Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep (touring)

What would happen if our ‘waking selves’ and ‘sleeping selves’ met, conversed, and maybe even healed? This digital/analogue performance by sleeptalker Tanya Marquardt tells the story of how they discovered a ‘sleeping self’ named X through their iPhone—an eight year old, cup ½ full little creature walking around in their brain.

A process that began in 2017, Some Must Watch was sourced from hours of mp3 audio sleep-talk recordings and writings, which were workshopped during an artist's residency with world renowned theater company Mabou Mines and performed as a staged sêance, and inspired an NPR Invisibilia. Residencies at Earthdance, foldA (Festival of Live Performance Arts), and Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver clarified the performance, and as the pandemic hit in 2020, Some Must Watch was adapted from a live performance to an installation, SMS texting play, and AI play.

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep is conceived and performed by Tanya Marquardt in collaboration with co-curator of the installation and director Fay Nass, composer Omar Zubair, installation designer David B Smith, coding design by Ainsley Ellis, and dramaturgy by Heidi Taylor.

Production History

2024, Buddies in Bad Times, Toronto, Canada.
2023, PuShOff, Vancouver, Canada.
2021, FoldA, Kingston, Ontario. Canada.
2017, Collapsable Hole, Manhattan, New York.
2016, Soto Clemente, Manhattan, New York. 2016, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Upstart Festival.

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep was the subject of an NPR Invisibilia episode titled “True You.”

“The piece started with the fact that I am a sleeptalker. My mother told me I talked in my sleep and when I was a sixteen year old runaway my friends woke up when I talked. Then I downloaded a sound activated recording app on my iPhone and started to record myself at night. That’s when I discovered that I have a sleeping self; an entirely different ‘person’ that rolls around in my head, talks to themself, to me, and to the people sleeping next to me. Then my sleeping self became aware they were being recorded: “Hi, my name is X,” they said, and “I want to see you.” This baffled me. I thought maybe X was trying to heal trauma from my childhood, or that I was speaking to a ghost, receiving proof of our collective dream world. Which freaked me out. And totally intrigued me. “

– Tanya

Contributors throughout the development include Stephen O’Connell, Ellie Heyman, Luke Nickel, Nicolás Noreña, Patty Bella Gone, Masha Tsmiring, Emma Riviera, Barra Mazie-Levy, Daniel Pettrow, DD Kugler, David B Smith, Mel Hague, Abby Wendle, Deidre Barnett and JoAnne Akalaitus.

Beta-Testers include DB Amorin, Jess Barbagallo, Ethan Brown, Derek Chan, Anastasia Clarke, Sabrina Fonseca, Díana Garcia, SJ Norman, Bobbi Sue McCollum, David B Smith, Michael Wheeler, June Fukumura, Elliott Reed, Anais West, Sacha Yanow and Alice Yorke.

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Earthdance, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, foldA Incubator Residency, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Theatre Replacement, Company 605, PuSh Festival, NPRs Invisibilia, Harvard University, Deirdre Barnett, Mallory Catlett, Ashley Tata, Maiko Bae Yamamoto, the frank theatre, and the Mabou Mines residency program.