Leave a (ghost) light on

Leave a (ghost) light on for me

By Bonnie Goodheart

Theatre is a world where magic comes alive, where tales are recalled, where we suspend our disbelief and follow a story till its funny, sad or thoughtprovoking end. It’s also a world with its own customs and a raft of weird and wonderful superstitions. Join me on a tour around a few of them…

Probably the best-known superstition involves never wishing an actor ‘good luck’ – it tempts the mischievous pixies to do the opposite and create chaos during the show. Replace it with break a leg. Not as cruel as it sounds: if the actor responds to applause by bowing/curtseying, he or she visually breaks the straight line of the leg. May the performance be so successful that you’ll have to break a leg. Meanwhile, you may hear opera singers utter the phrase toi, toi, toi. This imitates the sound of spitting three times; three is a fortunate number and the saliva in spit has apotropaic qualities that ward off evil spirits.

Never whistle on stage.

Scenery flown in and out has been used in theatre for centuries. Numerous ropes are involved and sailors, good with these on old ships, would often be employed to fly. They communicated using different whistles for different instructions but if an actor whistled on stage and confused the flymen, they might get a heavy piece of scenery dropped on their head! More modern ways are used today but whistling - throughout the theatre, to be on the safe side - is still best avoided.

Leave a ghost light on.

Many theatres leave a single light illuminated on stage, even when the building’s empty. Well, maybe not quite ‘empty’. It’s left on so that the theatre’s resident ghosts can find their way around the stage at night, without tripping over the props. It also means theatre staff, returning to the stage, don’t have a similar mishap. And yes, it really is called a ghost light.

Closed Mondays. It’s not unusual for a theatre to go performance-free on Monday nights. The previously-mentioned residents are given a night to themselves, traditionally a Monday, and are likely to cause mischief if they’re ignored and a performance is staged.

Anyone sitting here? London’s Palace Theatre used to keep a couple of seats off sale so their ghostly guests had somewhere comfortable to watch the performance. It’s true. Imagine sitting next to them - would you strike up a conversation at the interval?

In pantomime, and some say in all forms of theatre, it’s unlucky to perform the whole show without an audience present. So how do you complete rehearsals? Avoid

saying the last line of the show until there’s an audience

present on the first night – and then hope you remember it!

There’s also a belief that good

characters should enter stage right and the baddies, stage

left. Right has long been associated with being honest and true. The Italian word ‘sinistra’ means left/ on the left and it’s the root of the English word ‘sinister’. So when a character creeps up on your left…

And while we’re talking sides: the next time you visit a theatre, unless you want to hex the show, lead with the right foot as you enter!

There are many other superstitions, including those linked to Shakespeare’s Scottish Play; I hope you’ve enjoyed this short guide to some of the more frequentlyencountered customs. I love theatre!