Last week, Buzzfeed published an article detailing multiple instances in which performers and staffers of Sleep No More, New York’s long-running immersive experience, allege that they were sexually assaulted by patrons. These claims suggest that Sleep No More lacked policies to curb and manage audience misconduct. They also suggest that a culture of demeaning and degrading actors, a millennia-old phenomenon, is still very much with us.

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That Sleep No More, a Punchdrunk show imported by a trio of US producers, has apparently become a flashpoint for assaults against actors isn’t a huge surprise. Because it’s an immersive production, there is no proscenium dividing actor and spectator, no seats to stay in. Audiences are masked and allowed to go and do more or less wherever and whatever they want, contributing to a sense of anonymity and permissiveness. The nightclub feel, from the bouncers and ropes outside to the bar inside, with strong cocktails available throughout the show, probably doesn’t help – it’s the unusual avant-garde show that could double as a bachelor party destination.

The crowds probably don’t help either. The New York Sleep No More is easily the most congested Punchdrunk production I’ve ever attended, making it easy enough to disappear into a throng. And Sleep No More is a provocative show, with ample nudity (Gawker once published an article detailing where to stand to make the most of it) and erotic dance.

Sleep No More performers can grab patrons, pulling them aside for intimate one-on-one scenes, maybe it seems unfair that patrons can’t do the same. But hey, those are the rules in strip clubs, too, and people mostly follow them. (By the way, as an audience member, I was once cheerfully snogged by an actor who leapt into the aisles in the Broadway production of Hair. Did I reciprocate? No. Because I’m a woman and a critic and the house lights were half up and I have some sense of boundaries.)

Play Video 2:26 The problem with immersive theatre: why actors need extra protection from sexual assault - video

In an environment where misconduct is possible and audience members can’t all be trusted to behave themselves appropriately, it is incumbent on the show’s producers to set clear guidelines and to have enough security present to enforce them. The Sleep No More producers claim that there is plenty of security, but performers dispute this. Only recently has a line been added to the show asking audience members to “keep a respectful distance” from the performers. Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a culture where this nannyish reminder was unnecessary? It would. We don’t.

A borough away, Then She Fell, produced by Third Rail, is another long-running immersive show that does not seem to have been plagued by similar problems. Jennine Willett, one of Third Rail’s artistic directors, noted that the lack of masks and the promenade-style performance make a difference. She also wrote, “Our company members have full support to walk out of any scene if it is deemed that an audience member is behaving inappropriately and we have a procedure in place to communicate this quickly so our staff can identify and escort that audience member from the show right away,” a structure that any immersive production should implement. Maybe the number of assaults cited in the Buzzfeed article is low, maybe it’s high. But it’s clear that performers did not feel that they could report the incidents to management and feel properly supported and protected.

And actors may need extra protection. If Sleep No More makes misconduct uniquely feasible, the evidence of the Buzzfeed article reasserts the tenuous status of actors. In ancient Rome, actors were often slaves. They couldn’t vote, they couldn’t hold office. If they gave a bad performance, they could be punished, even killed. When it came to female performers – mimes and rope dancers – they were often confused with prostitutes, confusion that in some cases was justified. In renaissance England, pamphleteers inveighed against actresses as “notorious whores” and the stigma of whoring clung to performers during the Restoration and after. If these actors could prostitute their emotions, what else could they prostitute?

These days acting doesn’t carry the same stigma, but actors still seem unusually vulnerable. In recent months, many performers – some wildly successful, some unknown – have come forward to report outrageous abuses of power, many of them worried that they still won’t be believed. Even behaviors far less flagrant than sexual assault suggest the entitlement that audiences feel toward actors. How else to explain the taking of photos and videos during performances, the crowds at the stage doors after, and the complaints, on message boards and elsewhere, if a performer refuses to sign Playbills or pose for photographs?

Thrusting a Playbill at an actor is pretty innocuous. (Thrusting other things? That’s less innocuous.) But perhaps it’s part of that same unarticulated belief that actors should be available to us on and off the stage, that because we’ve sat – or stood, sweating behind a beaked mask – and watched them, they owe us something in return.