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I was wondering why this was here, figuring most on HN know already about this. However I did chuckle reading to the end; in case others missed it:
> At the 94th Academy Awards, Chris Rock congratulated Denzel Washington on his performance in The Tragedy of Macbeth, saying the name of the Scottish play aloud in the Dolby Theatre. Moments later, Rock was slapped by Will Smith after making a joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Viewers, including playwright Lynn Nottage, quickly took to social media to joke that Rock had suffered the curse of the Scottish play
Theater superstition is an entirely new area for me. I don't know why you would assume otherwise for a forum full of computer nerds.
That's a stretch, because it wasn't said during production.
Which reminds me of the earlier Wikipedia days where "In popular culture" was a common section, and it often contained increasingly trivial references. There's also an xkcd about it: https://xkcd.com/446/
I didn't know. I guess I am one of today's lucky 10,000 (see https://xkcd.com/1053/).
I was in a community college production of Measure for Measure. During one rehearsal, some of us were backstage conversing about theater superstition and the Scottish play in particular, taking care to use the proper euphemisms.
One older cast member, who didn't have much theater experience, kept saying, "the Scottish play... what do you mean???" We tried to explain to him within the limits of the taboo, and finally he said, "Oh, you mean Macbeth!"
That night, in the middle of the night when the theater was all locked up, the main stage's brand new expensive backdrop, which had just been installed, ripped in two from top to bottom.
No one ever figured out how it happened.
Just anecdata: every theatre I've run for has been a running shitshow of OSHA violations and near-misses. You could pick any random word and make it into a "curse": something is bound to happen.
I expect MacBeth to be one of the most produced plays in the English speaking theatre world, so it makes sense that many noteworthy accidents / incidents happened. However, Hamlet has apparently been staged even more often, and it would be interesting to compare the number of incidents, but since there's no curse for Hamlet, no list of incidents exists, at least not on Wikipedia. Macbeth's curse could also be a self-fulfilling propehcy in some cases.
It also has a number of fight scenes, which are dangerous, and is often darkly lit. I don't know if you could really control for all of the variables, but the thing about the name is just a fun joke among theater people. Few actually believe it.
I will note that the worst injury in my troupe's 20+ year history was during a production: a one in a million bounce by a blunted stage weapon. It is the only time anyone got taken to the hospital. But there have been other injuries, and the last time I directed that play I made sure the injury count was zero.
(Credit to my fight choreographer, who made sure of it.)
> A variation of the superstition also forbids quoting lines from the play within a theatre except as part of an actual rehearsal or performance of the play.
This one was probably born out of people getting sick of hearing Macbeth references getting dropped all the time. Napoleon Dynamite of the 17th century.
Obligatory Black Adder: https://youtu.be/h--HR7PWfp0
Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends! Aargh!
For reference, that’s from the fourth episode of the third series, “Sense and Senility".
The Simpsons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-tD2t77RSQ
Fifteen minutes ago I was watching a few scenes from Blackadder on YouTube (which included parts from Sense and Senility)[0] while lunching and now I get here and find this post. Amusing to say the least.
Hah, I was just hearing about this for the first time from a friend, I had no idea it would have its own article, tho I would have preferred the format “List of theater accidents caused by uttering the name of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play”
As a techie, I've always made it a habit to walk out onto the middle of the stage and shout, "Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! There, now it's done with!" at some point during tech week.
Had we three microphones, the back rows would have heard thee.
See also: The Scottish Restaurant...
There's no way to avoid the curse of intestinal distress... on the bright side, sometimes ice cream cones are available.
See also "break a leg".