To hash this out, I invited Ben Marcus — a novelist and an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches fiction writing — to see “Seminar” with me and talk afterward about the ways writing workshops are depicted in the performing arts. His first novel was acquired by the writer, editor and teacher Gordon Lish, considered to be the inspiration for the character played by Rickman, and Marcus also attended one of Lish’s legendary seminars, conducted in private homes, like the class in the play. (Marcus’ fourth book, the novel “The Flame Alphabet,” will be published in January.)

We found Theresa Rebeck’s play amusing and pointed — right down to a reference to the bi-coastal literary magazine Tin House — despite the fact that it doesn’t bear much resemblance to any writing class we’d ever encountered. That, we concluded, might be for the best.

When characters are discussing writing in a dramatic work like “Seminar,” the things they say are so sweeping compared to the more detailed focus of an actual writing class. But what also struck me in this play is how the concept of writing and of being a writer is so intensely romanticized.

Also, the students have no ability to determine their own value for themselves. That’s the great conceit the whole play is riding on, that these people can’t begin to make a decision for themselves. That makes them funny, silly and ultimately vulnerable.

I noticed some of that with Gordon Lish. There were degrees of vulnerability around him. On one hand, it was easy for some people to blame him for his forcefulness, but with people who weren’t quite as vulnerable, I think that they thrived and got a lot more out of it. They got to listen to him talk inside and out about a piece of writing and to see that he could be deeply perceptive and that he cared about fiction more than anything else in the world.

The people who got caught up in the theater of winning his approval instead of, say, deriving their own system of self-worth, they didn’t seem to fare so well.

Would you say that some of the people who went to his seminars were like the characters in this play? Like a lot of writing students in movies and TV, they seem to be in the class for the sole purpose of getting a verdict on their work from some big-time authority figure.

In the students, I didn’t really recognize anybody I’ve ever seen. There are little bits here and there, but the thing I really didn’t recognize is the sort of blatant and publicly articulated desperation. There’s one character, the one who’s using his connection to his famous uncle, who is a very enjoyable stereotype. But anyone who behaved that way in front of any writing student I know — people would be horrified by that. Most people are self-aware enough not to behave the way that guy does.

But even if people don’t behave that way that doesn’t necessarily mean …

… that they don’t think that way, no. You could argue that it’s the play’s job to externalize that stuff because it’s funnier to see everybody acting on their demons and their craven desires. It’s more entertaining.

There’s stuff that, as the teacher, you don’t necessarily see. I once taught this class, maybe five years ago. It just never gelled. There was something strange about it. I just thought that I sucked because I couldn’t get them going. The semester ended, and I ran into someone who’d been in the class. That person then told me about this elaborate set of dramas that was going on among the students. There was a broken love triangle, someone who tried to kill someone else and they hated each other. It was just insane! I had no idea. They were consumed by their own drama.

Speaking of drama, the play takes the position that writing is a completely tortured experience.

Tortured and joyless, with no possible good outcome for anyone. One of the funny things that Alan Rickman’s character does is that he gives these predictions about everyone else’s future: This is what your life will be, in these funny monologues. The most talented one, who was writing the best work, he’s got a miserable future ahead, totally miserable. There’s no redeeming thing about it at all!

He’s going to end up like the Alan Rickman character.

A big difference that I would cite from Gordon Lish, is that he didn’t have any of the buffoonery of the Rickman character. He wasn’t self-important or grandiose, with the bragging, the travel and the overt sexual stuff. I think there was clearly a big ego there, but he was also very modest in person. His feeling was, “I will never do really great work, but maybe you will. If you think about these things, maybe you will. It’s too late for me.” The drama was about whether or not you could get behind his enthusiasms.

The thing he did that might be construed as abusive was that he was interested in pitting people against each other. Let’s say we have Smith and Dale: Smith might write something interesting and Gordon would say, “Dale, what’s your answer to that? How are you going to sleep at night knowing that your buddy here has written something so good?”

I think the pedagogical idea is that you might work harder if you feel competitive with your peers. Sometimes he would create competitions, but other times the students just weren’t biting.

What the Alan Rickman character does — his long, irrelevant, self-glorifying digressions about his adventures in various kinds of disaster tourism — well, maybe Gordon Lish didn’t do that, but I’ve certainly heard about a lot of writing teachers who do.

It struck me as a more old-fashioned, first-wave creative-writing model. The famous writer is trucked into the Midwestern university. He’s drunk all the time and he makes these pronouncements. You don’t even get your work read, but you sit at his feet and listen to these drunken tales and that counts as some kind of instruction.

