Stage Is Set. Ready for Your Part?

Since Punchdrunk was founded in 2000, it has made a name for itself for its immersive sense of stagecraft.

For “Sleep No More,” which arrives in New York after a run at a school near Boston in 2009, the company took over six stories of three adjoining warehouses on West 27th Street in the Chelsea gallery district. Audience members don masks and explore some 100 rooms and environments, including a spooky hospital, mossy garden and bloody bedroom. An eerie soundtrack fills the air as costumed performers move about all six floors re-enacting pivotal scenes from “Macbeth.”

Each room has a back story that has been painstakingly detailed and designed with a mid-1930s vibe. More than 200 unpaid volunteer artists spent about four months hand-writing letters, coloring wallpaper and building furniture. A spokesman for the show declined to say how much the production cost, other than the budget was “in the millions of dollars.”

“The rooms are in such incredible detail, yet the place is so massive,” said Randy Weiner, a producer. “It’s a great contradiction.”

Punchdrunk aims to erase the fourth wall as much as possible. Felix Barrett, Punchdrunk’s artistic director and the show’s co-director (with Maxine Doyle, who also choreographed the dances), said the nosier the audience the better. “In our world, every single drawer, cupboard, wardrobe that can be opened, should be opened because you’ll find something inside,” he said.

Following is a closer look at details of six rooms. An interactive audio feature on these rooms, narrated by Mr. Barrett and Ms. Doyle, is here.

Hecate's Apothecary

Woodsy and flowery scents permeate this room, which is filled from top to bottom with vegetation, drying herbs, soils, sands, trinkets and jars.

"Nature has this huge power within this play, this sense ofdestiny and nothing you can do to stop it,” Mr. Barrett said.“Things are collected, crafted and manipulated.”

Many of the arrangements, which include peppermint geraniums, lemon leaves, thistle and coxcomb, were donated by the florist StoneKelly. Other flowers were obtained by volunteers who walked through the flower district asking shopo wners for any blooms they were about to throw away. The stems, many of which hang from the ceiling, were dried in-house.

“Natural force is very much in evidence in this space,” Mr. Barrett said.

Taxidermy Room

Groups of stuffed animals, a few of them frozen in battles to the death, stare out from dramatic dioramas in this room.

“There’s a sense of threat everywhere around this space,” Mr. Barrett said.

Most of the animal forms were purchased from the collection of Frank J. Zitz, a taxidermist in Rhinebeck,N.Y.

“About half of his shop, his life’s work, is in the show,” Mr. Barrett added. “We’re grateful because the sheer quantity of the material that we needed to make the space feel real and authentic and unquestionably alive is difficult to source.”

Some of the smaller items, like false teeth, were bought at an antiques fair in Brimfield, Mass.

Sweet Shop

Sampling is not out of the question in this room of dramatically backlighted jars stuffed with thousands of wrapped candies, including traditional English sweets like pear drops, striped toffee-center humbugs and aniseed balls. Th eroom is coated before every performance with a caramel-scented spray.

“I think there will be an audience pilgrimage to this space,” Ms.Doyle said.

The room reminds her of the candy stores she frequented as a child in the north of England.