5 ms·

Performances at my local theatre are banned. The crowd loved the short five-night run, last time. It made all the papers, tickets sold out, tourists rocked up

by shakna 9d ago

Performances at my local theatre are banned. The crowd loved the short five-night run, last time. It made all the papers, tickets sold out, tourists rocked up for it. Seven actors were injured, in a space that usually saw one injury a year. Six were ruled unavoidable by the fire warden doing the post-assessments.

talon8635 9d ago
Banned why? I understand why you wouldn’t want to reveal your location, but I’d be interested to know where such a policy was enacted. Or this is a joke on the “curse”?
- gryfft 9d ago
  Not a joke, I think. Thespians are a superstitious bunch and the Scottish play at this point is virtually a self-fulfilling prophecy of disastrous productions.
  - moron4hire 9d ago
    As someone with the last name "McBeth," I very quickly got any interest in theater verbally beaten out of me by this particular religion. There's always that one person in the production who takes it way too seriously, legitimately thinks it's real, and will make sure you know how terrible of a person you are for even showing up with such a name.
  - rmunn 9d ago
    It's also a very physical play with a large number of onstage fights. Fight choreography is some of the most dangerous stuff to do onstage: a single mistake and someone can easily be hit by a sword that was supposed to just barely miss them. And although stage-fighting weapons are naturally blunted, they're still big heavy metal rods that can bruise or break bones if you get hit by them. (See my P.S. for a funny story about that, BTW — nobody was injured in that one, but it came close a couple times). There are some scenes in Macbeth that can be turned into offstage fighting if the director wants to minimize risk to the actors; for example, the battle with Macdonwald (not a typo) in Act 1 Scene 2 is reported to King Duncan, but not seen onstage in most productions. (Though an ambitious director might choose to have a mass battle depicted during the transition from Scene 1 to Scene 2, then have the combatants leave when Duncan walks onstage to hear the report). But there are three scenes that explicitly call for an onstage fight: Act 3, Scene 3: three hired killers attack Banquo and his son; Banquo is killed but the son manages to escape. This all happens onstage. Act 5, Scene 7: Macbeth fights young Siward, and kills him. Act 5, Scene 8: Macbeth fights Macduff, and it's a long fight. They fight once, pause to exchange some words while both are gasping for breath, then they fight again. The stage directions call for them to exit the stage still fighting, then come back onstage still fighting, just in time for the audience to see Macduff kill Macbeth. With three swordfights that must happen onstage, the potential for accidents is a lot higher than for most of Shakespeare's plays. On the other hand, Romeo and Juliet has a similar number of fights, as does Hamlet — yet neither of them has acquired the same reputation. So it's also possible that there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy going on here: actors who are worried about getting hurt might not have their full attention on the fight choreography, making them more prone to make mistakes that do actually result in injury. P.S. Now for the funny story I mentioned. If you haven't seen The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye as the protagonist and Basil Rathbone as the villain, go watch it; it's hilarious, and it deserves to be more widely-known than it is. In the final swordfight between Kaye's character and Rathbone's, the fight ranges all over the castle, and for plot reasons, Kaye's character is alternating between fighting expertly, and making wild, amateurish swings with no skill at all. Thing is, Rathbone was