Tag Archives: Theater

Circle — A High School Theater Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bay Area, California
Performance Date: May 2nd, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: N/A

Main Piece: 

Before every show we always had this thing called Circle, and the purpose of Circle was to kind of like, get you hyped up and get your nerves out, and kind of keep you from being shy or feeling stage fright by doing silly, silly things, and seeing people do silly things. And the whole tradition of Circle is that you chant, “Oooh, I feel so good like! I knew I would! Oooh I feel so good!” And you would just continually chant that while clapping to a certain beat until someone went into the circle and would be like, “Like [something now]”  and everyone would just mimic them no matter what it was. It could’ve been something that had been done every year before them; that’s like a very simple one, like “Like a chair now!” And you do a squat [laughing] and, y’know, you do a squat and then you continue the chant. Or, you could make one up every single time. I remember [a classmate] once went in the circle and went like “Like a parabola!” and literally did a backwards handstand and bent over backwards. And it was crazy, and people started doing it all the time after that even if he wasn’t at [the high school] anymore at the time. That was a fun one that, like, caught on. 

Background: 

My informant is one of my friends from high school, and was very involved in our school’s theater department. Circle was one of the most consistent rituals prior to every show, no matter if it was opening or closing night, and the chant from the piece was one of the most popular and well known. When I asked my informant what the tradition meant to him, he said it was about “being vulnerable and bonding with other people, especially if it’s your first show and you’re nervous.” Seeing people perform silly antics removed the fear of embarrassment and let everyone come together to prepare for a great performance while also feeling supported by those around you.

Context: 

This came up when my informant and I were trying to remember traditions that happened in our theater department during high school. While I was involved in a few shows, my friend had more experience than I did and was able to remind me of a ritual that the department participated in before every single play or musical show. 

Thoughts: 

In this ritual, we can observe that the purpose is to create an energetic atmosphere where the cast and crew could get excited for the show; in a way, this ritual is meant to bring good luck to them and alleviate tension. We can also observe that there’s an expectation for what to do during the chant, but not only that, there’s a myriad of variations to the chant that have been made up by people from past generations of the theater department. I also liked that my informant gave the example of “Like a parabola now!” because it shows that Circles functions not only as a stress reliever before a show, but an opportunity for a theater kid to leave a legacy behind, as seen by the fact that our past classmate’s variation is still performed even if he no longer goes to the school. Additionally, we see the multiplicity and variation in the different chants that are performed at each Circle, and know that some will die out and be replaced with others depending on how popular the chant becomes. 

123 Shakespeare

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bay Area, California
Performance Date: May 2nd, 20201
Primary Language: English
Language: N/A

Main Piece: 

Everyone comes early to rehearsal and they play 123 Shakespeare. What that is is there’s one person who starts, and you have to try— its in a field—  and the goal is to run away from the field without getting, I guess, eliminated and once you are, you join the eliminators. So it starts with one person. To eliminate them you have to drag them out of the zone of the field, and then they join your team, and you work together to get more people. And then once you have a couple more people, you have to start lifting people up and shouting “123 SHAKESPEARE!” while no part of them touches the ground. And then you have eliminated them. And you’re allowed to do whatever you’re comfortable with to be the last one standing, and that happened before every show. 

Background: 

My informant is one of my friends from high school,  and was very involved in our school’s theater department. As he told me, 123 Shakespeare is a ritual game that’s done before the opening of every show, and was one of the most anticipated traditions of our theater department. However, it was also kept secret; only the cast and crew of the show knew about it, not the general rest of the school. It was additionally kept secret from anyone who was participating in a show for the first time. What would happen is that people would be told to come to rehearsal early, “not explaining anything, but [we had] the decency to say ‘bring a change of clothes you don’t mind getting dirty.'” Upperclassmen in the theater department would make up ridiculous rules as a prank, like telling newcomers “No tool boxes allowed,” “Guys, make sure you leave your hoverboards at home!”, and then reveal the actual rules of the game once everyone arrived on the day 123 Shakespeare would be played.

