The Scottish Play and Other Theatre Superstitions

We all know about superstitions like black cats and walking under ladders but the other day I got into a discussion with my mum about superstitions particular to the theatre. I spend a lot of time working in theatre so I'm used to the accompanying superstitions and was a little surprised when she hadn't heard of most of them. So I figured this would be an interesting topic for this week.

The Scottish Play

One of the most well known theatre superstitions is the curse of the Scottish Play. If you so much as mumble the word Macbeth in a theatre you'll have a lot of people freaking out at you. There are different theories for how this started, some say the play is cursed because during the first ever production of it the actor playing Macbeth died. Others claim the first production used actual witches and witchcraft. The more practical claim that it's because there's a lot of swordplay in it and therefore a lot of chances for actors to be injured.

No matter how it started there is no lack of support for the myth. Everytime the show is put on something has gone wrong, even so far as actors being injured or in a few cases dying during the rehearsal and production period of a show. I myself have never worked on the Scottish Play before but people I work with swear strange things have happened when someone has said the M word in a theatre.

Of course people slip up sometimes so there is a rememdy for the curse. Should you quote from the play or say the M word you must immediately exit the theatre, spin three times, spit, swear, and knock before reentering.

Break A Leg A pretty straightforward superstition, it's bad luck to wish someone good luck so you tell them to break a leg. Unless it's a ballet and then they get rather concerned about actually breaking a leg. Apparently ballerina's tend to just say the French word "merde".

Whistling

Now a days it's considered bad luck to whistle in a theatre but this used to actual be something sensible. It used to be that only major cities had theatres and of course back in the day there weren't cars or planes or even trains really so major cities were located on rivers or coasts so that they had ships. As theatres developed the rigging for sets and hanging lights and such was all based off of the rigging from the ships. As well a lot of sailors would end up working as technicians in the theatres. When adjusting rigging on ships sailors used a series of coded whistles to communicate and of course this was brought into the theatre as well. It was a bad idea for actors to whistle inside the theatre because it could be misinterpreted by the technicians and next thing you know there's a set piece falling down. Now with the technilogical advancements made a lot of things have become computerised and technicians have wireless headsets to be able to communicate with so the practice of whistling for work has fallen out of use but the tradition of not whistling in a theatre has carried on.

Ghosty Ghosts!

Apparently most theatres are haunted. Almost any theatre you go to will have ghost stories a plenty to tell you about. Even my theatre at school supposedly has ghosts. I've never really seen evidence of them myself though, just heard stories. Well, there was one thing that was pretty unnerving with our lights, but I maintain it was because our lighting board had been acting up for months. Anyways there are a few things done in theatres that are generally attributed as being for the ghosts, as well as just being practical. One is monday's being a "dark night" for theatre, in other words there is no performance that night. It's said dark nights are so that the theatre ghosts can have one night a week to perform their own plays, but also it gives actors and techs a night off after a weekend of shows where there's both a matinee and evening performance each day. The other common referance to ghosts is the ghost light. Every theatre has a light that stays on once all other lights are turned off, generally just a normal lightbulb on a stand wheeled out onto the stage, though some theatres have them built in. Purposes for the ghost light are as follows:

1) The light wards off ghosts

2) The ghosts always want enough light to see and failure to provide them with it may anger them, leading to pranks

3) So that humans who would otherwise be crossing the stage in the dark don't fall into the orchestra pit, die in the fall, and become ghosts themselves.

There's lot's more out there but I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the zany world of theatre superstitions :)

Post Script

I'm sorry the formatting's all weird, I fix it and then as soon as a post it it goes weird again. I don't understand!