I got my MFA about 20 years ago, a little more. Then, there wasn’t much of an established tradition of actual instruction. Now, 20 years later, if there are 12 students in the class, the students are getting back 11 copies of a submitted work, plus the instructor’s, with intensive line editing and one-and-a-half to two-page, single-spaced typed criticism — more criticism on this apprentice work of fiction than you get when you publish a book. This feedback machine has been created, giving students some pretty substantive criticism. That, I think, takes the spotlight away from the instructor as this Svengali figure who makes these pronouncements that are going to lead to some shattering revelation.

Enjoyable as those revelations are to watch on stage! Another thing you don’t see in the play is the idea that there are different types of literary traditions, each equally valid, the idea that good writing can be something other than opening a vein on the page. One of the characters writes a fake memoir about a transvestite Cuban gang member that completely deceives them all until she tells them with great amusement that she’s the one who wrote it. They all think it’s fantastic before that, but it’s still presented as a debased thing for her to do.

Well, she’s taking a sort of superficial bait by going for this supposedly gritty, real-world authenticity that the teacher wants. There’s a little bit of satire in there, right, because she can actually ape this form perfectly and she makes a successful piece of writing. It says something about how we value the personal stories behind the writers. If it’s a book about the streets, we want the writer to be …

… of the streets.

Yeah. You see that when you’re promoting a book. No one’s interested in talking about the actual book. They want to talk about the person who wrote it. What bad things happened to you that we can talk about? So the play does some funny satire about our desire for the “real” by also showing that someone can fake it. It’s just a style. It’s artificial and anyone can do it.

Then there’s the figure of the young woman who writes a lot about sex, and she’s very pretty and fully prepared to capitalize on that, and this generates a lot of bogus interest in her work. Now, that’s not an unfamiliar kind of writer, but sometimes the writers who fit that profile are actually really good writers as well.

They are.

They’re more mediagenic, and many people resent them for that, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be talented, too. In the play, that character is sympathetic, very grounded. But she’s also a slapdash person who isn’t committed to doing good work. She’s likable, but she’s supposed to be a contemptible writer.

She didn’t have any gravitas at all. But then gravitas is often an awful thing to encounter when you’re teaching. It doesn’t correlate to anything. When it’s attached to really poor work, it’s torture.

Each of the students had to play a certain type, right? They all play really well. There is the glib, competent, self-promotional one. And there’s the sullen genius who refuses to show his work to anyone — but that’s where it all starts to fall apart. He, in the end, is immune to the praise that he’s so covetous of.

It’s meant to show his integrity, I guess.

Yet he was still there, still soaking it all in.

He’s the character who dissents from the seminar and has a distance from it in a way that the audience shares. He’s a skeptic about everyone else’s shtick, recognizing it as shtick, which is what the audience is doing, too.

It’s funny to see these types, but it would have been funnier if their writing didn’t correspond to their type in such an obvious way. Because, too often, the self-important, brooding genius type — that guy is bad. He’s so bad.

Yes! In real life, the guy who is melodramatic and idealistic and angry about the importance of writing, and just so grandiose about it, is also the person who lacks the subtlety or wit or humor or perspective to be a really good writer.

There’s really the biggest myth of all that’s propagated by the play, which is that somebody’s persona has a lot to do with the quality of their writing. That’s just never true. Sometimes, it’s the dull, plain person who turns in totally killer, electrifying writing. Sometimes the really dynamic, witty, amazing person just dies on the page after the first sentence. Or, sometimes the really talented person is just a complete sweetheart. Just a really nice person. The whole notion of equating somebody’s personality with what they’re capable of creatively just falls apart very, very quickly.

One of the characters takes a job as a ghostwriter, and that’s treated as a fatal deal with the devil. Once you take a step in that direction, you are doomed as an Artist. She couldn’t possibly learn anything from it. That doesn’t take into account how Hemingway’s early work as a reporter affected his fiction, let alone the fact that a number of revered novelists — Don DeLillo, Peter Carey — started out working in advertising.

It’s really a portrait of a certain kind of idealism that you can only have before you’ve done anything. It’s of a certain age and a certain stage.

But if you’ve never gotten past that stage, or have only seen it from the outside, it might seem like the way all writers are. Which is why the play convinces its audience, perhaps.

Everybody was laughing.

