Tag Archives: performance

The “Shit Damn Motherfucker Motherfucker Damn” Ritual

Nationality: American

Age: 21

Occupation: Student 

Residence: Mason, OH, USA

Date: 4/29/2025

Language: English

Description

This is a a theater ritual that the people at USC do. And there are different variations of this at other schools, but there’s one very specifically that USC does which I really, really like. It’s [done] before a theater performance. Everyone gets together in a circle. Every actor gets in a circle. And you start really low and very quiet. And you say: “shit damn motherfucker motherfucker, damn! This dumb bitch just stole my man. Gotta find another fucker better than the other fucker, shit damn motherfucker motherfucker damn!” You do it four times, and you get louder and you get higher off the ground until you’re like jumping and screaming. And after that, it’s, like, okay, let’s go. And everyone goes back to their dressing rooms, gets focused, and begin the show. That’s the ritual. 

Subject’s Opinion: 

Interviewer: Do you know where that came from? 

Subject: I don’t know at all where it came from, but I know at other schools, there are variations of this. So I assume that it came from some sort of like, bigger, more professional thing, and then people sort of took from that, like took their own versions from that. From that original typical folklore. 

Interviewer: Why do you you think it’s such a significant thing that’s done here? 

Subject: Well, I think there’s multiple things. I think one people just love saying swear words. And, and also before a performance, you have to get very, like, energized. You have to be very active, even if you’re playing a very inactive and unenergized character. You, as the person who’s playing that character, need to be sort of heightened. Um. And there’s something about the consonants as well…shit damn motherfucker motherfucker, damn. Like the consonants of that are very activating. Um, and also just the community bonding aspect. We’re all like having fun. We’re all like… it’s silly. It’s ridiculous. You can’t take it seriously at all. Like, you cannot take that exercise seriously and getting yourself into that sort of like heightened, heart-beating state, and then having to take it down to like a performance, and having to have all that energy inside of you while you’re like…rocking it with whatever you’re doing. 

Analysis

As an active participant of the theatre community, I’ve seen the ritual performed many times, and can attest to the strong impression it leaves on anyone seeing it done for the first time. Witnessing or taking part in it being performed is a rite of passage for all theatre-makers at USC, as it means you’ve completed a show ready for performance, marking an important moment not only for the actors, but the people behind the scenes. And as one’s theatre career unfolds at USC, they will see this ritual done again and again, each time more meaningful than the previous, as it is symbolic of the camaraderie and pains and joys of telling a meaningful story together.

Ritual: Pre-performance Routine

Date of Performance: 04/30/2025

Nationality: British

Primary Language: English

Residence: Edinburgh, Scotland

My informant is a performing musician, and describes to me his pre-show ritual. He’s a singer, and so his routine is precise – while some of it is mental, any anomalies could compromise the condition of his vocal cords. It consists of several conditions: first, without fail, on the day of a show, he drinks “two full britas” worth of water. This, he explains, is to keep his vocal cords as hydrated as possible. This step is probably the most critical – as an example, he recounts a time when he had several alcoholic drinks instead of water, and embarrassed himself deeply onstage after the fact. Next is his diet: on the day of the performance, he eats only a sandwich with tomatoes and cucumber. Anything oily, like meat or fried foods, throws him off, he says. Before he arrives at the venue, he drinks a thermos of tea, specifically throat coat, at a medium temperature. Finally, while driving to the show, my informant listens to “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind, and Fire to get him in the right state of mind for his performance. 

He says that he doesn’t necessarily ascribe meaning to each of the steps in his ritual, but that adhering to them keeps his mind and body in the right space so as to perform to his best ability. When asked as to how he formulated each step, he responded that they were things that just sort of stuck with him as he performed more and more. I did witness a concert of his after this interview, and I can attest that his ritual seems to have worked. 

Being a performing musician myself, too, I can understand the importance of a standardized pre-show routine to my informant. While personally, I don’t adhere to as strict of a regimen, the music I perform doesn’t rely heavily on vocal technique, which might be the difference. A lot of singers I know have similarly precise routines, likely due to the biological component of singing properly. Often, they are encouraged to follow more rigid warm-up rituals so as to keep the vocal cords, a muscle, in its best condition, much like athletes would do before a game or competition.

