Follow the Light: Inside ‘Viola’s Room,’ NYC’s Most Intimate Immersive Show

Walking barefoot through the dark is not something most New Yorkers would willingly sign up for. But Viola’s Room at The Shed in Hudson Yards dares you to do exactly that—strip away the armor of city life, step out of your shoes, and follow only flickers of light, whispers in your headphones, and the pounding of your own heart.

Created by Felix Barrett and Punchdrunk, the pioneers who brought Sleep No More to Manhattan, Viola’s Room is something altogether different: more intimate, more vulnerable, and—yes—more emotional.

“It’s essentially one long, singular personal experience,” Barrett explains. “We ask people to take their shoes off. That simple act changes everything—the ground beneath your toes adds layers and depth to what you are seeing and hearing.”

The show’s intimacy is no accident. Written by Booker Prize–shortlisted author Daisy Johnson and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, the experience winds you through a labyrinth of rooms that feel less like theater and more like memory made physical.

“From the start, our conversations were about texture—what you could feel with your hands and feet, what you could smell,” Johnson says. “I wanted the words to embody that touch-sensuality, like Angela Carter or Mary Shelley, where excitement easily twists into something dark and frightening.”

As audience members drift through childhood bedrooms, fevered ballrooms, and hushed chapels, the lighting itself feels alive—like a spirit guiding you closer to Viola’s story. Simon Wilkinson, the show’s lighting designer, calls them “wisps,” inspired by folklore.

“We treated the light as a character. It should feel like it breathes and dances around you,” Wilkinson says. “Once you’ve been starved of light in the dark, the impact of a room flooded by it is amplified a hundredfold.”

That surrender to darkness resonated with me in ways I didn’t expect. My own life has been shaped by dance, and by a mother who passed that love on to me. I danced ballet professionally and trained for 10 years at the School of American Ballet when George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirsten were still alive. My mom had danced there, too—her devotion to ballet became mine. When she passed away in 2023, I placed pointe shoes in her resting place, a symbol of her eternal dance. Standing inside Viola’s Room, where a pair of pink pointe shoes rested with a note, “To Viola With Love, Mom,” I felt that bond anew. The show’s tree of pointe shoes felt like my own living altar—an eternal reminder of love, beauty, and movement that outlives us.

Designer Casey Jay Andrews understands that visceral connection. “Pointe shoes felt at once ethereal and savage,” she says. “They demand blood. We had shoes donated from ballet companies, each marked with the wear and tear of hours of dancing. Their authenticity makes them haunting. You can feel the history in them.”

The show’s dream-logic unfolds in layers, blurring the line between Viola’s reality and fevered imagination. “I loved planting familiar objects—childhood drawings, wallpaper, toys—that later reappear transformed,” Andrews explains. “That’s how dreams work. Something ordinary slips in, mutates, and becomes uncanny. The line between memory and nightmare dissolves.”

And for Johnson, that emotional volatility was at the heart of her writing. “We talked about that strange time between being a child and becoming a teenager,” she recalls. “Your senses feel newly alive. I love that first room, the childhood bedroom—the safety you crawl out of. It captures that moment of leaving innocence behind.”

If Sleep No More made you feel like a voyeur in a cinematic dreamscape, Viola’s Room makes you, the protagonist, in on a whispered secret.

“If you feel the story is just for you,” Barrett says, “then you’ve become the main character.”

That’s what makes this show so mesmerizing. It isn’t just immersive—it’s personal. When you walk out, blinking back into daylight, you carry Viola’s story with you. For me, I carried my mother’s, too.

Because sometimes, following the light doesn’t just guide you through a performance. It guides you back to love.

http://theshed.org/