Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions – Part 3

GHOSTS

[Thank you for reading “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms,” my survey of the paranormal beliefs and traditions of theater folk.  I’m up to Part 3 now, the start of my accounts of some of the stories about theater ghosts and haunted playhouses.  (Parts 1 and 2, posted on Rick On Theater on 14 and 17 August, respectively, covered the superstitions to which actors and other theater workers subscribe.) 

[I’m starting off with tales of hauntings in regional theaters, that is, theaters outside New York City.  (Part 4, coming up, will recount the ghost stories associated with houses in New York, mostly the Broadway theaters.)  As I observed in Part 1, nearly every theater seems to be inhabited by at least one spirit, especially the old houses (or ones built on the site of an older structure).

[After reading Part 3, below, you’ll be convinced that that’s probably true.  By the time you get through Part 4, you’ll be certain of it!  So, relax and indulge your supernatural tendencies and read about some of the spooks that haunt our entertainment centers.

[“Only . . .,” as Tevye, the milkman of Fiddler on the Roof, says to his wife Golde when he’s about to tell her a different kind of theater ghost story (one told in a play, as distinguished from one told about a playhouse), “don’t be frightened!”]

Let’s move on to the pièce de résistance of theater superstitions: haunted theaters.

No type of building is as frequently haunted as theaters.  (Cemeteries aren’t buildings, so they don’t count.)  Just about every theater has at least one resident ghost.  If the Soviet formula for concrete was one part cement, three parts sand, and one part microphones, the builders’ plans for a new theater seem to be: one seating area, one performing area, one back-stage area, and one ghost.

Theaters that don’t have their own specter can always rely on one spirit to pay them a visit: the ghost of Thespis.  When anything goes wrong in the theater, believers can point to the ghost of Thespis as the culprit if they don’t have their own house spirit.

Thespis is mostly a legendary figure in Western theater lore as almost nothing is known about his life.  A singer of dithyrambs (songs about stories from Greek mythology) in Ancient Greece, he flourished in the 6th century BCE. 

Aristotle (384-22 BCE) records that Thespis was the first performer to step out from the chorus and speak dialogue as a character in the story.  That made him the first actor and, coincidentally, the inventor of Greek drama.  It’s from his name that we get the term for ‘actor’ in the English-speaking world: ‘thespian.’  Thespis won the first documented competition for the best tragedy in 534 BCE at the City Dionysia in Athens.

People who work at theaters around the country (indeed, probably around the world, but I’m going to limit my coverage to the U.S.—plus one) have frequently told of eerie happenings that they can’t explain.  The most common occurrences of this sort, I suspect, are encounters with someone who formerly worked or appeared at the theater but still hangs around after his or her final curtain has rung down. 

“There are several levels of haunting,” instructs Playbill, “ranging from the odd unaccountable noise to actual knocking . . ., to the mysterious opening of doors and cabinets, or the flickering of lights.”   Author Robert Viagas continues:

Sometimes there is a strange cold spot in a room, a colored mist, a floating orb in a photograph, an inanimate object that moves without anyone touching it . . . or the echo of a disembodied voice.  Sometimes you may see a wispy manifestation, a contorted face in a mirror or window.  More rarely you see a full human figure, sometimes ectoplasmically white or sometimes in full natural color.  Even more rarely, the figures speak.  Or touch.

(There are plenty of accounts of ghosts and specters in New York City’s many performance venues, but for the last four years, American Theatre, the monthly magazine about the non-profit theater scene in North America published by the Theatre Communications Group, has posted a yearly article on theater ghost stories from regional companies. 

(Since they mark Halloween, the articles, written by AT managing editor Russell M. Dembin, are all published—only on the journal’s website—on 31 October; when that date rolls around again this year, we’ll see if AT will continue the series beyond last Halloween.  Most of the stories about the regional theater ghosts below are drawn from Dembin’s reports.  I’ve cherry-picked some that seem most intriguing.)

The Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California (about 10 miles northeast of Los Angeles), has had so many reported sightings and unexplained events that the theater hosts groups who wish to explore the building (built around 1912) for evidence of the paranormal.

There’s even a staff member whose duty, among others, is to coordinate with the paranormal groups.  She herself has reported that after arriving at her office below the prop loft early one morning, she heard overhead what “sounded like a woman walking around in high heels.  Our prop master would never, ever wear high heels,” she asserted.  “Plus I was the only one there, ’cause it was so early in the morning.”

Other Pasadena Playhouse staffers in the theater have also reported footsteps above their heads when no one else was around or ghostly whistling in the basement late at night.  The common belief is that

It’s the spirit of Carrie Hamilton (1963-2002), an actress, singer, and playwright who was the daughter of Carol Burnett, a member of the Pasadena Playhouse board.  The small theater upstairs was rededicated to Hamilton after her death from complications of lung cancer and people have claimed to have seen a woman of Hamilton’s age there wearing a white or yellow dress

Staffers at Toronto’s Young People’s Theatre have reported several incidents of spectral encounters.  Since 1977, the company has occupied an 1883 building (the former stable for the horses of Toronto’s streetcar company) and at least one apparition was dressed in Victorian garb.

That appearance was reported by YPT’s administrative director.  Like the Pasadena Playhouse staffer, he was alone in the old building, working late rather than early.  He was locking up for the night and on the second floor, he checked the ladies’ restroom to see that the lights had been turned off.  He saw that they had been and turned around quickly to head down to the lobby.  

In front of him on the staircase, he saw a young woman in a Victorian-style “chocolate brown satin formal outfit with a floor-length skirt and waist-length jacket.”  The woman looked at the admin director, seemingly alarmed that he’d seen her.  She dashed down to the ground floor, but by the time the admin director followed her seconds later, she’d disappeared.

Probably almost everybody knows the little poem about the man who wasn’t there:

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there!

He wasn’t there again today,

Oh how I wish he’d go away!

(It turns out, serendipitously, that there’s a theater connection here: the poem was a song from a play William Hughes Mearns, 1875-1965, wrote at Harvard in 1899.) 

Another spirit encounter, the sighting of a “man who wasn’t there,” was reported by YPT’s director of operations.  He’d also come in to work early one day, around 6:30 in the morning.  He was coming from the basement up to the Green Room, and as he reached the top of the stairs, he saw the theater’s cleaner pushing her janitor’s cart out of the Green Room.  (An explanation of what the Green Room is is provided in Part 1 of this series.)

Following behind the cleaner, the ops director saw a tall man with no facial features wearing a brown suit.  The ops director glanced away for a second, wondering who the man could be at that early hour.  He had an eerie, bad feeling—and by the time he looked up again, no one was following the cleaner.

Most of the theater ghost stories are about unnamed or unidentified spirits appearing or leaving traces in the theater.  Some have presumed identities, like the spirit of Carrie Hamilton at the Pasadena Playhouse.  Another named ghost manifested itself at the GALA (Grupo de Artistas LatinoAmericanos) Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C., as told by the company’s production manager.

Established in the old Tivoli Theatre, opened in 1924 as one of the largest movie palaces in D.C., the theater has experienced a series of weird occurrences.  Mysteriously, the production manager explained, the lights would turn off in the middle of meetings, static would come out of the speakers, the thermostat would be turned all the way down, and the staffer said that she heard someone “when locking up the building before.  One of my painters said she saw [someone] when she was doing an overnight paint call.”

To whom was all this spectral activity attributed?  Harry Crandall, who built the Tivoli and owned a chain of movie houses in the Nation’s Capital. “The rumor,” noted the production manager, “is that he hung himself inside the Tivoli.”

