Several years ago, a theatre I’m aware of was preparing to stage a production of “Macbeth” in its black box, where the stage was in the middle of four sets of raised seats. It’s one of Shakespeare’s best-known shows, but many actors consider “Macbeth” to be cursed and won’t even say its name inside a theatre, if at all. Whether because of a curse, coincidence or lighting that matches its dark tone, the play has a reputation for on-set accidents and misfortune.
This particular production made a point of showcasing the darkness. After the opening announcements, for instance, the house lights dimmed and plunged the theater into darkness. There was silence just long enough for people to start to get a little nervous, when the first witch lit a flashlight under her chin and asked, “When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning or in rain?” followed by the second witch’s lines, and then the third’s, each lit in isolation by a flashlight they held.
All three were seated in the audience and apparently had been the entire time. They completed the entire first scene like this, walking counterclockwise in a circle around the center of the stage, lit only from beneath by the flashlights they were carried. It was spooky as hell.
I tell you this to give you a sense of how the director was presenting the show. The scenes with the witches as written are already enough to build suspense, and the director was ratcheting it up even more with lighting tricks like that.
Now there’s a scene in the play that came after the intermission, where Mackers, having ascended to the throne of Scotland, asks the witches to tell him what the future holds, and they give him a vision of Scottish kings to come. (Spoiler: None of them is a descendant of Mac himself.) The director had some crazy lighting effects in mind for this scene, to show the state of Mac’s mind, his violation of the natural order in seeking such knowledge, and the overall creepiness of the witches. So it came to Brian, the producer of the show, to make sure that the lighting was all set up.
Aside from any actors superstitions about the Scottish play, it’s also true that just about every theatre has a ghost story connected with it. Sometimes the ghost is said to have been an actor, director or producer associated with the the theatre in life, and sometimes it’s just a presence people claim to have felt. Maybe it’s said to do something like haunt the props loft and move things about, but really, theatre ghosts are like the plaque honoring the people who supported last year’s fund drive. You don’t notice them until someone tells you that they’re there, and then you lose interest and forget about them.
At this particular theatre, which I’m not going to identify by name out of respect for the people involved, the resident ghost was supposed to be one of its founders. People had “felt his friendly presence” or whatever the standard claptrap was, after he had died. When the theatre’s original building burned down and they took one of the foundation stones to their new location, the ghost supposedly had followed. They called him “Sam.”
So it was the day before tech Sunday, and in a scene that I am sure is familiar to anyone who has ever worked on the technical side of a show, Brian was working late at the theatre to finish setting everything up.
It was late, sometime after midnight, when he started hearing noises. The set designer had left two hours earlier, after she had finished prepping the few significant props that would be needed, such as the banquet table where Mac sees Banquo’s ghost; and nobody else was supposed to be there.
“Hello?” Brian called. “Is somebody there?”
There wasn’t any answer, so Brian kept on going about his work and getting the lights set. A few minutes later, he heard voices again — a child’s voice, specifically — and he heard someone running around.
Now it was late Saturday night, and the last thing Brian wanted to deal with was some idiot who thought it was OK to bring their child to a theatre and let them run around. The only thing he wanted less was to have to deal with that idiot and all the authorities who would come visit the theatre once that child got hurt. So especially when he heard a loud crash come from near the props table, he climbed down the ladder as quickly as he could and went to investigate.
The props table had been trashed. Everything — Duncan’s crown, the flashlights, a few swords, Banquo and Fleance’s fishing rods — had been thrown onto the floor. It didn’t look like anything was broken but now Brian was getting angry. Not only was this unsupervised child loose in the theater, he was acting the proverbial bull in a china shop and was going to cause major trouble. He saw the child run toward the lobby, and he took off after him.
It was a short chase, and when the child ducked into the concession stand, Brian was sure he had caught him.
He was wrong.
There was only one entrance to the concession stand and the child hadn’t run past him, but he wasn’t in there either — not under the counter, not in plain sight, and (obviously) not hiding in any of the cabinets either.
The coffee machine, though, that was there. Someone had left it on, it had overheated, and he could smell it starting to burn. Brian quickly turned it off and unplugged it, and then thought about what would have happened if he hadn’t come down the ladder and come out here. He had a terrible vision of the theater going up in flames for a second time, with him trapped inside, and he shuddered.
Feeling too relieved for words, he walked back into the black box. All the props were back on the props table, exactly where they belonged.
People have all sorts of explanations for what happened that night. Some say Brian smelled the coffee machine starting to burn and his subconscious mind conjured a child to draw him out to deal with it, some say it was the curse of the Scottish play nearly doing the theatre in (it ended up being a very successful production, actually, and made a lot of money), and of course a lot of people say Brian just made the whole thing up when someone asked why the coffee machine wasn’t working on Sunday.
If you ask Brian, though, he has a very simple answer. Sam had already lost his theatre to a fire once. He didn’t want to see it happen a second time.
Vortoj de la Maradanto 