Mac bet he’d be unlucky in the Scottish Play
From Phuket Gazette
Arcane superstitions abound in the theatre, but the ones everybody remembers are about not wishing someone “Good Luck” but that they “Break a Leg” instead.
Now, I’m not a terribly superstitious chap but, after accidentally mumbling “Good Luck” before the Andaman Players took to the stage at the Playhouse in Patong, I thought I had better look into how to lay any possible curse I may have brought upon us. I vaguely remembered that it had something to do with spinning around three times, pinching my nose and throwing a cat over my shoulder… or something like that.
Not wishing to upset one of my cats unduly, I thought it best to do a bit of serious in-depth research first (translation: at least to the second page of a Google search) and what I found out left me staggered. There are almost as many web-pages about theatrical superstitions as there are about Britney Spears - which makes me wonder if people are taking both subjects a little too seriously. Most of these sites, akin to the ones about Little Miss Toxic, are annoyingly repetitious, basically spouting the same old superstitions and their histories and offering little in the way of curse removal solutions. Worst of all, it left me wondering just how many superstitions we’d broken since we first took to the stage last December.
For instance, did you know that wearing green on stage is considered incredibly bad luck (apparently Moliere died wearing a green night shirt), unless you’re in Italy then purple is the colore sfornato, while Spanish actors refuse to wear yellow (anyone know why?).
Fresh flowers on stage are also considered unlucky, but – as one sharp director points out – this is probably because fresh flowers need replacing daily and that’s very bad luck for the producer’s wallet.
My cats were very relieved to find out that I wouldn’t be lobbing them about anytime soon, because cats in theatres are considered very good luck… unless you kick one, which is very bad luck. Apparently this superstition dates back to the Pharaohs – and we all know what happened to them, don’t we.
Then I remembered that Tony Kelsey-Stead’s costume in the play Adjoined – in which he plays a drunken Italian hotelier – includes a pair of Garfield slippers. Does standing on fluffy representations of cats count as a theatrical curse? Eek!
Still, only two more performances of that play and Night in a Bar Room to go – Royal Phuket Marina on 30 August and then our final show of these two comedies will be back at the Green Man on 6 September. Extra milk rations for Tibbles between now and then should keep that curse at bay.
There’s one theatrical superstition to which I hope we never have to resort. According to some sources, giving the director a bunch of flowers on opening night is very good luck for the actors, but the flowers need to be stolen from a newly-filled grave. Ugh! And why is this good luck? Because it saves those skin-flint actors from having to pay out for winning the director’s favour.
But what about “Break a Leg”? Well, there are so many ridiculous reasons for this saying that I don’t know where to begin. Some of the weirdest of these include: a reference to John Wilkes Booth who, having just shot Lincoln, broke his leg leaping onto the stage (yeah, that’ll teach him to go around shooting presidents); Shakespearean audiences throwing the furniture about if they enjoyed the show (breaking many chair legs in the process?); and opining understudies wishing ill to their on-stage counterparts and thus causing the opposite.
The “Good Luck” thing is even sillier, having something to do with theatre faeries that prefer to do the opposite of what’s been asked – although the astute director mentioned above does point out that egotistical actors who believe themselves imbued with good luck are more likely to fluff their lines.
So, following my research, it would appear that the Andaman Players have broken about half the superstitions that cause bad luck (although I have yet to catch anyone knitting backstage) and failed to do most of the things that guarantee a successful performance. If there is anything to this superstition lark it hasn’t done us much harm so far. Still, just to be on the safe side, I’ll curb my desire to slip the name of the “Scottish Play” into my next script (“I’ve finished laying the tarmac, Beth!”) because I’ve just read about a theatre company that called itself Defying Macbeth in an attempt to reveal the theatrical folly behind not mentioning that name. Terrible performances and poor audiences proved otherwise.
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The Andaman Players are seeking new actors, backstage crew and anyone interested in being a part of this growing performance arts adventure. Must have own rabbit’s paw.
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