The truth is that Crandall (1879-1937), despondent over the collapse in a two-day blizzard in Washington of his Knickerbocker Theater and the subsequent bankruptcy of his company, killed himself by gas in his apartment.  Reginald Geare, 1889-1927, architect of the Knickerbocker and the original designer of the Tivoli—he was fired after the roof of the Knickerbocker fell in—also committed suicide over the disaster, which killed 98 moviegoers, including a congressman, along with a number of prominent political and business leaders.

(Side note: Geare also designed D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre, one of Crandall’s houses, which has a connection to my family, as I describe in “Lincoln & Howard Theatres: Stages of History,” posted on Rick On Theater on 2 December 2011.)

A number of staffers at the Alley Theatre of Dallas have reported feeling “presences” or sensing figures rushing by them in or around the Hubbard Theatre, housed in the building that’s been the company’s home since 1968.  The theater’s also been the setting of a number of eerie experiences.

The troupe’s director of operations and events himself has several tales of ghostly presences.  One’s an experience that even led some of the housekeeping staff to quit.  One night after a performance, the husband-and-wife cleaning team “witnessed a bloody female figure standing onstage,” and “screamed, ran out of the theatre . . . .”  That act seemed to have unnerved another housekeeper in the lobby and they left the building and didn’t return.

The Alley ops-and-events director continued,

We investigated, of course [and] . . . there was nobody here, but everybody that’s in the housekeeping department said they had been seeing things like somebody walking into the restrooms at night, assuming it was a staff member, but they never came out.  So that when they went into the restrooms, there was just nobody there.  I had several members that were very nervous after that and would refuse to clean anything by themselves.

                                                                                                 

At the Pittsburgh Playhouse, there are several ghosts who haunt the complex in the Oakland section of the city off the campus of Point Park University, of which the theater’s now a division.  At least two have legends connected to the theater or its buildings.  (Pittsburgh Playhouse moved out of its complex of converted buildings three miles from the university campus in 2018.  These tales are associated with the old facilities; I don’t know if the ghosts followed the company.)

“The Lady in White haunts the Rauh Theatre,” said the Pittsburgh’s producing director, referring to its prior main performance space in the former 19th-century German Club.  The story dates back to the late 1920s or early 1930s when the theater was still the German social hall.  A woman in a white nightgown came stalking her wayward husband. In one version of the legend, she was an actress who’d discovered her husband was having a tryst with one of the ladies from the upstairs bordello.  In some tellings, this occurred on their wedding day.

The wedding reception was being held in the downstairs restaurant of the German Club. The Lady in White climbed the steps in a rage, found her husband in flagrante delicto with his paramour, and shot them both dead.  Then she leapt off the balcony to her death, the gun still in her hand.  Reportedly, she still paces that balcony.  (In other versions, the Lady in White shot herself after killing her husband and his woman.)

In recent times. the spirit of the Lady in White appeared as a woman in a long, white nightgown who paced the Rauh balcony, said the producing director, “back and forth calling her dead husband’s name.”

The Lady in White is a disconsolate spirit, said the staffer, but John Johns, another presence at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, is a different matter when he often frequents the Rockwell Theatre, another of the company’s venues.  Johns was an actor at the playhouse starting in the 1930s—though by day, it’s said, he was an accountant.  (The troupe has its origins in 1933.)  

One evening in the 1950s or ’60s, Johns was performing at the Rockwell, costumed in a tuxedo, when he suffered a heart attack onstage.  His castmates carried the actor up to his dressing room, number 7, to wait for the ambulance, but Johns died before they could get him into the room.

In some versions of the account, Johns wasn’t performing that evening, but attending a banquet in the restaurant downstairs.  He customarily wore a tux in the evening; he was reported to have been a handsome man who liked to dress elegantly.  In any case, since that night, people claimed to have heard disembodied footsteps climbing the stairway to dressing room 7, always stopping just outside the door.

“On nights when the theatre has no audience,” recounts the Pittsburgh’s producing director, “he has been known to pop in many different theatre seats clapping for those rehearsing onstage.”  He’s also known to check the props and help with the set construction.  Always dressed in his tux, he’s been seen dancing on stage with the Lady in White as well.

(There’s a caveat regarding John Johns: research shows that the actor did exist and was a Playhouse regular, but there’s no published obituary for him.  Furthermore, a former staffer at the Pittsburgh who knew Johns affirmed that he died at the Oakland Veterans Hospital, not at the theater.)

The David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, is the Little Tokyo home of the East West Players.  The theater’s in the Union Center for the Arts, built in 1922 as the first Union Japanese American Church.  The EWP director of production explained that during World War II, when Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to concentration camps, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos moved into the neighborhood, which became known as Bronzeville during the war period; a predominantly black congregation moved into the church.

EWP staffers say they’ve had a number of unexplained experiences at the theater.  The director of production affirmed that he’d heard many stories during his time at the theater “of an old man (the former groundskeeper of the building) who sits in the balcony (the old choir loft).”  He adds, “Actors have complained about people watching auditions when no one was actually there.  Some employees have encountered specific smells when he’s around, but he seems to be a pretty benign spirit.”

A member of the Penobscot Theatre Company, which occupies the Bangor Opera House in Maine, claimed he’s had many ghost encounters at the theater.  The Opera House, built in 1920, is located in the city that inspired the fictional town of Derry, author Stephen King’s frequent setting for his horror and supernatural fiction. has been the troupe’s home since 1997.  Bangor’s oldest performance space, the opera house stands on the site of another theater which opened in 1882 and burned down in 1914.  

One story tells of a firefighter who died in that blaze and still haunts the new theater.  Penobscot actors frequently see a dark apparition in the former balcony that now serves as a storage space, and some believe that it’s the firefighter.

A recent appearance happened during a production of Wait Until Dark in the fall of 2018.  The longtime troupe member, who was in the cast (as “Sgt. Carlino,” one of the bad guys in Frederick Knott’s terror play), described the specter as a “big, tall man in the balcony,” and dark “like a shadow.”  The actor noticed this figure while onstage during a recent performance. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell,” he says, “because spot-ops [spotlight or followspot operators] can be up there.  But no one is up there for this show.”

Among the other ghosts that haunt the Bangor theater, most are poltergeists (German for “noisy ghost” or “noisy spirit,” from the combining form of poltern, ‘to make a rumbling sound’).  They cause occurrences like eerie plumbing phenomena.  But another haunt in the opera house is the manifestation of a “little girl in a light dress with long, flowing hair.  Transparent and kind of fuzzy, not in focus,” according to a troupe production stage manager.

New Orleans is rife with spirits, ghosts, and ectoplasmic emanations.  At Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré in the city’s famed French Quarter, founded in 1916, there are many tales of hauntings, including one of the spirit of an actress who “threw herself from the catwalks, got caught by a rope from the fly system on her way down,” and died, all for the unrequited love of the production’s leading man, according to the theater’s former technical director.

The TD insisted that he’s “[n]ot much of a believer in the ghostly apparitions” and never paid much attention to the stories of the paranormal at the Petit Théâtre.  As he put it, things changed one early morning about 3 a.m. when he was working alone in the theater, preparing for the next production.

Uncharacteristically, the TD recounted, the French Quarter, usually alive with sound and movement at all hours, was quiet.  At one point,

he was facing the stage from the edge of the apron, with his back to the house.  “With no warning, a loud swoosh was heard from the stage right leg curtain [see part 2], and it fluttered just like something was rapidly sliding down it, jerking near the bottom and waving about as if someone was shaking up against it.  Nearly as quickly as it started, the curtain became calm, swinging from upstage to downstage like a lazy pendulum from near its base, till it settled finally on its own, as if nothing untoward had occurred.”

