I don’t want to make too big a deal about this, but I find it rather perplexing that anyone should still seriously give weight to the prohibition against saying Macbeth in a theater.
Surely we’re all rational and reasonable enough to understand there’s no actual curse… that there’s no cause-and-effect relationship between uttering those syllables and an ill fate befalling a production.
Some have suggested that it’s simply a harmless tradition: fun, in a way, and nothing more than that. Perhaps, and if so… fine, I guess.
To me, however, it seems rather silly. After all, theater has genuine transformational psychological power for practitioners and audiences alike… and to reduce that power to a simple curse seems to diminish it unnecessarily.
The promulgating of a curse, furthermore, puts us at risk of alienating scientifically- and rationally-minded audiences, too, who would be justified in taking us less seriously if we went on about it too much.
Now… I have no interest in insulting anyone, so I don’t go around saying Macbeth just to piss people off… but I just don’t have the mental filter that would keep me from saying Macbeth if the play came up naturally in conversation. The word would come rolling out of my mouth long before I ever thought it might be bothersome.
So if I say Macbeth in your presence, and we’re standing in a theater… forgive me. I’m not going to turn around three times reciting a curse word, leave, and ask permission to come back, but I also don’t mean to raise your hackles. I just can’t really understand why they get raised in the first place, and it never occurs to me that they do.
When Teller and Aaron Posner directed the performance at the Two River Theatre in Red Bank, they decided to take the opposite approach and said “it” all of the time…It seemed to work out quite well as the show was wonderful and went on beyond…
Teller was already one of my heroes: now, more so.
Aaron, as you know, is my friend: when I see him on Saturday, I’m going to thank him for this…
I don’t hold to a “curse” of any kind, and while I may draw a sharp breath if you say it to me in a theatre, I’ll never ask you to do anything ridiculous.
On the other hand, speaking of ridiculous? A simple thing like the little tradition against saying the name of the play is hardly going to alienate scientifically-minded audiences. That’s absurd, Gwydion.
You think? Maybe. I might have overstated the case… but I know at least a few scientists who are quite ready to dismiss anything “artistic” the moment it isn’t silly. (Think of the type of person who won’t watch CSI because “fingerprints can’t be scanned that quickly” or “blood factors disappear after four hours” or whatever.) So I don’t think it’s entirely absurd.
Thing is, I don’t believe those people are coming to plays anyway. They wouldn’t like how often we have things like ghosts or prophetesses or paintings that have a powerful effect on everyone who sees them but are invisible to the actual audience. I don’t think we’ll lose them over a thing like Macbeth.
I completely disagree. I know they come to plays because I come plays.
They’re also, in some ways, the main people I make theater for. In some ways.
But they don’t mind STORIES about ghosts etc…. they mind if we take them seriously.
I wish I could come up with something to say to that other than, “Well, that’s awfully silly of them.”
What is?
People who hold a scientific/naturalist worldview often find the behavior and beliefs of people who hold a supernaturalist worldview perplexing. They don’t mind seeing plays about those things — I certainly don’t mind seeing Macbeth, for example — but I shouldn’t be expected to take Macbeth seeing a ghost literally. I find productions that lead in that direction underwhelming and annoying and I don’t care for them. That’s my personal preference, and there’s nothing wrong with a personal preference.
Won’t let me reply to you either. Probably my fault. Probably some setting I chose…
It’s not about being offended. It’s about dismissing theater practitioners as out of touch with reality, and thus not relevant to their lives. And it’s not about being rigid or “refusing to ever see a play again.” It’s about saying “I guess they aren’t talking to me over there at that theater, so I won’t go there.”
Of course they go their great aunt’s house. She makes the best sweet potatoes. But they get annoyed when she throws the salt, and they think she’s silly.
Well, it puts me off, personally. That’s why I wrote this post. I take people who take the curse seriously a little bit less seriously. I still, of course, go see shows made by those people. I’m still friends with them, I still respect many other things about them. I still consider them valuable collaborators and people I can learn from and work with. But in some corner of my mind, I think: how odd that you should give that curse any weight.
Now, imagine that the person in question isn’t a regular theatergoer, but someone who sees, oh, two shows a year. Are they going to visit a theater that prattles on about ghosts and spirits and curses, or are they going to go somewhere that offers stories informed by a naturalist worldview? You just lost them.
And they are our audiences, too. They deserve theater as much as believers do.
So if you don’t want to have dinner with that person — or me — or sit next to either of us in the theater, I understand… but I think that’s a rather dismissive response. I wouldn’t do the same to you, if I thought you believed in the curse.
I do. They’re in the minority, but they exist.
The comment thread won’t let me reply to you!
Sure, there’s nothing wrong with a personal preference, but being so offended by theatre’s little supersitious tradition that you’ll refuse to see a play ever again–that is intensely rigid-minded, and silly. Do they also refuse to eat Thanksgiving dinner with a great-aunt who throws salt over her shoulder if she spills it?
Really? Really, that tiny habit of ours–of some of ours–which is rendered with a smile and a little self-consciousness by most of us, and has nothing to do with the play whatsoever–that’s a thing that would change someone’s mind about going to a theatre? That would be enough to make them figure that the theatre company is “out of touch with reality”?
Sorry, G, but I wouldn’t want to have dinner with that person, or sit next to him/her in the theatre. S/he sounds like no fun at all. Yuck.
Oh, honey, I just don’t know of any theatres that “prattle on” about it. Do you? It’s an almost-nothing to the people I work with.