“Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors,” philosophized Thomas Huxley. But the distinguished English biologist’s argument, however influential in scientific circles, has never quite stuck among the artistic crowd, whose imaginative temperament provides fertile ground for the flourishing of a variety of superstitions.
Perhaps this doesn’t make artists as irrational as scientists are wont to think; after all, the success of their work often hinges on luck, a phenomenon that remains beyond the grasp of logic. And while some superstitions can reasonably be traced back to common practices of the time, the origins of others are so convoluted that they must, it seems, be consigned to the annals of obscurity.
One actor’s superstition that history might well ‘explain away’ is whistling in the dressing room or back stage, said to bring bad luck. One suggested origin is that whistling was used by the director as a signal to stagehands that it was time for a scene change, and doing so otherwise could cause one when it was not intended.
Similarly, green is seen as an unlucky color because actors used to perform outdoors on grass and would be poorly seen if they were to wear it; additionally, the green spotlight that was often used to illuminate characters made anyone wearing that color practically invisible.
There are countless other superstitions with more or less credible rationalizations: an empty theatre, if left totally dark, will be occupied by a ghost; real mirrors should never be used onstage; the looping of a drop curtain is a certain forerunner of evil; makeup boxes should never be cleaned out; and knitting by the side of stage is unlucky.
Then there are some that simply cannot be logically explained. It is said, for example, that to trip upon entering the scene on the first night of a play is a sure sign of success, that holding a rehearsal on Sunday will bring disaster to the theater or its people, and that no person presenting a free ticket can be admitted on opening night until a paid ticket has been deposited into the box.
One controversial and extremely persistent superstition revolves around Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which can never be named inside a theater, instead only referred to as ‘the Scottish play’ or ‘that play’. It is said that the play’s curse dates from its very first performance, when a boy named Hal Berridge, who had been cast in the role of Lady Macbeth, was stricken with a sudden fever and died. The play’s inauspicious history was further strengthened by the violent storm that hit England on the opening night of the play almost 100 years later, and as the centuries passed, Macbeth’s real-life victims began piling up as surely as its diegetic ones: some famous figures to have supposedly suffered from its curse include Abraham Lincoln, Orson Welles and Charlton Heston.
“Some people take [the Macbeth superstition] very, very seriously, particularly those people who have more experience doing classical work all the time,” said Ron Himes, founder and producing director of the Black Repertory Theatre company, which has presented the production. “If you say it in a dressing room, there are things you have to do, like turn around three times before you are allowed back in. In our production, everyone did respect the tradition, though we called it ‘Blacdeth’.”
Thespians are not the only kinds of artists prone to superstition; in music, Gustav Mahler was reportedly terrified by the ‘Curse of the Nines’, which had supposedly befallen the composers Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorák and Bruckner before him, all of whom died almost immediately after completing their ninth symphonies. Whether Mahler’s fear was prophetic or self-fulfilling is debatable, for he died while writing his tenth.
Quilters too have their superstitions; it is said that making human figures on a quilt allow the figures to walk and visit you at night, and that stealing a quilt design is tantamount to stealing part of its maker’s spirit. Additionally, sleeping with a quilt helps cure sickness, but sitting on one is taboo.
Similar superstitions exist across cultures. Chinese opera actors burn incense on an altar in front of their patron saint, the Chinese emperor Tang Ming Huang, before every performance, so that he will give them the power to perform well. When opening a new theater, they douse the stage with dog’s blood or chicken’s blood, dress up as spirits and equip themselves with masks, tablets and whips to drive away devils and harmful spirits.
Despite all the efforts to give artist superstitions some basis in logic, so-called irrationality still creeps in through the back door. The color green is avoided, for example, not only because it is impractical, but also because it is the faeries’ favorite color and might provoke their jealousy if worn by an actor. Backstage whistling is prohibited because it used to be a signal to bring the curtains down, but it may also have been triggered by the Cornish saying about the devil, ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you!’.
In his book, Supernatural on Stage, Richard Hugget addresses the actor’s precarious state opf being: “It is not our bodies which we actors endanger, but our hearts and souls,” he writes. “It is not bullets nor storms nor bombs nor cave-ins we fear but the most deadly and unpredictable and relentless of all natural forces-public opinion and fashion.”
Is it any wonder this climate engenders high levels of anxiety about the suggested?
While many try to explain the superstitions through practical common sense, the uncertain etymologies of artist superstitions bear testimony to the richness of their professions, where folklore lingers patiently in the hallways of the imagination.