“Hello?!” he called out, his voice shaking “from the injection of adrenaline I’d just been dosed with.”  He shouted the names of the few others with keys to the building—he doubted that someone would stop in at that hour on a weeknight with an early call the next day, but there was no other explanation.  “Slowly I made my way to the center of the stage, eyes locked on the now quiescent curtain, hoping against hope to see someone putzing about or staged behind the curtain, ready to laugh at my reaction, combined with a hearty back slap and a, ‘Go home, Alex!’ Nothing.”

He continues, “On profile now with the errant velour, looking directly stage right at it, I took a quick glance to see if the air conditioning could cause such calamitous careening from the curtain.”  The air conditioning was off. “Nothing had fallen from the defunct catwalk, nor the batten the leg was hung from.  As I dared to get closer, now slightly more cautious than a moment before, I started to hear the sound again.  Right in front of me!  The billow began its fateful trip down the inky black, inherently flame-retardant fabric, almost frenzied this time.”

At that point [the tech director] dropped his work, raced out of the theatre, “swore not to work in that place alone at night again, and dodged the foot traffic on Bourbon and Chartres Streets on my bike all at the same time and before the cursed ghost of showmances past could complete the reenactment of her fateful fall.”

The TD admitted that “Le Petit may very well not be haunted.”  He’s “still on the fence about the paranormal,” he continued.  He couldn’t explain what happened in the theater early that morning, and he added,  “[D]arned if anyone else can either!”

The Tenth Avenue Arts Center (also known as the Tenth Avenue Theater) in San Diego is home to at least four spirits and one suspected spectral visitor.  Built in 1924 as the First Baptist Church of San Diego’s chapel for military personnel and converted to a performance space in 2007, the theater seems to revel in its ghostly history. 

It authorized Alex Matsuo, an actor, director, playwright, and paranormal researcher, to research and write The Haunting of the Tenth Avenue Theater (2015; Llewellyn Publications) and it stages performances that evoke (if not invoke) the haunted reputation of the theater.  The theater also hosts a Halloween “paranormal investigation” by an organization called TheDeadTalk. 

Participants might expect to meet some or all of the theater’s spooks, which began to appear as soon as the old chapel started serving as a theater.  According to the website of the Association of Paranormal Study, manifestations include “voices from a child running up and down the stairs to orders being barked in a British accent” and more.  

The child is a little girl called “Missy” who died in the 1960s by falling down the stairs while playing “a chasing game” with one of the church’s ministers.   The minister with whom Missy was playing hanged himself out of guilt over causing the little girl’s death.

The barked orders heard in the theater come from a British World War II lieutenant who was killed in Japan. His spirit possessed the doctor who had treated him; the doctor came to San Diego and to the chapel to pray for the men who’d perished.  The lieutenant’s ghost then left the doctor’s body but apparently stayed around the chapel building even after it was converted into a theater.

The fourth ghost at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center is a woman named Carol Laroc (or Lorac, but I think that’s a typo; I’ll call her Carol to be safe).  Carol was a devoted member of the church congregation; she had obsessive-compulsive disorder and still keeps an eye on the building.

There may be a fifth ghost in the theater, suspected because of unexplained occurrences in the early mornings, but the source hasn’t been identified yet.  It’s thought to be a young boy haunting the building’s basement.

(Some research was conducted on the ghost stories connected with the theater, but no confirmation could be found for either the tragic tale of Missy or the putatively suicidal priest.  There’s no record of any accidental fall at the church, either.  No word concerning the other suspected supernatural stories was provided.)

The Lincoln Square Theater in Decatur, Illinois, is known as one of most haunted places in the area, and possibly even in the whole country. The Lincoln Theater (the name was simplified at one point in its long history, dropping the “Square”) was built on the same plot where the Priest Hotel burned down in 1915, and the new theater opened in 1916.  Two men died in the fire, but there were also hotel guests who were never accounted for after the fire, so the death toll is believed to be much higher. 

Starting in the 1930s, ghost stories began to circulate.  One story is about “One-Armed Red,” a stage hand during the vaudeville era.  The legend is that during a performance, Red—his real name is lost to history—fell off a grid 75 feet above the stage and his arm got caught by a hook and torn from his body.  The story says he died almost immediately. 

Red’s spirit stalks the theater, but he’s not the only one.  Sightings include a woman in a long, white, old-fashioned dress, for instance.  Many other manifestations have appeared to theater workers, but most haven’t matched Red’s description.  (For one thing, Red had distinctive, bright auburn hair.) 

Some people believe that the other spirits are the ghosts of the victims of the hotel fire.  Reported encounters at the theater have included footsteps, cold chills, hooded figures, and being touched by someone.

The legend aside, Red did die at the Lincoln Theater, but not from a fall.  He also had really lost an arm, but it was from combat in Europe in World War I—and he was a phenomenon back stage at the theater, out-working his younger fellow stage hands and doing it all with one arm.  One afternoon, Red took a nap back stage and simply never woke up.

The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, was originally built in 1890 as the Grand Opera House; in 1907, the theater became known as the Orpheum.  Principally a vaudeville house, it burned down in 1923.  The new building opened in 1928 and is listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places.  According to rumors, the theatre is haunted by the ghost of a 12-year-old girl named Mary.

Mary had no connection to the Orpheum in life, and stories vary concerning how she came to haunt the theater.  The most common explanation is that she was killed nearby in an accident.  In one version, young Mary was injured in a car accident in 1921, while in another she was struck by a trolley in 1928.  In both tellings, the injured Mary was carried into the Orpheum, where she died and her spirit stayed in the theater.

In 1979, a group of paranormal investigators from what was then Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) examined the Orpheum using séances and a Ouija board and determined that the little girl died in 1921 in a falling accident in downtown Memphis.  Mary’s ghost simply wandered into the Orpheum after the accident.  She liked it there, so she stayed.

Apparently Mary, described by those who’ve seen her as a shy little girl with brown braids and a white dress, likes to play pranks on the living.  People have reported hearing her giggle or walking up and down the aisles.  Other reports include doors opening and closing on their own, flickering lights, tools emptied into toilets, and doors swinging open and shutting loudly.

Such happenings even spooked Yul Brynner (1920-85) while he was rehearsing for The King & I in 1982.  A séance was also performed in 2019 by the touring cast of Fiddler on the Roof to try to contact Mary and anyone else haunting the theater.  While her blank stare and ethereal appearance have unnerved some of those who’ve seen her, Mary’s never been known to disrupt a performance.

Some people connected with the Orpheum claim to know of as many as six other spirits in addition to Mary who inhabit the theater.  One has a curious relation to the little girl’s spirit.  He’s known as David (though that’s just a name of convenience) and he’s waiting to escort Mary to “the other side.”  Since she likes the beautiful old theater and refuses to leave, however, David can’t leave either and therefore he must spend eternity in the Orpheum with her.

[There are nearly endless stories of haunted theaters, almost always of old buildings and usually associated with tragedies or accidents in the theaters—though not always.  I’ve selected a few of the ones I found for retelling here, but this barely scratches the surface.

[“Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions,” Part 3, has focused on the ghost tales of theaters around the country (plus one in Canada) outside of New York City.  On Sunday, 23 August, I’ll post the fourth and final installment of this series, which retells several of the ghost stories about some of the country’s theater capital’s 41 Broadway houses.  Please return to Rick On Theater for the completion of my spooky series.