Laughing in a very knowing way, too! I get the impression that the image many people have of writing classes comes from this sort of depiction.

What’s funny to me is that, as far as I know, instruction in some of the other art forms doesn’t seem as available for satire and derision. Why aren’t we making fun of people making mud sculptures and the pretensions of teaching in the visual arts world?

That’s especially puzzling because when it comes to visual arts, you can actually show the audience what the characters are making.

And, oh my God, it’s even worse. I’ve seen it firsthand. They say things that, if you wrote them down — there’s nothing there. The kind of faux theory shit that comes up is so crazy and meaningless. It should be made fun of so much more! And yet, we don’t treat the formal study of painting as if it were a joke. We don’t question that someone might want to go to art school.

Or music school.

Boy, that just seems like it would be the last subject for comedy, right? A music class in graduate school. And yet, when it comes to writing classes: “Ha, ha, ha! What morons! They think they can get together and talk about writing!”

What is that? There’s the whole “Writing can’t be taught” thing. I was once at a dinner, and at the other end of the table there was a gray eminence writer, whom I won’t name, who said, when asked if he taught, “Writing can’t be taught.” And I, a smartass 20-something, leaned over and said, “You mean you can’t teach it.” Because how does he know? That’s like me announcing, “Cello can’t be taught!” because I can’t teach it.

I think a lot of stuff does get taught and it can be talked about. I think writing is a craft. Language is the medium and you make things with it. But, you’re right. This play isn’t for people like me. It’s for people who have a vague idea about what goes on in a writing class. It’s a rough enough sketch, and it’s funny enough. It would be dour to demand realism from that play. It would be ridiculous. It would just take the entertainment away. I would never go to a play that was accurate about teaching. My God!

The attendant explained that there would be no talking during my stay at the McKittrick Hotel and that I was to wear a carnival-style mask at all times, but also that I was free to explore the space as I saw fit. As the elevator lurched to our destination and the doors opened, he offered these parting words: “this experience is best had alone.”

Unbeknownst to me, I’d stepped onto the blood stained set of “Sleep No More”, an innovative concoction dreamed up by site-specific British theatre company Punchdrunk. For this immersive theatre experience, they’ve mixed two parts Macbeth, one part film noir, a healthy splash of stage blood and just a pinch of drug-fueled techno orgy, shaken vigorously and served unapologetically.

First staged in Boston before coming to New York City, “Sleep No More” is a choose-your-own-adventure play extrapolated across six floors of three abandoned warehouses. Audience members are free to walk, run and rifle through over 100 rooms in the labyrinthine space and its elaborately designed sets, each with their own unique sights, sounds, smells and even tastes.

Punchdrunk has created a type of entertainment medium mash-up that is wholly immersive in ways all other forms of entertainment aspire to but rarely achieve. In a medium that hasn’t changed much since Shakespearean days, “Sleep No More” stands apart as a true innovation in immersive theatre.

The storyline of “Sleep No More” is a wordless reimagining of Macbeth told largely through dance. Characters rush in and out of rooms, tumbling and pirouetting around and on top of each other, disappearing as quickly as they came. The key to following the story is to chase after the characters as they literally run up and down multiple flights of stairs and hallways, another reason it’s probably best to split up with anyone you came to the show with.

As a detail-obsessed designer, I was so enthralled with the environment that I got very little of the narrative of the play the first time through. (I later went back to see it a second time.) I spent the entire time rifling through drawers and stacks of papers and exploring the different spaces including a hospital, candy store, cemetery, apothecary, detective agency, photo studio, pine forest and taxidermist’s shop. The environment is so completely immersive and transformative that it even becomes disorienting at times. One gets the feeling that that’s exactly what the brilliant engineers of this experience had in mind.

A peculiar thing happens when you dress a group of strangers in identical, expressionless masks. By essentially inviting the audience onto the stage, the masks form a kind of fourth wall, and help maintain a division between performer and viewer. But by stripping you of your identity while maintaining such close proximity to the actors, you take on more of a voyeuristic role in an extremely intimate setting. After all, the story you’re watching unfold is rife with violence, nakedness and all manner of sexual activity. The masks free you to stare at things we might shy away from if we could be seen as ourselves. They are the final key in allowing the audience to truly immerse themselves into Punchdrunk’s lavish world.

While chasing after Macbeth late in the play, I found myself back in the bar I’d originally entered through at the beginning of the night, but it appeared to have been completely overgrown with vines and leaves. It was extremely disorienting and unnerving– what the hell was going on here? Where was everyone? We were the only ones in the room and I could feel chills creeping up the back of my neck.