Theatre Pre-Performance Ritual for RENT

Main Piece

“[This ritual] is very common: the whole team tapping a sign before a game. In RENT, we have a plaque hand-carved by Jonathan Larson’s uncle that he carved when he died that his sister gave us. She came in and talked to our cast, and her and his college roommates gave us this plaque for the duration of our show. And it’s this big hand-carved plaque that says “Thank you, Jonathan Larson” on it. It’s hung up backstage, and after our group circle, we all have to go up to it one by one [before every performance] and like, place our hands on it and thank him before we go onstage to perform…Really simple, but we all do it and constantly remind each other of it and it’s really important to our cast.

Some of us like, if we’re feeling especially emotional, will literally sit in front of it and cry. I’m so serious, I’ve done that, ’cause Jonathan Larson is really important to me.”

Interpretation

Informant Interpretation: Informant related ritual to common sports team rituals of tapping a specific sign for luck or protection before a game. They also mentioned that the pre-RENT performance tapping of the sign was a means of “community building” and enabled cast members to “ground themselves” and “remind themselves about why they’re doing this piece of art.”

Personal Interpretation: This is clearly an important tradition to the informant and their cast, furthered by the subject matter of RENT (queer people living in NYC during the HIV/AIDS crisis) and fact that its creator, Jonathan Larson, died one day before the musical’s original opening in 1996. The sign is a physicalized reminder of the humanity and weight the show carries, and gives the cast members a material way to remember the real people it’s grounded in before going onstage. To me, it sounds like tapping this sign is a ritualized remembrance of the responsibility to tell and represent an important, nuanced story to the audience, and for the cast to honor the people around them–cast, crew, relatives, friends, and more–as well as the source of the art they’re bringing into the light.

Background

Informant is a 21 year old college student studying theatre at USC. The performance of RENT mentioned happened this semester, with rehearsals running January-April and performances in April. It was put on by the USC School of Dramatic Arts–informant performed in the ensemble for all performances. Informant is mixed race (white and Pacific Islander), and identifies as queer and fem-presenting.

The Queen’s Feast

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

Context

The informant is a freshman at USC from Barrington, Illinois. During a call, I recorded an interview with them about rituals, superstitions, and festivals. When asked if they perform at any festivals, this is what they performed. Important context to know is that they would be part of the “Bristol Busking Frolic” performance troop that would perform at the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha, Wisconsin over multiple years.

Text

PL: I’m going to tell you about Queen’s Feast at the Bristol Renaissance Fair in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Okay, so every day at the Renaissance Fair, which is in the summer, and stuff. So the whole–one of the–one of the big concepts from the Renaissance Fair is that it’s a day in 1574 in Bristol, England. And Queen Elizabeth the first is visiting, you know, like you do. Yeah. And so there’s the whole thing is like, “Whoa, we’re going to see the queen.” So I’m part of a cast called the Bristol Busking Frolic. BBF, for sure.

PL: And every day at, I believe, like, two–I think it’s two, I think it’s two, I’m gonna go with two. I don’t remember somewhere in like the early afternoon, or noonish.

PL: We, as a cast will all meet beforehand and plan a couple of things for the Queen’s Feast. And the Queen’s Feast is a thing that is primarily the court cast does–the cast–to please the Court.

PL: And so queen will sit at a table. And she will have like the mayor and like her ladies next to her. And then they will be presented with food. And that’s literally their lunch. Like they eat as a performance. And there’s chairs and there’s benches set up around to like watch and like hang out. And then there’s a little carpeted area where you–during the day, like, the Court will do like court dances and stuff like that.

PL: And the Queen, so she’s eating lunch or whatever. And we the Bristol Busking Frolic will show up, and we will each day usually sing two songs and do one mum, which is a story or skit sort of thing. And sometimes that’ll be shaken up because like sometimes someone might want to like share, like, something they’re learning or like a thing or like a solo on the flute that they learned. But usually, we will do two songs and a mum and there’s a set, there’s set songs we do. They’re like folk songs and stuff. There is a lot about boats. One about drinking, you know, classic folk song stuff. And then we’ll tell mums which are often based on or feature a folktale.