[Just remember what Tevye says, though . . . .]

Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions – Part 2

MORE SUPERSTITIONS

[Welcome to the second part of “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms,” the continuation of my account of the supernatural beliefs held by many theater people.  (In Part 3, I shift over to telling ghost stories about haunted theaters.)  I pick up here where I left off in Part 1, starting after the curse of the “Scottish Play.” 

[This is not the kind of post that requires starting from the beginning for easy understanding.  I do make reference to things I have explained or defined earlier, but each superstition mostly stands on its own.  Still, I hope you will go back and catch Part 1, posted on 14 August, when you have a chance.  Reading about the famous Macbeth curse is worth the visit in itself, I’d think.]

The Macbeth curse (see Part 1) is surely one of the most elaborate and pervasive—not to mention direst—bringers of bad luck in the theater.  There are others, however.  Another one that’s well known even among what one of my teachers liked to call “civilians” is the admonition never to wish an actor “good luck.”  (The prohibition applies to pit musicians in a musical, but apparently not to stage crew personnel or designers.  Go know!)

The principal excuse for this proscription is that those mischievous spirits that inhabit the theaters like to cause havoc by bringing about the opposite of what the living wish for.  Hearing the actors wish one another good luck drives them to bring bad luck to the production and the offending actor(s).  Think of Puck and his tendency to mess with Bottom, Titania, and the four lovers—especially Lysander—in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Theater sprites are a rascally lot!

So, what do actors say instead?  You may know this one, too: “Break a leg!”  There are many explanations for the origins of this phrase as the theatrical substitute for “good luck,” dating the expression from Ancient Greece (though we really don’t know very much about classic Greek theater practices) to Elizabethan (i.e., Shakespearean) times to the 19th century.  Most of them seem fanciful to me.

First of all, “Break a leg” is an English expression, though even the Australians have their own theater saying (“chookas!”).  It’s also only a theater term.  Opera singers, I’ve learned, say “Toi toi toi” to one another; it’s an utterance to defend against a spell or hex, perhaps an onomatopoeic representation of spitting on the ground three times to ward off evil spirits and bad luck.  Dancers, it seems, greet each other with “Merde!” for some reason.  Merde is French for ‘shit.’ 

The most preposterous explanation for the phrase is  that it’s a mordant reference to John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.  As most Americans know, Booth was an actor and after shooting the president at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, he jumped down from the presidential box to the stage, breaking his leg.  But members of the profession are mortified that an actor committed that act, so why would any actor want to invoke the murderer for any reason, especially a greeting of happiness and good fortune?  I don’t think so!

Another implausible explanation is the suggestion that Elizabethan or even Ancient Greek theater audiences either stomped their feet or banged chairs on the floor or ground to express applause.  The more pleased they were with the performance, the harder they stomped or banged . . . until they broke their own legs or those of the chair. 

The first notion is just preposterous on its face and the second is unlikely to start with, but even less credible since Elizabethan theaters had few actual chairs.  The groundlings stood in the pit and middle-class spectators sat on benches (which I can’t see anyone picking up); only the aristocracy had “lords’ chairs,” and I can’t see a duke or an earl standing up and banging his seat on the theater floor like a navvy.

Another suggested origin of the saying comes from the theatrical use of the word ‘leg.’   In stage tech, a leg is a tall, narrow drape (curtain) hung parallel to the proscenium opening at the sides of the stage.  It’s used to frame the sides of the acting space as well as to mask the wings (off-stage space to the right or left of the playing area), where actors may be preparing to enter the stage and set pieces may be stored before being moved onto the stage.

A successful run with repeated curtain calls could wear out the fly machinery that raises and lowers the leg.  “Break a leg” is a way of expressing wishes for a show that is such a hit that the audience demands so many curtain calls that it “breaks” the legs.  This strikes me as more than a little forced.

Some explicators maintain that in Shakespeare’s time, ‘to break’ meant ‘to bend.’  To bend a leg, then, means take a lot of bows.  The problem with this one is that neither my Shakespearean glossary nor my dictionary of early English confirms this definition of ‘break.’ 

A related explanation has to do with a man’s trouser legs.  In men’s haberdashery, the cuff of a man’s pants was supposed drop about a quarter of an inch below the tops of his shoes so that it crumpled just a bit.  This was called the “break” (and it stopped being popular in men’s styles in the 1960s).  One theory concerning “Break a leg” is that if an actor bows enough times, the pants legs will be permanently creased, that is “broken.” 

When I lived in Germany as a teen, one of the first German colloquialisms I learned was the common expression for “good luck”: Hals- und Beinbruch.  This was disconcerting to hear at the top of a ski slope when you’re about to schuss down the piste because it literally means “neck and leg-break.”  But I wondered if it had any connection to the English-speaking actors’ good-luck wish, “Break a leg.”  The similarity was just too striking.  The German expression is a general saying—it seems to have started among German air pilots—not theater jargon, but nonetheless, I couldn’t shake the apparent coincidence.

One explanation is that the saying made its way from German aviation to German society at large and then to the English-speaking stage by way of immigrant German actors—and German-speaking Jewish actors, of whom there were quite a few transferring from the Yiddish theater—to England and the U.S.  No one really knows the true origin of “Break a leg,” but this is the theory I like the best.  It has the advantage of at least being conceivable.

Another more well-known jinx in the theater is non-verbal: whistling back stage.  This behavior was originally prohibited for practical reasons to avert actual danger; now, it’s just bad luck for an actor to whistle back stage.  Why?

If you’ve ever been back stage at an older theater—I’m not talking ancient here, but up to post-World War II and earlier—and looked at the technical apparatus, you may notice it’s mostly ropes and pulleys; if the theater hasn’t been modernized, the ropes are all tied off at racks of wooden pins along the sides of the wings.

If you take a mental step back and look around at the whole set-up, it may remind you of something: the rigging of a wooden sailing ship.  That’s not your imagination; nor is it a coincidence.  The pins are belaying pins and the racks are pinrails. 

In the heyday of the proscenium stage—the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries—when moveable sets with flying (that is, rising up into the “fly” loft above the stage) set pieces was the height of modern theater technique, the apparatus for rigging a theater was designed and constructed by sailors and shipbuilders. 

This was because seamen knew about ropes and rigging, so it was natural that the men who ran that rigging for plays were sailors.  Deckhands used coded whistles to give commands such as hoisting or lowering the sails, moving cargo in or out of the holds, and so on. 

Therefore stage hands used the same system to cue scene changes.  An actor who whistled could confuse them into changing the set or scenery at the wrong time or dropping a counterweight (usually a sandbag) or piece of scenery onto an actor, resulting in injury or death.  

The same proscription is followed for clapping because sailors and stage crews also used it to communicate instructions for actions on a ship’s deck or back stage. 

Today, the stage crew normally uses an intercom or cue-light system to initiate a change, and much of the process has been mechanized and computerized so that real-time commands are rare.  But the superstition that grew out of a necessity persists. 

(By the way, some believers extend the prohibitions against whistling or clapping from just back stage to on stage as well—but it’s hard for an actor in a show not to whistle or clap if the playwright put them in the script or the director calls for them.)

Yet another silent bad-luck-bringer is wearing blue on stage (unless it’s thwarted by also wearing something silver).  The rationale for this ill omen was that blue dye was once very expensive and if a foundering acting company dyed some of their costumes blue in the hopes of pleasing prospective spectators, they wouldn’t have any money to pay the actors.  The use of silver was to show that the troupe was wealthy (or had a rich patron) which enabled its actors to wear real silver.

