Tag Archives: theater ritual

Senior Pranks

Age: 21

TEXT:

Informant- “Senior year of high school at my school we always had to do, in the theater department, a senior prank on the lower classmen and the teachers and each year it would be different like VERY different and people would go all out. One year people brought sand giant, like inflatable pools and we had a beach day in the classroom and all the underclassmen had to watch us and we locked them out. One class had our school mascot like in the room filled with cups of water so no one could go get it. It was very odd and like, signs warning about “the tornado” cause that’s our mascot. I can’t remember any other ones but each year we would try to like up the other group do better, one up of them, and it really brought the senior class together!”

CONTEXT: The informant recounts the time in high school in Florida and the various senior pranks that happened during her time there.

ANALYSIS:

Pranks as a rite of passage are very important to many people, especially the transition from adolescence to adulthood and the limbo of being a teenager in high school. I think the added element of being in the theater department in high school and having that extra layer of folk and community adds to the competitiveness of the pranks to will not be each other and bond in a way through these pranks

Plonkies

Text: “In High School, I was in drama club. Every time before a show, about 15 minutes before a show, everyone would gather around to hear our director’s speech to send us off. When it got down to 5 minutes, our stage managers – that being our Production Stage Manager and two Assistant Stage Managers would stand up on chairs in the center of the crowd. Their speech is different from the directors’; it was more centered towards hype and getting all the positive energy into your systems. They would start with a drum roll…and as that beat rolled through the crowd, they would spin their arms in circles and YELL, “It’sssssss going! Itsssssss going! ITSSSSSSS PLONKIES!” Everyone would say the Plonkies part with them, and then all hype, we would run off to places, whether we were in the crew or cast. I’m not sure how it originated, but it has been a long-running tradition since I joined my freshman year. Plonkies is pretty much a funny way to say places. It would be said at the beginning of each of the three shows we had over the weekend; the last one was always said cause it meant the last show, but it was fun nonetheless.”

Context: A high school theater tradition that is celebrated by both members of the cast and crew and performed by students. OK was a tech student and saw and participated in this tradition for all four years in high school, for each of the eight shows over that time. There would be two shows every year. It is always performed by the Stage Managers.

Analysis: The mix of the drum roll, the yelling, and everyone joining in creates this shared burst of energy that hypes people up and calms nerves at the same time. There has always been a wide variety of traditions within theaters, most relating to ghosts, but it is interesting to see a different kind, one that includes both the crew and the cast together. Overall, it’s a good example of how inside jokes and traditions can build a sense of community and make stressful moments feel exciting instead of overwhelming. Knowing it has been a tradition passed down for generations of theater students makes the sense of community even stronger; it’s a bond of the present and past students.

String

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Morris Plains, NJ, USA
Language: English

The interviewee was a member of the local high school’s theater program and valued the ritual as a part of connectivity and valuing the community of the theater program. 

“When I first joined theater I accidentally found out about a surprise tradition called Lock-In so I asked questions about it. People told me there were things like scavenger hunts and that it ended with String. I asked what that was and the [G](the upperclassman) just gestured to her wrist where there was several different colors of string. It turned out to be this sweet little circle up where we all took turns throwing a ball of yarn to each other and wrapping it around our wrists then throwing it to the next person without cutting it. The thing was that we threw it to someone, not our best friend, who had inspired us or made us happy or taught us something during that season. Someone special who made their time better. Then that person would do the same thing. At the end we would all hold our wrists up in the air and the president of the ITS board would tell us that the string represented we were all connected across the departments. We would then go through a cut it so everyone could wear the string till opening. Normally people would keep the string bracelets and wear them for other seasons. I still have the string from all of 7 of my shows.” 

The tradition was something to look forward to every year. It was a way to feel included and appreciated for the hard work and long hours that were the theater program. It is also a time to reflect and enjoy the people who have inspired and helped you. Wearing the string on your arm all day for a week and seeing all the people you are connected to in the school in the halls is a way to feel unity and appreciation for others. 

Break a Leg Ritual

Text
“So this is like the traditional ‘break a leg!’ before a performance, because I’m a theater major. But before any type of performance, instead of just saying ‘break a leg,’ the performing group that I grew up in since I was a kid to high school, we always would say ‘break ALL your legs.’ As like a way of saying ‘you’re even gonna do better than just break a leg, like you’re gonna have a phenomenal performance.’ And then we would- I don’t know how to explain this properly, but we basically lock our pinky fingers together, and then like, bump each other’s hips, each hip twice, and then like, spin, like, turn with our arms. And I was like- everyone in the group that I grew up in performing did this, um, and was incredibly superstitious about it. It was a thing of like, even if you were called to places, you would run backstage to the other side of the stage to find the other people in the cast to do it to. Because it was an incredibly, like, you HAVE to do this. Like, if not something’s gonna go wrong. Um, and so I was incredibly superstitious about it. Like if I didn’t get the chance to do it to everyone, I, like, I was not comfortable on stage and I was like ‘something’s gonna go wrong, I’m gonna mess up, just it’s not gonna be the performance I know it can be.’