Interviewer: What is the structure of a mum? How is it different from a folktale?

PL: It’s–okay, so it’s usually one person will tell the story and there’ll be like the narrator. And then a couple of other people will play the characters in the story. And we’ll have brief lines, but mostly it’ll be like, “And then the sausage said, I’m a sausage!” and it’s like, hahaha. They’re usually funny. They’re funny stories. They’re short.

PL: And any one person narrates it, and they know the story. And they and everyone else either sits to the side or they’re players in the story and they’ll have honestly, there aren’t really costumes but a lot of times there’s small props.

PL: Like a donkey’s mask–we have we have a mask with a donkey on it. Anyways, yeah. And, and they’ll act out the scene, and the story and they’re funny and it’s like, whoa, ha, ha, ha. And then we all bow. And at the end, at the end of our performance, after we’ve seen–we’ve sung one song, and then we do them and then we sing another song, The Queen will be like, thank you so much. And we will all like skittishly gather around and like bow. Actually, we don’t bow. That’s the big thing. Bowing isn’t a thing, you révérence, which is where you take one foot behind the other and lean back on that back foot and keep your forward leg straight. Actually, that’s the male reference. The female reference is basically just a curtsy.

PL: Whole thing with like, maintaining eye contact or something. I don’t know. Anyway, different thing. But we’ll we’ll we’ll révérence and she’ll be like, thank you so much. And then here’s this tradition. She gives us grapes. Oh, it’s weird. I don’t know why. But traditionally, she throws grapes to us and we try to catch them and we’re like, “Oh, the grapes from the queen!”

Analysis

This performance is a key part of the Renaissance faire; as the informant describes, it is the main part of the each day. The “queen” is supposed to be Queen Elizabeth the First of England, but her performance is less of a historically accurate depiction of the historical queen, but rather a representation of a homogenized ideal of the time period in question. The performance harkens to “tradition,” but it demonstrates that “tradition” itself is more of a contemporary performance referencing the past rather than an accurate depiction of it. It is not certain whether the act of throwing grapes was ever something that Queen Elizabeth I did, but it is part of this performance because of its mix of entertainment value and “Renaissance” aesthetic.

Certain aspects of the historical time period hold over in this performance: of course, the clothes are meant to represent this time period regardless of whether they are perfectly accurate, but gestures such as the révérence seem to have actually been practiced in that period. The révérance might be the easiest part of emulating the Renaissance time period as performance, as it is simply a specific movement of the body. However, it is not certain whether this act was performed in the same context as the performers sought to emulate. It is instead meant to signal historical performance to the paying audience.

Musical Theater Pre-Show Ritual: Linking Pinkies and Biting Your Thumb

Text:

MA: “A pre-show ritual we would do at my high school, if you were sticking your thumb and your pinky out, you would link your pinky with someone else’s and then bite your thumbs in front of each other’s faces. It’s kind of like a kiss, but you’re not actually kissing.”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old college student from Orange County, California, who did musical theater throughout her childhood and attended a performing arts high school. She and her castmates in high school would do this ritual before the beginning of a performance. MA described how the gesture allowed performers to be calm in the high anxiety moments before a show. The intimacy of this act, which she compared to a kiss since “you’re literally a hand’s length away from each other’s faces,” fosters a sense camaraderie between members of a cast which can boost performers’ confidence.

Analysis:

This ritual, like many if not all pre-show rituals, evokes a sense of solidarity between performers. Because performers spend so much time together rehearsing, members of a cast tend to bond with each other. This is important since live theater relies on each individual’s performance as well as the interactions between performers, so fostering a sense of community promotes the success of the actors and of the show. The medium demands vulnerability from performers, who must put themselves on display and maintain their dramatic personas while fielding the immediate, unfiltered reactions of the audience. Thus, a show’s success relies on the cast’s ability to trust one another. This intimate musical theater ritual both reflects and promotes the closeness of the cast, conveying that the performers’ trust and believe in each other. This sense of support and community can build confidence and lessen stress, enabling better performance. It can also be interpreted as a good luck ritual or even a superstition.