Green is also considered unlucky (hence the ban on painting the Green Room green; see Part 1).  One explanation for this belief dates back to when most performances were given outdoors where wearing a green costume would make it hard to distinguish the actor from surrounding foliage.

Some specific green and yellow items of costuming, such as a tie, a vest, or a hat, are believed to bring very bad luck.  This may be because they’re traditionally symbols of the Devil in the medieval mystery, miracle, and morality plays.

(For those who’ve forgotten their theater history, mystery plays are enactments of Bible stories, such as The Second Shepherds' Play; miracle plays are the stories of saints, like Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, a French miracle play; and the morality plays are allegorical dramas, like Everyman, that demonstrate a moral lesson.)

In addition to costume parts and colors, there are other things that actors are barred from binging on stage because they presage bad luck.  Based in practicality is a ban on mirrors.  Of course, mirrors have many superstitious connections in general society and a number of magical and supernatural powers are attributed to them (here’s one: looking into a mirror could open up your soul to the devil), but on stage they can be an actual problem. 

After theater performances were restricted to daylight and theaters started to use artificial lighting for effect rather than just visibility, mirrors were a nuisance for stage lighting because they cause shadows and reflected glare that are difficult to control.  This is mostly true of large mirrors, but even a hand mirror can create a moving hot spot that wreaks havoc with lighting (and can be distracting for both spectators and actors on stage). 

A similar problem is attributed to jewelry, so wearing real jewels on stage is forbidden as well.  Paste and even cut glass doesn’t cause the same difficulties that real gems do—and they’re less of a temptation for theft and less of a loss if they’re swiped.

I’ve watched a production’s lighting designer, set designer, costume designer, and director stand on stage before a tech rehearsal trying to figure out how to stop a mirror, big glass object, or large costume jewel from reflecting a stage light and ruining an effect.  (One attempt: coat it with hair spray.  It actually sort of worked!)

One of the oddest prohibitions I’ve run across—though I’ve never seen it in action—is the one against using peacock feathers on stage.  I love this one, not because of the ban itself, but the explanation of its origin.  It’s one of the few theater superstitions that’s derived solely from mythology; there’s nothing rational about it.

As everyone knows, the tail feathers of the male peafowl are patterned with what look like giant eyes. (As a result of nature’s own sexism, the peahen doesn’t have this elaborate and striking feature; she’s basically brown.)  The peacock’s eyespots are believed to represent a malevolent “evil eye” that imparts a curse on the show.  They are seen as a manifestation of Argus, the mythical Greek monster whose body was covered with a hundred eyes.  It’s not rational, but it’s neat.

Probably everyone who’s gone to the theater more than twice has seen someone bring flowers to the leading actress in the play during the curtain call—that is, at the end of the performance. Sometimes the director and playwright are called onto the stage and handed bouquets, too.  It’s a gesture of appreciation and even devotion, very welcome to the actress who receives them.

Often, the actress and any other women in the cast (and even some of the men) will find flowers in their dressing rooms after the curtain falls for the final time of the evening.  Back-stage visitors will frequently bring flowers when they call.

But woe betide the actor who receives flowers as a gift before the performance!  A gift of flowers before the show’s opening harbingers a lackluster performance that night.  This is one of several traditions concerning the rewarding of actors for a performance they haven’t given yet.  (Another is the proscription of practicing the curtain call before the cast has earned one—that is, near the very end of rehearsals.)

In a related practice, it’s considered good luck to give the director flowers stolen from a graveyard when a production closes.  As macabre as this gesture is, it denotes the “death” of a production and laying it to rest.  (In theater, as you all no doubt know, there are no reruns; when a stage production ends, it’s over and any revival is a new show altogether.)  Also, actors historically don’t make a lot of money, so cemeteries are a cheap way to get flowers.  (I don’t know anyone who ever did this.)

As you might surmise from this list, there are lots and lots of things that superstitious theater folk believe will bring bad luck or cause bad shows.  A few others include knitting in the wings (hear that, Madame Defarge?), using a real Bible on stage (other books or prop books with Bible covers are substituted), using real money on stage (another temptation for theft), peeking at the audience from the stage side of the curtain (a tacky and amateurish thing to do in any case), and bringing a pet onto the set.

Interestingly, that last item on the list has something of a corollary.  While black cats are felt to be bad-luck omens in ordinary life, some theater people think one brings good luck.  Except for the sheer perversity of the theatrical profession, I have no idea why this belief exists.  As far as I know, actors don’t deliberately stand under ladders or break mirrors.

After a litany of bad-luck generators and curses, here are some harbingers of good luck.  I just told you about the black cat, a beneficial “familiar” for theaters that want a house cat.  Another good-luck charm is a walking stick: use one in your show, and you’ll have success and good health.  (Unfortunately, the opposite effect will occur if you put a character on crutches in your production.  Has anybody checked the accident record of productions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?)

It seems that beneficent traditions—should we say charms—are rare among stage people.  Are we a dour bunch as much as we are superstitious?  One good omen every actor and director knows is the fervent belief that a bad dress rehearsal presages a good opening night. 

As far as I know, there’s no actual origin of this superstition.  It’s probably wishful thinking by the director, stage manager, and cast and something the director tells the cast (and him- or herself) to buck up their spirits when the final dress goes poorly.  (It might work despite its total lack of logic.  To borrow a common expression, a bad final rehearsal might tend to concentrate the minds of the cast and crew on opening night.  Might work . . . .)

How ’bout this one: sleeping with a script under their pillow will help actors learn their lines faster.  This is less a superstition than an old wives’ tale, but it’s often repeated—more or less jokingly.  To be truthful, I never even tried this because it’s so obviously counterintuitive—and I don’t know any actor who’s tried it, either.  (I did sleep with a tooth under my pillow and woke to find a quarter—about a buck-and-a-half today . . . but I was six or seven at the time.)

Osmosis may help you stop smoking (“the patch”) or manage pain, but it won’t help you learn anything, much less the lines for a play!  In fact, sleeping with a script under the pillow is believed to have caused bad luck.  (That one is a superstition.  Why anyone would test it to begin with is implausible to me.)

One other way to secure good luck, though, is to be certain that the first spectator to be seated is a man.  Sexist, I know, but if a woman is the first patron to enter the house, bad luck will ensue and the run of the show will be short. 

The story behind this is about the 1866 presentation of what was to become known as the “first American musical” as it was about to open in New York at Niblo’s Garden on Broadway near Prince Street, in what is now SoHo in lower Manhattan. 

(The theater center of New York City steadily moved uptown over the decades.  In the 1870s, it was around Union Square at 14th Street and Broadway and Edwin Booth built his theater in Chelsea at 23rd and Broadway in 1867-69.  In the 1880’s, it had begun to move uptown to Longacre Square—which became Times Square in 1904—at 42nd Street and Broadway.  That area was officially designated the Theatre District in the 1980s.)

The Black Crook, with a book by Charles M. Barras (1826–1873) and music selected and arranged by Thomas Baker (ca. 1820-88) was a flashy extravaganza that was some 5½ hours long.  It was a serendipitous combination of a theater manager desperate to put a production into his dark theater and a stranded ballet company, the Great Parisian Ballet Troupe, whose scheduled theater had burned down.