an expert fencer, and helped teach Kaye (who had no fencing experience) how to fight. Now, usually in a swordfight scene, they would substitute a stuntman to double for the actor when the actor's face isn't visible. But in the scenes where Kaye's face is visible and Rathbone's isn't, it's still Basil Rathbone doing the fighting — because Kaye was so inexperienced that he was likely to make mistakes, and Rathbone didn't want anyone less experienced than himself facing an inexperienced actor in a dangerous fight scene. (In fact, if you have a lot of experience with fight choreography, you can probably spot the times when Kaye came very close to actually hitting Rathbone for real, and if Rathbone had been less experienced he might very well have been injured).
    - throwup238 9d ago
      > just in time for the audience to see Macduff kill Macbeth. Spoilers! I was just about to go see my middle school’s production of Macbeth hoping to see some violence but now it’s ruined!
    - rmunn 9d ago
      P.S. Another reason why Macbeth might have more injuries than either Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet is the setting. In both Romeo and Juliet and in Hamlet they're fencing with rapiers, appropriately to the setting. But in Macbeth they're in the Scottish highlands, and a rapier just wouldn't look right. I don't believe Shakespeare ever explicitly specified what kinds of swords the characters in Macbeth are fighting with, but traditionally they've used either longswords (two-handed) or arming swords (one-handed swords, which are what you might think "longsword" means if you came to your knowledge of weaponry through D&D or other RPGs). Both of which are heavier (especially the longswords) than a rapier, and easier to accidentally injure your opponent with (broken bones, concussions, etc) than a blunted stage rapier. So that fact alone might help explain why injuries tend to be higher in stage productions of Macbeth. It's just inherently more dangerous to perform than the rest of Shakespeare's plays.
- shakna 9d ago
  Banned, not a joke. Because there is a marked number of incidents around the play. It doesn't matter if it is rational or not - it happens. So, banned.
  - talon8635 7d ago
    But… what kind of incidents? Assume I’m totally ignorant on the topic, because I am :) But I want to know more
    - shakna 6d ago
      Random and unrelated things. Things that could have happened anytime, but didn't. Just all at once during one run. And haven't really happened since. Ones I remember: - Opening night, actress slipped on a stair, and fractured her ankle. - Mirror in the changerooms had its hook break (warden said internal manufacturing defect, could not be seen ahead of time), and smashes an actor in the head. Concussion. - A door jammed after the weather changed. Someone tried to open it without realising, and dislocated their shoulder. (200 year old building.)
      - stronglikedan 5d ago
        > A door jammed after the weather changed... (200 year old building.) This happens in my thirty year old house! The more things change, the more they stay the same!
getoj 9d ago
Apropos of the curse, an explanation that I heard from a reasonably famous Scottish stage actor: Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time. So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.
chasil 9d ago
Did they avoid peacock feathers onstage? Reciting lines from The Two Gentlemen of Verona and A Midsummer Night's Dream is also rumored to be helpful (from the last section). "For the more athletically inclined, one should exit the theatre, spin around in a circle three times, and spit." https://broadwaydirect.com/13-theater-superstitions-halloween/ https://broadwaydirect.com/13-theater-superstitions-hallowee...
- shakna 9d ago
  Nope. They don't really follow most superstitions. But most didn't end up with half a cast injured.

by shakna 9d ago

talon8635 9d ago

Banned why? I understand why you wouldn’t want to reveal your location, but I’d be interested to know where such a policy was enacted. Or this is a joke on the “curse”?

gryfft 9d ago
Not a joke, I think. Thespians are a superstitious bunch and the Scottish play at this point is virtually a self-fulfilling prophecy of disastrous productions.
- moron4hire 9d ago
  As someone with the last name "McBeth," I very quickly got any interest in theater verbally beaten out of me by this particular religion. There's always that one person in the production who takes it way too seriously, legitimately thinks it's real, and will make sure you know how terrible of a person you are for even showing up with such a name.
- rmunn 9d ago
  It's also a very physical play with a large number of onstage fights. Fight choreography is some of the most dangerous stuff to do onstage: a single mistake and someone can easily be hit by a sword that was supposed to just barely miss them. And although stage-fighting weapons are naturally blunted, they're still big heavy metal rods that can bruise or break bones if you get hit by them. (See my P.S. for a funny story about that, BTW — nobody was injured in that one, but it came close a couple times). There are some scenes in Macbeth that can be turned into offstage fighting if the director wants to minimize risk to the actors; for example, the battle with Macdonwald (not a typo) in Act 1 Scene 2 is reported to King Duncan, but not seen onstage in most productions. (Though an ambitious director might choose to have a mass battle depicted during the transition from Scene 1 to Scene 2, then have the combatants leave when Duncan walks onstage to hear the report). But there are three scenes that explicitly call for an onstage fight: Act 3, Scene 3: three hired killers attack Banquo and his son; Banquo is killed but the son manages to escape. This all happens onstage. Act 5, Scene 7: Macbeth fights young Siward, and kills him. Act 5, Scene 8: Macbeth fights Macduff, and it's a long fight. They fight once, pause to exchange some words while both are gasping for breath, then they fight again. The stage directions call for them to exit the stage still fighting, then come back onstage still fighting, just in time for the audience to see Macduff kill Macbeth. With three swordfights that must happen onstage, the potential for accidents is a lot higher than for most of Shakespeare's plays. On the other hand, Romeo and Juliet has a similar number of fights, as does Hamlet — yet neither of them has acquired the same reputation. So it's also possible that there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy going on here: actors who are worried about getting hurt might not have their full attention on the fight choreography, making them more prone to make mistakes that do actually result in injury. P.S. Now for the funny story I mentioned. If you haven't seen The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye as the protagonist and Basil Rathbone as the villain, go watch it; it's hilarious, and it deserves to be more widely-known than it is. In the final swordfight between Kaye's character and Rathbone's, the fight ranges all over the castle, and for plot reasons, Kaye's character is alternating between fighting expertly, and making wild, amateurish swings with no skill at all. Thing is, Rathbone was an expert fencer, and helped teach Kaye (who had no fencing experience) how to fight. Now, usually in a swordfight scene, they would substitute a stuntman to double for the actor when the actor's face isn't visible. But in the scenes where Kaye's face is visible and Rathbone's isn't, it's still Basil Rathbone doing the fighting — because Kaye was so inexperienced that he was likely to make mistakes, and Rathbone didn't want anyone less experienced than himself facing an inexperienced actor in a dangerous fight scene. (In fact, if you have a lot of experience with fight choreography, you can probably spot the times when Kaye came very close to actually hitting Rathbone for real, and if Rathbone had been less experienced he might very well have been injured).
  - throwup238 9d ago
    > just in time for the audience to see Macduff kill Macbeth. Spoilers! I was just about to go see my middle school’s production of Macbeth hoping to see some violence but now it’s ruined!
  - rmunn 9d ago
    P.S. Another reason why Macbeth might have more injuries than either Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet is the setting. In both Romeo and Juliet and in Hamlet they're fencing with rapiers, appropriately to the setting. But in Macbeth they're in the Scottish highlands, and a rapier just wouldn't look right. I don't believe Shakespeare ever explicitly specified what kinds of swords the characters in Macbeth are fighting with, but traditionally they've used either longswords (two-handed) or arming swords (one-handed swords, which are what you might think "longsword" means if you came to your knowledge of weaponry through D&D or other RPGs). Both of which are heavier (especially the longswords) than a rapier, and easier to accidentally injure your opponent with (broken bones, concussions, etc) than a blunted stage rapier. So that fact alone might help explain why injuries tend to be higher in stage productions of Macbeth. It's just inherently more dangerous to perform than the rest of Shakespeare's plays.
shakna 9d ago
Banned, not a joke. Because there is a marked number of incidents around the play. It doesn't matter if it is rational or not - it happens. So, banned.
- talon8635 7d ago
  But… what kind of incidents? Assume I’m totally ignorant on the topic, because I am :) But I want to know more
  - shakna 6d ago
    Random and unrelated things. Things that could have happened anytime, but didn't. Just all at once during one run. And haven't really happened since. Ones I remember: - Opening night, actress slipped on a stair, and fractured her ankle. - Mirror in the changerooms had its hook break (warden said internal manufacturing defect, could not be seen ahead of time), and smashes an actor in the head. Concussion. - A door jammed after the weather changed. Someone tried to open it without realising, and dislocated their shoulder. (200 year old building.)
    - stronglikedan 5d ago
      > A door jammed after the weather changed... (200 year old building.) This happens in my thirty year old house! The more things change, the more they stay the same!

getoj 9d ago

Apropos of the curse, an explanation that I heard from a reasonably famous Scottish stage actor: Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time. So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.

chasil 9d ago

Did they avoid peacock feathers onstage? Reciting lines from The Two Gentlemen of Verona and A Midsummer Night's Dream is also rumored to be helpful (from the last section). "For the more athletically inclined, one should exit the theatre, spin around in a circle three times, and spit." https://broadwaydirect.com/13-theater-superstitions-halloween/ https://broadwaydirect.com/13-theater-superstitions-hallowee...

shakna 9d ago
Nope. They don't really follow most superstitions. But most didn't end up with half a cast injured.