Context: 

This came up when my informant and I were trying to remember traditions that happened in our theater department during high school. While I was involved in a few shows, my friend had more experience than I did, so I asked him what events he could remember, and he described 123 Shakespeare for the archives. 

Thoughts: 

I remember participating in 123 Shakespeare when I was in high school right before the spring musical, and it went exactly as my informant described it. Looking back on it now and knowing what I know about peer groups and folklore, I thought it was fascinating that this tradition was both a ritual, and a bit of an initiation for people who are getting involved with the theater department for the first time. The upperclassman keeping the secrecy of what 123 Shakespeare is establishes the social hierarchy of the theater department, and the joke of making up nonsensical rules can be viewed as a display of that status, and simultaneously accepting the new members into the peer group by initiating playful behavior with them. Similar to the wedding tradition of pulling pranks on the groom by the bride’s family, I think this game of 123 Shakespeare demonstrates a liminal space that new cast and crew members must cross before they can be fully accepted into the peer group of the theater department. This game stands between the tireless rehearsals and the opening night of the show, so this is the point in which they are invited to participate in a longtime tradition passed down through the generations of the theater department. 

Traditional Practice: Whistling in a Theater

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Singing Instructor
Residence: Staunton, VA
Performance Date: April 19, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

“Okay, so the first story I’ve got is something that I encountered working in the theatre in Germany. And I, for some reason, when I don’t think about it, whistle. And I remember being in the theater and without consciously doing it I was whistling going down the halls and one of the managers pulled me aside and really reprimanded me and said that, you know, that that was really a bad thing to do. I wasn’t really sure why and then I went back and I asked someone about it and they said that was a really big superstition, and not to do that at all, and it actually goes back to when the theaters used gaslights for lighting. And if the flame went out, the only way that you’d really know that it was out was a whistling sound. And so, if someone was whistling through the halls it could really kind of cover up or hide the fact that the gas light had gone out.”

Background:

My informant grew up in America before departing to Germany for several years to sing in German operas. This happened relatively soon after college, so he was a newcomer to both the professional theatre world and German culture. My informant explains that this is a superstition that apparently extends to American theaters as well. They present it as the product of a practical concern kept up for tradition’s sake.

Thoughts:

This is an interesting example because it started out one of two ways. Either this practice was occupational folklore at first passed between workers at a theater or it was a company or institutional policy and wasn’t originally folklore at all. However, as gaslights were faded out of theaters, this practice remained as a matter of tradition. What’s interesting is that this isn’t a superstition- there aren’t stated consequences for whistling in a theater. The reprimanding person doesn’t say that something bad will happen. It’s simply a forbidden practice because it used to be forbidden. 

The M-Word

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2pm 9, 2021
Primary Language: English

“So in the theatre you’re not supposed to say the word Macbeth ever. And that is because in legend, Shakespeare used like actually witch spells in the beginning of Macbeth, um, and so the witches cursed him and cursed the play so every time it was said in the theatre like something would go wrong in the production. And I’ve heard stories of like this happening to, you know, not to my school but like my friend’s school or a friend of a friend’s school, where like someone said Macbeth like 40 times in the middle of the theatre, and, like the pipes burst during opening night and like the lead broke their knee or whatever. And the only way to reverse this curse is to go out of the theatre, spin around three times while spitting over your shoulder and saying Shakespearean curses, and then ask to be invited back into the theatre. That’s the only way to reverse the curse. And so um for a lot of thespians, they try and find new and creative ways to say Macbeth. So I’ve heard the M-Word, I’ve heard Mac Daddy, I’ve heard the Scottish Play…Mac Daddy is a funny one I heard that at a like regional theatre competition like out of the mouth of like a grown man so that’s fun.”