Barras cobbled together a script about a fantasy world from Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust that didn’t make much sense, into which Baker shoe-horned some songs and William Wheatley (1816-76), the manager of Niblo’s Garden, inserted the unemployed ballet dancers.

All that mattered, though, was that there were beautiful dancing girls in flesh-colored tights on the Niblo’s Garden stage.  So on opening night, 12 September, Wheatley was at the theater’s entrance as the audience was about to enter.  To his chagrin, first in line was a woman.  “No!  You cannot be first,” Wheatley is said to have exclaimed, pushing her away.  “To allow a woman to be the first to enter would ruin the success of the play!”

The Black Crook ran 474 performances, unheard-of for a time when long runs were unknown.  Its success immediately generated scores of imitations, putatively giving birth to what became the American Musical Theater.  Wheatley reportedly credited his great triumph to having denied a woman the first seat on opening night.  (Try that today and see what it gets you!)

Counting this as a box-office superstition, here’s another: it’s a bad omen to start off a show with an empty till.  To defeat this, some house managers will hold “comp” (that is, ‘complimentary,’ i.e. ‘free’) ticket-holders until a paying spectator has entered the house.  (How does this work today when few tickets are purchased for cash or even at the box office?  All credit-card transactions are done electronically, so there isn’t even a paper receipt to put in the cash-box.)

The days of the week can be portentous.  One belief I know is seldom indulged is that rehearsing on Sunday engenders terrible luck.  One suggested explanation is that members of the company have been out late on Saturday—though I can attest to the fact that most actors in rehearsal for a show are too tired to stay out late on any night after rehearsing all day. 

In any case, Sunday is seldom a universal day off, especially near the end of the rehearsal schedule.  Though non-union shows are different, Actors’ Equity mandates not only how many hours an actor can work in a union production without a break, it also mandates how many days in a row an actor can be called for rehearsals without a day off. 

The Equity deputy in the cast—the equivalent of the shop steward in a factory—keeps tabs on this, among other work rules.  But the union doesn’t determine what days a given actor has off; that’s up to the director—with the deputy looking over his shoulder—and depends on the needs of the show.

Another superstition that concerns a day of the week is the belief that a play should never open on a Friday.  It’s also another one that’s seldom observed much today when shows open any day of the week that suits the production and the producer.  Shows even open on Monday, the traditional dark night when the world was more regular, and also on Sunday, usually a matinee day in most schedules. 

(Until the middle of the last century, the theater season used to start in September and end in May and then the theaters would all close down in the days before air-conditioning—and the actors would go off to do summer stock in places like New England and the mountains of Pennsylvania to avoid the heat of the cities.  But that all changed once silent A/C arrived in theaters and not only did shows continue through the summer, but occasionally a new production will even open between May and September.)

With the admonishment against practicing the curtain call before it’s earned, the proscription of Sunday rehearsals starts a small sub-group of theater superstitions concerning rehearsal practices.  Another in this category is the notion that the cast should never say the last line of the play without an audience present.  It’s supposed to be bad luck because a play isn’t really finished until it’s performed before an audience so the company should never “finish” it without one.  (I’m not sure about the logic of that—but superstitions are basically alogical, so . . . .)

“Given the number of tech cues associated with that last line—lights, sound, curtain—plus somewhat frenzied blocking to get everyone offstage and in position for the curtain call,” observes one director and theater professor, “isn’t it awfully risky not to rehearse it?”  To get around this, some directors allow a limited number of friends and family of the company to attend dress rehearsals.  (It’s also a way to start getting the cast used to having spectators and to get a feel for how the show plays before the public.)

There are also a couple of make-up traditions with which I was unfamiliar.  In the film and television worlds, it’s common that actors almost always have a professional on the set to do their make-up.  (This is true mostly because film and TV make-up is much more precise and specific, what with close-ups and high-definition cameras, than stage make-up; the days of black-and-white cinematography were even more exacting and often counterintuitive because of the “grayscale.”) 

In the theater, actors usually do their own make-up—except perhaps wigs and prostheses—and maintain their own make-up kits.  One superstition in this domain is that an actor shouldn’t ever wear brand-new make-up on opening night.  I assume that if you ignore this taboo, it’ll jinx your performance, but I have no idea where the notion comes from. 

It’s probably akin to the Macbeth curse (but less dire) in that someone compiled a record of the times she or he gave a bad opening performance and correlated it with the times s/he wore new make-up and . . . .voilà!  A superstition!

Other make-up beliefs include never cleaning your make-up kit—which will certainly cut down on anyone wanting to borrow your make-up but could end up pretty gross after a few shows—and the advice always to use a rabbit’s foot to apply your make-up.  Obviously, a rabbit’s foot is soft against your skin (until it gets all caked with make-up), but I don’t really know where that last one comes from, either, unless it’s associated with the old belief that a rabbit’s foot is a good luck charm (though obviously not for the rabbit!).  Today, from the point of view of wildlife conservation and animal-cruelty sensibilities, it’s a terrible practice.  (I never knew an actor who did this, incidentally.)

[Well, that wraps up my look at theater superstitions.  There are certainly more, but I picked out the most interesting and best known traditional beliefs held by American actors and others who work in the theater. 

[I’ll be posting Part 3 of “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions” on 20 August.  Part 3—and a possible Part 4—will cover the stories of ghosts that inhabit theaters around the country and in New York City.  I hope you’ll come back to Rick On Theater  to see what I’ve come up with,  You may have heard some of the spooky tales, but I’d bet you don’t know them all.]

Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions – Part 1

SUPERSTITIONS

When my friend Kirk Woodward sent me his copy for the Rick On Theater post that became “Playwriting Bake-Off” (posted on 19 July), he included the wording of the Summit Playhouse’s rules for a playwriting contest.  It included the sentence: “During this time of COVID 19, the ghost light is on in the theatre.”

Thus I learned the answer to a question that had been niggling at me for years and years.  I’d been wondering what that stand-up light placed on a dark stage is called . . . and now I know!  It’s a ghost light!!  (Thanks, Summit Playhouse!) 

Looking up “ghost light,” I hit on the idea of a post on theater superstitions and traditions.  (You’ll see the connection shortly.)  My unscientific opinion is that, after sports (especially baseball) and maybe seafaring professions, theater has more superstitions and traditional beliefs than any other field.

So here’s a round-up of many of the pervasive beliefs and practices of theater folks that seem to defy logic and reason—even though, as you’ll see, many originated in practical, though now perhaps obsolete, situations.  Some are observed nearly universally by both pros and amateurs of the theater, even by non-believers . . . because they’ve become accepted, even beloved theater traditions.  Others are rarer or regional; quite a few were new to me.

As far as the initial explanations or justifications for these practices is concerned, I’m sure everyone is aware that superstitions and traditions often have multiple origin stories; some are contradictory and many, if not all, are apocryphal.  Nonetheless, I’m going to try to present as many of them as I can gather for the sake of completeness.  There’s no accounting for what people will believe—which explains why there are so many religions in the world. 

Let me start with the practice that launched this rumination: the “ghost light.”

Also known as the “Equity light” or “Equity lamp” (in theater parlance, a ‘light’ is a lighting instrument such as a Fresnel or a “baby spot”; a ‘lamp’ is a bulb or light source—the ‘lamp’ goes inside the ‘light’), or sometimes the “spirit light,” the ghost light is a moveable stand with a single, bare bulb at the top enclosed in a wire cage.  Illuminated, it stands down center on a proscenium stage (or anywhere functional on other stage configurations) when the theater is “dark,” that is not in use, such as days off for rehearsals, days when the production isn’t performing (that is, “dark” nights), or for extended periods when there’s no production booked at that house.