And now that I’m in college and I’m not part of this performing group anymore, I still carry it on. Um, especially with this one, like, performance group I’m part of. Backstage before every show that I’ve started since freshman year doing, I teach it to like anyone who’s new in the group, and I do it with as many people in the cast as I can do, and I even like, explain the story of it to people, like ‘this is something I used to do in my past performing community that I was a part of, and we’d say break all your legs,’ and I teach it to them and then like, they go on to do it to other people in the cast and explain it to them. So it’s something I’m like carrying on and spreading to other people.”

Context
C is a current student at the University of Southern California and grew up in Palm Desert, California. She gave the context that she had been part of the same local theater group for her preteen and teenage years until coming to college. When asked to elaborate about some of the logistics of the ritual, C explained how the ritual would be done between two people in the cast, with the goal of everyone in the cast eventually doing it with everyone else. She also stressed the importance of performing the ritual as immediately before the beginning of the performance as possible. She also described how different people in her original group believe in different degrees of consequences for not performing the ritual with everyone in the cast; while some people think it is not strictly necessary, many, including C, believe that there will be “severe and immediate consequences” during the performance for not doing it with everyone. Finally, C explained that, while she is not sure when the ritual began, allegedly everyone who her director had worked with had a similar kind of ritual, which leads her to believe it stemmed from him and evolved to what it is today.

Analysis
As C acknowledged, this tradition takes a widely-known example of theater-specific performative speech and adds an additional physical element as added superstitious behavior. I would say that this ritual combines elements of homeopathic and contagious magic. By believing that not performing this ritual correctly induces bad luck, this theater group exhibits the ‘like produces like’ belief behind homeopathic magic; however, the contact required for the ritual, perhaps to ‘share luck’ amongst the cast, suggests that the connection between two cast members lingers after contact, which is characteristic of contagious magic. There also seems to be an added dimension of promoting the group’s strength and unity; by requiring everyone in the cast to perform this bad-luck-warding behavior together, it reinforces the idea that the group is stronger together. Ultimately, I think this ritual is a perfect example of the multiplicity and variation that is often said to be a core component of folklore, and I would be interested to see if/how this ritual changes after its introduction to USC theater spaces.

Paper Plate Awards Ritual

Text
“This is called the paper plate awards. For every [theater] show two seniors would get paper plates, and with sharpies, for every single member of the cast, they would get their own individual ‘paper plate award.’ So on a paper plate they would write, like, um, for me it would say ‘C, 2022 paper plate awards for The Sound of Music’ and then it would say, like, ‘best mistress’ or whatever. Like- like it would be a very specific award that has to do with, like, an inside joke about the show or something that has happened at rehearsals, or something about your character you’re playing, or a funny line you have, and they would do some type of variation on that turned into the name of an award. And it was important because every single person got their own award, and every single person’s award was very specific to them. Like, no one got a generic award, everyone felt included and like they had a thing that like, that was their show or their little specialty. So it was meant to make everyone feel close and like- even though it was a joke awards, it was all meant to show that like everyone has contributions to, not just like the talent of the show, but like the community that we are like forming.

And so it was always the dinner before opening night, um, that is when the two seniors would do the award show and just present it to everyone. Um, and they would just go down the list and be like ‘we’re presenting this paper plate award for blah blah blah to blah blah blah.’ Um, and by the time I was a senior, since me and this one other girl were the two seniors who had been there the longest, we got to be the ones to make the paper plate awards and hold the ceremony. So it was something I got to see from being like, eleven years old as like a little kid to then growing up and being like the eighteen-year-old who’s doing it and passing it on.”

Context
C is a current student at the University of Southern California and grew up in Palm Desert, California. In addition to stating that it was the seniors who created the paper plate awards for everyone, C stated that the seniors got the role because they were in somewhat of a leadership role; having been there the longest also meant that the leading seniors knew the group the best. When asked what would happen if there were more than two seniors who had been there the longest, C described that they performed three shows a school year, so the seniors would be able to ‘trade off’ and each get a turn. C finished by saying she hopes to establish the paper plate awards tradition at some of her performance groups at USC because she feels it helps foster connection and belonging, even if someone is young or new to the group.

Analysis
As C pointed out during our interview, the main purpose of this ritual seems to be strengthening communal bonds through the special acknowledgment of the value of each group member. The silly tone of the awards and their references to inside jokes from the rehearsal process harkens back to forms of workplace humor, where teasing and getting ‘in’ on a certain joke designates someone as part of a group. That the paper plate awards take place over a shared meal adds a further sense of connectedness. C’s comment towards the end also indicates that the paper plates awards are a particularly special time for the seniors; after having received paper plate awards for numerous performances, stepping into the role of creating the paper plate awards functions as a kind of rite of passage that acknowledges the seniors’ leadership role and experience. Depending on how advertised the tradition is throughout the rehearsal process, it seems as though a new group member’s first paper plate awards could function as a sort of rite of passage by giving an award that makes them feel seen, and therefore, ‘part of the group.’