Notes: This is a tentpole of the theatre community. I’ve never met anyone who was tangentially involved in theatre and hadn’t heard of the M-word. I’m not particularly superstitious, and even I jump at hearing the word Macbeth. This is a long-persisting legend, I feel in part to the universal “friend of a friend” that we can cite as our real-life source. I do think its interesting that this is the play that was chosen to be taboo as opposed to any of the other tragedies, which can be more gruesome and more supernatural. Perhaps this is the most well known tragedy?

For more on the curse, click here for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s article on the M-word.

Haunted Theaters and Ghost Lights

Nationality: Afro-Latinx
Age: 20
Occupation: FIDM Student Studying Fashion Design, Food Service
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles CA 90007
Performance Date: 4/13/21
Primary Language: English

My friend shared this story with me and another female friend one night in the kitchen after work. I asked this friend about her haunted house and she later shared that her classmates always left a ‘ghost light’ in the school theater. It was bad luck not to leave a ghost light. This friend also said that she believed her theater may have housed some recent ghosts.

This speaker went to an arts school in Tampa, Florida. She took classes in the drama department and was in school theater productions. Here is her story.

*

“Theaters are traditionally haunted all the time… they’re just traditionally haunted,” the speaker said. “After you’re done striking a set or cleaning up or after you’re done rehearsing. You’re always supposed to leave a ghost light, or the ghost, or else that was bad luck.” I asked whether the light was meant to guide the ghosts, but she said that it existed to appease them/ She said ghosts do not like the dark, and that this was ironic.

One day after practice “a student forgot to put the ghost light on, you know, it’s not anything, not a very big deal. It’s literally like a stick and a light ball. And you roll it out onto theaters, like, but we just forgot about it. And then the next day, like a spotlight fell, and that was really bad.”

The speaker said that there were some specific ghosts she thought haunted the theater. “There were a couple of tragedies that did happen at our theater. And there was actually some of them were actually pretty recent. So I’d like to think there were good spirits rather than bad spirits,” she said. The drama director’s brother had passed away that year, and the speaker said that she would like to think that he came to see the productions at the theater. The speaker also added that a young actress had died of a disease in the past, and that there was a plaque in front of the theater honoring her memory. The speaker said that she would like to think that the actress’ ghost visited the theater as well.

When I asked what this meant to the speaker, she said that the young actress had “put so much of her craft into theater.” I suspect that knowing that deceased guests might visit the theater is comforting to the speaker, and that these two particular ghosts help future productions.

*

The speaker has shared other ghost stories and believes that these stories are real, so it makes sense that she would believe these ghosts could be real as well. She began telling this story discussing ghost lights and bad luck, but the story ended on a note of good luck. I was taught to act as if a god was always watching, and I know many people feel comforted to know that someone else is guiding them during stressful parts of their life. It might be comforting to know that ghosts are watching over stage productions as well, since the ‘good’ ghosts the speaker mentioned had theater or theater-adjacent backgrounds.

I did not know that movie theaters and stages are supposed to be haunted or that actors would leave a ghost light. My school had a small theater that we used for small class meetings when the drama department was not at practice. I can’t remember a specific light that was left on the stage, but the room was never completely dark. This was likely for security reasons.

The haunted theater trope may be due to the fact that theaters serve as a sort of liminal space when not in use. Theaters are such specific buildings, and sticking around after the show is not an expected reaction. Only janitors and stage crew might remain after a show is over.

Additionally, members who know about the ghost light are ‘real’ members of the theater community. They understand the traditions of other actors and stage crew, and they are part of an in-group.

This story also draws upon similar ideas as the article ‘Ghostly Possession of Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore’ by Ulo Valk. Actors and other community members who believe in ghosts come to terms with tragedy by carrying out traditions in the hope that loved ones continue to exist in the ‘haunted theater.’ The ghost does not necessarily need to be buried near the theater, rather the theater belongs to them because their devotion to acting tied these ghosts to this particular spot.

For another ghost legend by the same speaker, see ” Haunted House in Indiana- The Funny Man and the Woman with the Red Eyes: Sleep Paralysis and Two Traveling Ghosts” in the USC digital Folklore Archive.