For practical reasons, the ghost light is left burning in the empty theater to prevent anyone who comes in from wandering around the stage in the dark and crashing onto scenery or equipment or falling into the orchestra pit.  (The names Equity light and Equity lamp come from the fact that the Actors’ Equity Association, the theatrical performers’ and stage managers’ union, demands it in its contracts.)

The origin of the presence of the ghost light, though, is somewhat more fanciful.

First, a practical origin story: In the 19th century, before theaters were electrified, they were lit by gas.  Gas is highly combustible and pressure can build up in the pipes if it’s not drawn off by use.  A burning ghost light in a dark theater used excess gas and eliminated the pressure that might build to an explosion.  When theaters installed electric lights both on the stage and in the auditorium (around 1881), the tradition of the ghost light was retained.

As fanciful as this “history” might sound, the rest of the story is more supernatural.  One version has the function of the light as a method to chase away mischievous spirits that may hang around the theater and come out when it’s empty.  As we’ll see, nearly every theater has a legend of a ghost inhabiting it.  A few nights ago, I watched a TV mystery series episode set in a theater and someone used the theater’s ghost myth as cover for murder.  (The show was Australian and set in 1920s Melbourne.)

The other version of the ghost light legend says that it lights the way for the spirits of the theater to appease them and keep them contented.  Some theater people add that keeping the stage lit with the ghost light allows theater spirits to perform, keeping them happy so they won’t curse the theater or sabotage the set or production.

There are other superstitions that concern the theater building and how to care for it.  For instance, it’s ill-advised for actors to put shoes—and some people also say hats—on tables or chairs back stage, such as in the dressing rooms or the Green Room.  According to the belief, it risks a bad performance—but I suspect that it has more to do with disrespecting your fellow actors by taking up chairs and table tops in the cramped back stage with your personal property—especially shoes.

The Green Room, incidentally, is a room, or sometimes just a space, back stage where the actors can wait or relax when they’re not on stage.  It’s often wired for sound so the actors can hear what’s going on on stage.  Dressing rooms are cramped and often not convenient to the stage.  The Green Room can be used for many purposes, such as a place for the director to give a pep talk before the curtain goes up.  The origin of its name has many variations, some of them connected to the color the room is painted. 

This account is contradicted, though, by another superstition about the theater building: Never paint the Green Room green.  This may be related to the prohibition of wearing green  on stage: the color is considered bad luck.  I’m not certain that the color of a costume on stage and the color of a room back stage are related, but maybe; superstitions are weird things.  Anyway, I always heard that the Green Room was named for the man who first used one, and his name was Green—but I never found any confirmation of this explanation.

Another practice concerning the theater building itself, related to the ghost light, is the closing of the theater one night a week. In the United States and Britain (as well as many other Western nations), this is traditionally on Monday nights, which conveniently gives the actors and crew a day off after weekend performances (which, also traditionally, include a Saturday matinee and evening performance and a Sunday mat, adding up to three shows over two days). 

The simple explanation for this practice is that Actors’ Equity requires a day off during each performance week and puts it in all union contracts.  (I believe all the theatrical unions follow suit on this—the directors’, stage hands’, and theater staff guilds, for instance.)  Monday is the traditional dark night in U.S. theaters, but some houses and productions close on other weeknights instead. 

The explanation for the one-dark-night tradition from the superstitious, however, is that the theater ghosts like to relive their performing days and the dark night gives them a chance to perform their own plays as they did in life.   I wonder if the spirits that haunt other theaters pop in to see their peers work, just as live actors try to do?  Do you suppose there’s a spectral director to stage the ghostly shows?

Among the superstitions of theater folk, the most common and best known are curses and bad-luck bringers.  Arguably, the most famous of these is the curse of “The Scottish Play.”  Most of you probably already know what this is.

The most wide-spread version of this superstition applies only inside a theater and to speaking aloud, not thinking or writing (though beliefs vary).  Guided by that, I think I’m safe to be specific here (cross fingers and knock on wood!).

This belief is quite simple: When in a theater, never speak the name Macbeth.  That Shakespearean play must always be called “The Scottish Play” whenever someone refers to it.  (Some actors say Macbee for the play and “Mr. M” and “Mrs. M” or “the Scottish king”/”the Scottish lord” and “the Scottish lady” for the characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.)  Many actors even avoid saying lines from Macbeth, especially the Witches’ spells, inside a theater.  

Company members working on a production of “The Scottish Play” are, obviously, exempt from the prohibition.  As Oskar Eustis reminded the 2006 cast of the Macbeth (Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, directed by Moisés Kaufman and starring Liev Schreiber as Big Mac) presented by the Public Theater, of which Eustis is artistic director, their lines require it.  Otherwise, to breach this practice will bring disastrous luck down on the current production in the theater and all who work on it.

The supposed origin for this superstition is that Macbeth is a cursed play, stemming from a catalogue of misfortunes that have befallen past performances of it, including the first staging (1606) when the actor playing the title role died shortly before or after the production.  

Richard Burbage is believed to have played Macbeth; he died of natural causes in 1619, as much as 13 years after the play’s début performance (some records show that Macbeth’s public première at the Globe was in 1610), at the age of 52—pretty old for the Elizabethan/Jacobean era (when life expectancy was under 40 and only 59 if a man made it to 30).

In an alternative version of this rationale, it was an actor named Hal Berridge who’d been cast as Lady Macbeth.  He died of a fever, requiring Shakespeare to replace him.  (In Elizabethan and early Jacobean times, women weren’t allowed to appear on stage and men or boys played female roles until the Restoration in 1660.)  

One contemporaneous account asserts that at the first performance of the play in 1606, for King James I, William Shakespeare himself played the part at short notice.  (One assumes he already knew the lines.)

There are several other familiar explanations for this superstition.  One is the belief that the Weird Sisters’ lines are actual spells that will summon evil spirits.  (The Elizabethans believed in witches and actively hunted them.)  

Another version of this rationale has it that the use of the spells angered real witches and caused them to curse the play.  A third version states that the Weird Sisters were played in the first production by actual witches and thus brought a curse down on the play.

One rationale for the jinx on Macbeth is that Shakespeare himself put a curse on it so that no one else but he could successfully stage it.  (How did that work out for ya, Will?)  Another, less mystical  explanation is that there is more swordplay in Macbeth than most other Shakespearean plays, and therefore more chances for someone to get hurt. 

In point of fact, Macbeth is no more unlucky than any other play or production. British actor Sir Donald Sinden observed, “More actors have died during performances of Hamlet than in the ‘Scottish play’ as the profession still calls it.”  More accidents and injuries were probably reported during the rehearsals and performances of the late Broadway spectacular, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark (2011-14)

In my brief performing life, I actually did Macbeth twice (the only play of which I was in two productions).  One was a New Jersey community theater offering in which I played a character who was a composite of Big Mac’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain (1979) and an excellent (if I do say so myself) Off-Broadway staging in New York City in which I played the Thane of Ross (1981).  Both were successful and during neither of which did anything awful happen.  (Well, my stage name was misspelled on a promotional post card in the New Jersey production, but that’s all.)

If an actor slips up and utters the name of the play in a theater, there are traditional cleansing rituals required of the person who made the mistake.  The rituals are supposed to ward off the evil that speaking the play’s title is feared to generate.  The actor has to leave the theater (some believers only make her or him leave the room and close the door), perform the rite, and only then be invited back in.

