MacBeth Question

[Fiyero13]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 6:12pm

Clay Aiken was on the tonight show or conan, (i dont' remember), he talked about his experience in spamalot and mentioned that he can't mention the name macbeth while he was in the theater

why is that?

[insertclevernamehere]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 6:17pm

It's a famous theatre superstition. The story is that Shakespeare overheard witches talking to eachother and put their words in his play. When the witches saw it, they put a curse on Macbeth. Now, if you say Macbeth in a theatre, you get thrown out and the only way to counteract the curse is to walk around it three times, spit over yourleft shoulders, say an obscenity then wait to be invited back into the building. I think there are other methods, but that's what I had to do anyway.

[Weez]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 6:30pm

No one's allowed to say it, really. Check out the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_play Got some fun stuff on there.

I was in a play last year called 'The Scottish Play', which was about an amateur group putting on a production of 'Macbeth'. I felt really stupid every time someone asked what play I was doing, and I had to say "'The Scottish Play' - no, not 'Macbeth', it's actually *called* 'The Scottish Play'!". We're a totally unsuperstitious group; we kept talking about old Mr. Mac during our next production as well. XD

[insertclevernamehere]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 6:31pm

I was in Macbeth an we all started calling it Mackers.