even a tourist in Times Square you could have stayed all night in the beds. It was open until 6AM. The overall experience was nice and the audience was expected to experience the performance in and out of sleep. Some people brought blankets, snuggle up next to each other, some didn’t. Some people slept back to back in the same bed with each other, some did not. I could not tell you what I actually remember dreaming but the beds were comfortable. I did see some of a performance that involved a girl with really long wig, she was a very attractive light skin black female. I could hear the cards shuffling and could hear the loud but silent horn even when my eyes were closed and I was about to really fall into real sleep. All and all, I say it was worth going to. I passed by again saturday night and it was ridiculous crowded but it was also the last night.