The tradition usually requires the actor to turn around three times (as always, there are variations), spit over her or his left shoulder, swear or say a Shakespearean insult, or recite a line from another of Shakespeare’s plays.  

Popular lines for this ritual include: “Angels and ministers of grace defend us” from Hamlet, “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here, whilst these visions did appear” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and “Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you” from The Merchant of Venice. 

Some casts add brushing yourself off, running around the theater counterclockwise, tapping your left shoulder while saying the play’s name.  A variant cleansing ritual requires the actor’s spinning around and brushing her- or himself off, and saying “Macbeth” three times before reentering. 

There are numerous parodies and travesties of the “Scottish Curse.”  Playwright Lee Blessing wrote The Scottish Play, which examines the history of the tradition, and in the 2007 indie film Never Say Macbeth by screenwriter Joe Tyler Gold and director Christopher J. Prouty, the play becomes a farce when a non-actor is accidentally cast in a production as a witch and utters the name of the play, and sets off a cascade of unfortunate events.

The superstition is even parodied in a November 2003 episode of the animated TV series The Simpsons called “The Regina Monologues.”  While visiting London, the Simpson family meets Sir Ian McKellen outside a theater showing Macbeth.  (McKellen actually did the play opposite Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth for the Royal Shakespeare Company, opening in 1976 at the RSC’s home theater in Strantford-upon-Avon.)  

Every time someone (one of the Simpsons) says “Macbeth,” something happens to McKellen.  Among other things, he’s struck by lightning and a chunk of concrete falls on his head..

Hundreds of production of Macbeth have been mounted all over the world without mishap.  There’s an African version, Welcome Msomi’s Umabatha: The Zulu Macbeth, for instance, and Akira Kurasawa’s 1957 film, Throne of Blood, is Shakespeare’s tragedy of medieval Scotland reset to feudal Japan.  

(I saw a production of Umabatha directed by the author for the Johannesburg Civic Theatre at the Lincoln Center Festival in July 1997 and a stage adaptation of the Kurosawa screenplay, directed and adapted by Ping Chong for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 2010.)

There’s also the famous 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo” Macbeth with an African-American cast (set in the 19th century on a Caribbean island)—which got into political trouble (as usual for both Welles and the FTP), but no actual disasters occurred.  [After posting this section of “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms,” I discovered that this statement is historically inaccurate.  See my corrective Comment below, dated 23 August 2020, for a fuller explanation.  ~Rick]

The Macbeth curse has become so much a part of our theater culture, even among non-show biz people, that in recent years Playbill, the national theater magazine, has published a number of articles that refer to it.  Here are some from the last 26 years—but just the ones in which the headline mentions the Macbeth superstition (many more include references within the article, such as “8 Rules Every Theatre Person Must Follow—Do You Know All of Them?” by Mark Robinson, 1 July 2019):

·   “Paradise Productions Curse Macbeth through Apr. 4,” 31 March 1998

·   “Chicago’s Oddlife Tempts Fate With Inaugural Show: Macbeth, July 13,” 13 July 1998

·   “World Premiere of Lee Blessing’s The Scottish Play Finalizes Next La Jolla Season,” 15 March 2004

·   “PLAYBILL.COM’S THEATRE WEEK IN REVIEW, Feb. 9-15: The Curse Is Off,” 15 February 2008

·   “ASK PLAYBILL.COM: Macbeth (‘The Scottish Play’),” 22 February 2008

·   “Shhh!: ‘Never Say Macbeth’ to Arrive on DVD in August,” 11 June 2008

·   “Spiritual Symbol Protects Lincoln Center Theater’s Macbeth From Legendary Curse,” 1 January 2014

·   “Disaster Averted, Harlem Macbeth Goes on Tonight,” 8 July 2016

One of the articles above, “Spiritual Symbol Protects Lincoln Center Theater’s Macbeth From Legendary Curse,” specifically discusses an element in the set design apparently intended to ward off the evil spell.  Writer Robert Viagas asserts that “the cast of the current [that is, 2014] Broadway revival of what is known as ‘the Scottish play’ believes they may have found the antidote [to the play’s curse].”

The production in question is the Lincoln Center Theater’s Macbeth, which ran at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre from 21 November 2013 to 12 January 2014.  Directed by Jack O'Brien, it featured Ethan Hawke as Macbeth, Anne-Marie Duff in her Broadway début as Lady Macbeth, Richard Easton as Duncan, Brian d’Arcy James as Banquo, Daniel Sunjata as Macduff, and Jonny Orsini as Malcolm.  The rep company production ran for 60 regular performances and was nominated for one award, a Drama Desk for Japhy Weideman’s lighting design.

Viagas stated, “The centerpiece of the show’s artwork is a mandala, created by set designer Scott Pask, consisting of two circles, a pentagram and three heptagons, labeled with the name of God and his angels, according to a program note.” 

Mandala is a Sanskrit word that refers to a “ritualistic geometric design, symbolic of the Universe, used as an aid to meditation,” part of Hindu and Buddhist belief.  Ben Brantley of the New York Times asserted that the figure is inspired by Kaballah, a Jewish belief in mysticism that’s heavily reliant on numerology.

A pentagram is a five-pointed star formed by  extending the sides of a pentagon until they meet, forming five triangles on each side; it often has occult connotations.  A heptagon is a seven-sided polygon; it’s also a mystical symbol (7 is a magic number in numerology).

The LCT show was played right on the mandala because it was painted in black on the theater’s circular stage floor. The mandala also appeared on the show’s posters and program cover. 

Pask’s design was based on John Dee’s 1582 “The Seal of God’s Truth.”  Dee (1527-1608 or 1609), a contemporary of Shakespeare’s who’s believed to be one of the inspirations for the wizard Prospero in The Tempest, was a mathematician, astronomer, and scholar who was a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I.  He claimed to have been instructed in the mandala’s design by direct communication with angels.

Company members seemed to have felt the magic worked.  Stephanie Fieger and Shirine Babb, two members of the ensemble, reported “that the mandala seems to be warding off most of the usual backstage glitches and gremlins that seem to bedevil many productions.”  They believed that the image “has blessed the show and has given us the protection of the angels.” 

The two actors concluded that “now we never have to worry about the so-called Macbeth Curse!  We can say the title all the time backstage and we don’t ever encounter any of those things people say.”  Still, the superstition is so ingrained in the psyches of theater people that most say, like director O'Brien, “I don’t believe in those things, but I don’t not believe in those things.” 

Stage manager Tripp Phillips echoed the director’s sentiments: “I’m not a big superstitious person, but on the other hand there are so many traditions in the theatre, like not whistling in the dressing rooms, that we try to observe them.  There’s no point in tempting the Fates.” 

While some “oddball incidents”—a mysteriously misbehaving (and unmanned) dimmer and a recalcitrant on-stage banner—inexplicably occurred, the production had been “uncharacteristically trouble-free,” affirmed Phillips.  “I feel that this production has been a blessing,” proclaimed the stage manager.  “And if the mandala helps that, fantastic.”

[My survey of the strange beliefs of theater folk and their stories of ghosts and hauntings turned out to be much more extensive than I anticipated.  I’ll be posting “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms”  as a series.  This has been Part 1; Part 2 will be posted on 17 August and will continue my discussion of superstitions.  I’ll start the ghost stories in Part 3, to be published on 20 August.  (There may be a Part 4, the conclusion of the ghost section; if there is, it’ll come out on 23 August.)  I hope you’ll all come back to Rick On Theater for the continuation of “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions.”]