Why can’t I sleep? Anxiety, depression, psychological stress? Or cell phones, distractions, and late-night conversations? The National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that 1 in 3 people in the United States report difficulty sleeping at least one night per week. This also rings true in Europe, especially among youth. A new immersive production gives audiences a chance to hear different stories of why youth in Sweden are struggling to fall asleep.

Slumberland recently closed its curtain—or shut off its headsets—at Connecticut’s Yale Schwarzman Center, its second showing after its U.S. debut at Duke University. It is currently running at Oregon State University through May 11. The production, which blends theatre, virtual reality (VR), and documentary-style storytelling, was born of a collaboration between two Swedish performing arts companies: Bombina Bombast, based in Malmö, and led by Emma Bexell and Stefan Stanisic, and Lost in Time, based in Stockholm and led by Robin Jonsson.

Pillow Talk

Both companies have always been about testing the limits and pushing the boundaries of digital media and the performing arts, and they came together on this project because they both had heard much talk about whether digital media had a positive or negative influence on the theatrical industry. “Talking about digital and analog in such binary terms is really holding back our art form,” said Emma Bexell, “especially since society is so intertwined with technology in our everyday life.” She and Stefan connected with Jonsson when they were all searching for ways to continue storytelling when the pandemic put a halt to in-person theatre.

The idea of telling a story about insomnia began when the headline “Why can’t I sleep?” caught Bexell’s eye in a Swedish newspaper. The story was about a Swedish social worker in conversation with a former Stockholm gang member who discussed the rampant insomnia among young criminals he was in contact with. This piqued her curiosity. “We live in a world that wants us to be awake as much as possible and work, consume, scroll,” she said. “But at the same time these kids have the ability to text a social worker in the middle of the night, and to me that’s also comforting.” Emma began playing with the concept of “making a virtual world that would be a place for rest…sort of like a meditation.”

In interviews she conducted with youth at a community culture center in Malmö about bedtime routines, sleep aids, and sleep hindrances, she found that every single one of them had some form of trouble sleeping. She also asked them to describe their “slumberland”—i.e., their ideal sleep environment. Those responses guided the team to engineer their immersive production.

In speaking with Jonsson about his role as choreographer and co-director, he pointed to the ways in which VR technology assisted in the piece’s creation. In fact, the production’s original two actors only met in the VR rehearsal room. “Ninety percent of the creation process was online and they were in Malmö and we were in Stockholm,” said Jonsson. “They knew each other’s body and body language and voice very well, but they never met physically.”

The actors’ VR suits gave the production team the ability to see their movements and physical activities, so Jonsson was able to block the movements and choreography one-on-one with the performers. The virtual rehearsal room also gave him the ability to be a present for his kids, something he said echoed across the production team. This experience is “socially sustainable,” he said, because even as the production tours in the U.S. he can still be as heavily involved without ever having to leave his children’s side.

New Bedfellows

Their first production premiered in 2022 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam in front of a Dutch audience. Since that original staging, the team has been able to increase capacity from 12 audience members to 20 at a time. They have also refined virtual set pieces and continued to incorporate more personal accounts of insomnia in Slumberland.

As they prepared to bring Slumberland to Connecticut audiences, the Bombina Bombast and Lost in Time team were in constant communication with stage management at Yale Schwarzman Center, and with Yale University’s IT department. The entire production runs on a Wi-Fi server—not behind a firewall, meaning if the Wi-Fi drops, the entire production comes to a halt. Before the team arrived in Connecticut, they conducted a stress test to ensure the university’s Wi-Fi could handle the production for the entire 30-minute show.

Preparation also included registering the MAC addresses for each of the 20 Meta Quest Oculus 2 headsets that would be used for a sold-out audience. When the team landed in Connecticut, they ran through a dry tech, which included a training to Yale staff on how to use the headsets so they could guide the audience if there were issues. They also rehearsed contingency plans: In Plan A, the show works from start to finish in the VR headset. In Plan B, if batteries ran out or the server dropped, Yale had a projector on stand-by to project a 2D version of the story onto the wall. Yale’s IT was present for back-up throughout the entire run in case they ran into issues. Luckily Plan B was never needed.

Then it was call time.

Snoozefest

The production took place in The Dome of Yale University, a black box-ish theatre (but with white walls). The actor and technician were ready for “curtain call” in Sweden while audiences prepared in Connecticut.

As soon as audiences walk into the Dome, they step into Slumberland. The room has a blue light that runs throughout the space and ethereal audio playing from a Bluetooth speaker. There are 20 circular rugs on the floor with a small round light stand and two pillows stacked on every rug. The audience can move throughout the space, but the rug ensures that every individual knows their boundaries to avoid injury. “Our mission was to see, can we make people fall asleep in VR?” Jonsson said. They failed at that mission, but did succeed in taking them to a new world.

To make the transition easier, particularly for people who have never used VR, the last thing audiences see in the real world is the first thing they see in VR. The story begins with the narrator, played by Carita Ivanova at Yale. Audience members see each other as their chosen avatars. They recognize the person sitting next to them in real life is sitting with them in VR.

The actress walks them through a journey from different bedrooms. Each bedroom resembles a person who documented their sleep experience. When you look up in Slumberland, there are stars, each holding the story of a different interviewed individual. The audience can use their VR joysticks to grab a star, which unleashes the interview of a Swedish youth’s sleep experience. One might compare it to a documentary, only with a live actress narrating the story and walking you through the experience.

At curtain call, when headsets were taken off, there was a round of applause. One audience member, Christine, 16, said that she “really liked the live person that was narrating the story. I felt like it was more natural than sighted AI or text-generated guides.” And while she called the experience “super fun,” she also took away the message about how today’s stressful world affects our sleep.

Bexell, who was physically present in Connecticut, noted that there was not a stark difference between American and European audiences but rather between people who use VR for the first time compared to those who haven’t.

“We see a big difference between age groups in how they relate to the piece,” she said. “Also, younger audiences tend to sort of play the performance like a game. They test the limits of interaction and try it more than an older audience who will follow along more attentively with the stories. I love that our piece can accommodate multiple ways of interacting with it.”

So the real question that keeps us up at night: Is it theatre or is it VR?

It is theatre in the sense that the show must go on, even if technical difficulties arise from one headset, the show continues on. It is theatre because it involves a live actor in every performance, as well as a technician running lights, stage cues and more.

But it is groundbreaking for its capability to bring audiences in from anywhere. As long as there is a headset, the show goes on. With the entire production of actors and tech crew still home in Sweden, Slumberland continues to tour the globe. VR technology also has the potential to increase accessibility for those who may not be physically able to experience traditional theatre.

It is costly from a production standpoint. The Schwarzman Center at Yale University was able to put on the show without charging admission for any attendee, student, staff, or the general public, because they had the resources to bridge the gap between finances and accessibility. Whether other institutions can do the same remains to be seen.

“I want more directors and choreographers to work like this because it’s just so much fun, “ Jonsson said. “It’s like we’ve got this new toolbox for dance and theatre and there’s so much more to do. You can make people fly and they can listen to stories and stars.” The possibilities are endless—and you don’t have to dream them.

Slumberland is currently at the PRAx Patrician Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, where it will run through May 11 at the Ray Theater. The production will end its spring tour in Gothenburg, Sweden, at the end of May.

Rachelle Legrand (she/her) is a writer based in Michigan.