“Sleep No More” does what all good forms of entertainment attempt to do: to transport you from one reality into another. But through its truly innovative format, it does this so holistically and convincingly that it’s possible to completely lose yourself into its macabre world. And if that was the goal, after chasing Macbeth into the vine-covered bar, I was utterly lost.

“Sleep No More” runs through Nov. 5 in New York City.

All photos by Sara Krulwich / The New York Times

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2011.

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Many productions mark their setting with topical references, but usually the revivals happen long enough after the original that it seems quaint, not clueless. I mean, how could any actor go onstage now and sing about how tough it is to live on the Lower East Side as a poor artist? Or not feel a modicum of shame whining about the ethical dilemmas of “living in America at the end of a millenium”?

I want to tell the characters, “Wait until right after the millenium, and then come talk to me about the problems in New York.” I want to scream, “Stop singing about the different ways to measure a year!”

And to answer the titular question, “How do you pay last year’s rent?” How about getting a goddamn job?

But if I’m honest with myself, that queasy feeling I get when I hear anything “Rent”-related has nothing to do with Jonathan Larson’s show. One could argue that instead of becoming obsolete after September 11 forced New Yorkers to think about other issues than AIDS or how guitarists and filmmakers would be able to sustain their living arrangements in Alphabet City, “Rent” powered on through the aughts, refusing to conform to the changing world. It stayed true to its late creator’s original vision.

No, the reason I don’t want to hear about “Rent’s” revival is because I don’t want to think about the girl who spent weekends in high school shuttling up from Maryland to wait hours on line at the Nederlander Theatre for the cheap front-row tickets. I don’t want to remember the red, wooden “Rent”-decoupaged desk that my mother had made for me on my 14th birthday. And I don’t want to recall every line from every song on the soundtrack, which, of course, I can’t help doing as I write this.

“Rent” had such a hand in shaping my ’90s that it’s hard not to associate the musical with the beginning of the Internet: my first Instant Messenger name on AOL was RappGurl (after Anthony Rapp, who played Mark in the original production). The very first email LISTSERV I joined was “Rent”-related. That shared experience was my first inkling that the web had the capability to draw people together in a way that was never before possible. “Rent” is too personal, too close to home, and I don’t want to be reminded of the girl who was able to overlook the protagonists’ slacker mentality because the show’s message about art, love and death resonated in her suburban teen soul.

I don’t think I’m alone here. Even Ben Brantley’s review in The New York Times today seems slightly apologetic for its inability to separate the new production from the emotion and excitement of the original:

“Come to think of it, it seems like only five minutes since I saw ‘Rent’ the first time 15 years ago (more than 7,884,000 minutes), and I imagine that feeling holds true for almost anyone who was at New York Theater Workshop that February in 1996. It was one of the most genuinely dramatic — and cathartic — nights at the theater I’ve ever spent… OK, that was the moment that was, and it’s not one that’s ever likely to be repeated. And since I saw ‘Rent’ — both off and on Broadway — only with its original cast (I even passed on the 2005 movie version), it might be better to have a virgin pair of eyes check out this latest incarnation, which is also directed by Mr. Greif. “

I can’t imagine any reviewer writing something similar about “Phantom of the Opera” or “The Lion King.”

So maybe “Rent” was more than just an outlet for those stifled suburban theater kids who were a decade and a half too early for “Glee.” Despite the outdated references to AZT breaks and pre-post-millennial ennui, the spirit of Jonathan Larson’s show remains as immortal as… well… “La Boheme.”

It isn’t “Rent” that’s changed, we have: the audience and fans who bought into something sincere and genuine about the dream of New York, only to find ourselves 15 years later — jaded and hipsterfied — and totally uncomfortable with how much a Broadway musical once meant to us.

2. Nikki M. James, winner of the award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical (one of nine total awards taken home by “The Book of Mormon”), gives an acceptance speech that is rambling, emotional, spontaneous — and delightful:

3. Mary Rylance, named Best Leading Actor in a Play, baffles the audience with a seeming non sequitur of an acceptance speech (AP explains that he was quoting a poem by Louis Jenkins):

4. Chris Rock brings down the house with his hilarious presentation of the award for Best Musical (“Come on, we know what the best musical is. This is such a waste of time — it’s like taking a hooker to dinner.”)

5. Neil Patrick Harris sums the whole evening up in a rap: