Theatrical Superstitions - Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

• No real money should be used on stage. This may derive from gamblers' superstitions about money, or it could just be a sensible precaution against theft. In a similar vein, it is considered unlucky to wear real jewelry on stage, as opposed to costume jewelry.
• It is bad luck to complete a performance of a play without an audience in attendance, so one should never say the last line of a play during rehearsals. To get around this, some production companies allow a limited number of people (usually friends, family, and reviewers) to attend the dress rehearsals.
• In some companies wearing the t-shirt of the play being produced before opening day is considered bad luck. Other companies however hold the exact opposite opinion, and actually encourage their actors to wear the shirt as often as possible before opening night to increase ticket sales.
• A bad dress rehearsal foretells a good opening night. Possibly, this is an example of sour grapes. However, it has a tendency to be true in that cast and crew are scared straight by a bad dress rehearsal and therefore fix their mistakes by opening night. (Alternatively, a director may offer this superstition to boost the confidence of the actors after they were disheartened by the bad dress rehearsal.)
• A company should not practice doing their bows before they feel they deserve them.
• Gifts such as flowers should be given to actors after a show, as opposed to before.
• Peacock feathers should never be brought on stage, either as a costume element, prop, or part of a setpiece. Many veteran actors and directors tell stories of sets collapsing and other such events during performances with peacock feathers.
• Some actors believe that having a Bible onstage is unlucky. Often, other books or prop books will be used with Bible covers.
• Specific colours
  • Blue is considered unlucky, unless countered by wearing silver. As blue dye was once very costly; a failing acting company would dye some of their garments blue in the hopes of pleasing the audience. As for the silver to counter it, one would know that the acting company was truly wealthy, so to enable actors to wear real silver.
  • Green is also considered to be unlucky. This is said to date from the time when most performances were given out-of-doors. Wearing green would make it hard to distinguish the actor from grass/trees/bushes in the natural setting beyond the performing area. Another possible cause of this superstition is that green light tends to make actors look corpse-like. In addition, Molière, the famous French actor and playwright, died from pulmonary tuberculosis just hours after performing in his own play, Le Malade imaginaire (The Hypochondriac). He was wearing green and, since then, it has been believed to be unlucky for actors to wear green during a performance. Despite this superstition, the off-stage waiting area for actors is referred to as the green room.
  • Yellow is another that is considered unlucky. This is said to date from the days of the religious plays. Yellow was the color worn by the actor playing the devil.
• Specific theatres
  • Many Broadway producers believe that the "Curse of the Bambino" extends to the Longacre Theatre. Therefore they avoid backing productions at the Longacre for fear of losing their money to a box office bomb. The theatre was one of the many assets that Boston Red Sox owner and Broadway empresario Harry Frazee sold at the same time that he sold the contract of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees.
  • Many people also believe that theatres located on the streets east of Broadway may be cursed because they often house productions that have lower box office takes and fewer total performances than those staged on the west side of the street. This does not apply to theatres with addresses on Broadway, such as the Winter Garden Theatre which has housed several Tony Award-winning productions as well as two of the top ten longest-running musicals in Broadway history -- Cats and Mamma Mia!.
  • Some Broadway producers have also complained about the Foxwoods Theatre (formerly known as the "Hilton Theatre" and "Ford Center for the Performing Arts"). Completed in 1998, the main complaint is that the 1829 seat theatre's cavernous auditorium has poor sight lines and acoustics, making it difficult for audience members in distant seats to see or hear the actors. Mel Brooks (whose Young Frankenstein ran for 14 months there) made a different complaint about the theatre's acoustics, stating that its size also makes it difficult for performers to hear the laughter of the audience. The theatre opened with the two-year, 834 performance run of the original production of the musical Ragtime. This was followed in 2001 by the four-year, 1524 performance run of the revival of the musical 42nd Street. Normally, this would have given the theatre a good reputation, but its poor reputation grew exponentially in 2010-11 with the seemingly endless production problems of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which had already set the record for most preview performances five months before it officially opened on 14 June 2011. See also the Lyric Theatre under "Ghosts of Broadway Theatres" above.
  • Before My Fair Lady began its six-year, 2717 performance run at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in 1956, that theatre was thought to be cursed., It had been switched back and forth several times between being a motion picture theatre and a live stage theatre. From its opening in 1930 until the opening of My Fair Lady, the 1949 musical Texas, Li'l Darlin' had the longest run at the Hellinger -- nine months and 293 performances.