I'll dig around at home. I used to have my "Welcome to Technical
Theatre" primer that I used at Summer camp. I usually had 3 day to prep kids, that had never done anything in or on a
stage, to completely run a 15 act talent show. It was a blast and I learned that you really can expect a lot from kids and they can really surprise you.
Oh and Yeah, It's
Mac@#th that you don't say.
The origin, according to some, is that "The Scottish
Play" was written specifically for King James VI&I as he claimed kinship to MacDuff, who killed the Thane of Glamis.
< BTW My Wife is a direct descendant of MacDuff, which would mean she was related to James the VI&I and I'm a direct descendant of Edward DeVere, whom many think may have actually written Shakespeare's plays... but I digress> James was a HUGE fan of the Occult, in addition to having had the King James version of the Bible written for him he was rumored to have had many tomes of Occult lore compiled for himself as well. Shakespeare, wanting to enamor the king to himself, allegedly asked some real witches for some spells as 'research' Unfortunately he used the actual spells in the original production, revealing the 'Magic' and the Witches cursed the
play saying that it would be haunted by strife should the name be uttered. There are thousands of anecdotes about various productions that have suffered cast injuries, fires, deaths,
etc. so the legend has grown up that you simply don't say the name of the
play instead you say "The Scottish
Play". There are many ways to remove the bad luck of uttering the name of the
play, one of which is to go outside the
stage door, spin around 3 times then spit at the
ground. Another is to walk around the
theatre 3 times then knock 3 times on the
stage door and ask to be let back in.
Don't whistle backstage. Besides being obnoxious this is thought to hearken back to the earliest days of rigged stages when many of the riggers were ex-Navy men. Rigging commands were often whistled aloft while aboard ship and the thought was that if you whistled the wrong thing someone might think it was a
cue and
drop a
sandbag on your head.
Why do we say "Break-a-leg"? No body knows. if they say, "This is the real reason" they are full of it. No one knows. There are a million stories from, "If you 'broke the plane of the
Leg <
masking> in vaudeville you made it on-stage and therefore got paid even if you didn't get to do your whole act or if the SM pulled you back." to " Taking so many
bows, with your
leg properly extended forward, you fell forward, exhausted, and broke your
leg. Nobody knows.
Why do we
call it a
greenroom? Just 'cause.
Why is it Upstage and
Downstage? Everyone should know this. It goes back to the days of earlier
theatre when seating was all on a
flat plan and to
enable all the audience to see the action onstage the
stage was Raked or tilted up at the back of the
house. therefore when you walked to the back of the
stage you were literally walking
UP stage. This is also where the term "Upstaging" comes from though it originally meant planting yourself further upstage from an area of action in order to tract more attention from the star.