In 2008, Kristen Smiarowski started THE KEY GAME project, a series of choreographic responses to Polish writer and Holocaust survivor Ida Fink’s fictional short story by the same name. Each dance in THE KEY GAME series is a memorial to the one preceding it.

Sleep, Staring, Well culminates THE KEY GAME project. It weaves together live dance and theater performance with archival materials – including video, graphs, written word and audio recordings – from previous works in the series. Audience members experience Sleep, Staring, Well on foot as they move freely through a labyrinth constructed of rope, tubing and permeable fabric. This is a kinetic labyrinth of space and time: the shape, size and function of each room, alcove or passageway changes and morphs. New channels open as others are closed. Fabric is stretched, wrapped or dropped to conceal or reveal actions and objects, divide spaces and alter perspective. Sleep, Staring, Well draws attention to the hypermediation of historical memory. It reflects the ways in which generations born after World War II vicariously receive information about Holocaust history and how we attempt to make meaning out of a historical period we did not experience directly.