I Dare Do All That May Become A Man

So, about this curse then? The curse of Macbeth is so potent that I personally have seen many people, mostly thespians, get extremely offended if you dare mention the play regardless of whether you are inside or outside a theatre. Indeed at one school I was praccing at I witnessed a teacher give one of her students the ear bashing of a lifetime for muttering the name of "The Scottish Play". Surely, with so much belief being placed in the truth of the curse, there must be something to it, right? Here is a list of accidents that I found that have been associated with the play: Since 1606, there have been a string of deaths and misfortunes associated with "Macbeth". In 1667, the dark and gruesome tragedy was rewritten as a frivolous light-hearted musical, complete with dancing and a flying ballet. This version, with three singing witches, was revived in 1703 during a puritan backlash against the theatre. During its run the worst storm in England's history occured: a half thousand seamen died, Bristol was destroyed and London severely damaged. The hurricane expressed God's wrath, the puritans said. The original text was restored by Kemble at Drury Lane in 1794. At one performance, an actor playing the role of Macbeth sustained a near-fatal stab wound. Passionate fights were enacted with real weapons, and it is known that an actor playing the role of Macduff came away without thumbs, hacked off by the fiery Macbeth. In 1849, there was a riot in which more than 30 people died at the Astor Place Opera House, where "The Unmentionable" was playing. In the 1937 production at the Old Vic in London, the director got nearly killed in a car crash. Vera Lindsay, playing Lady Macbeth, was also badly bruised. The star of the production, the famous actor Laurence Olivier, lost his voice and almost died when a weight from the stage lights came tumbling down. After this incident, the the founder of the theatre, Lilian Bayliss, had a heart attack and died on the opening night. Later a member of the audience was hit by a fragment of Olivier's sword, and died also of a heart attack. A wartime production with John Gielgud as Macbeth may hold the record. The Third Witch fell ill and died of a heart attack during the final rehearsal and the actor playing King Duncan died of angina. A witch was dancing round the cauldron, but could not maintain the tempo of the music. She collapsed and died on stage. And the set designer committed suicide. In 1947, the promising young actor Harold Norman played Macbeth. In the final scene, Norman feel - but instead of dying on stage as rehearsed, he crawled into the wings. 'I've been stabbed,' he whispered to the stage director. He was taken to a hospital and died a month later. Later it emerged that, in the dressing-room he shared with another actor, Norman had begun quoting from "The Unmentionable", refusing to stop even when warned. Charlton Heston has played Macbeth several times. In 1953 he took the role in an open-air production at Fort St Catherine, Bermuda. During rehearsals he had a motorbike crash, during the first performance he had to ride a horse bareback in the first scene. Heston suddenly rushed off stage, pointing at his thights, writhing in pain and yelling: "Get them off me!" - Whoever had laundered the thights had dipped them in kerosene and the sweat of the horses and the heat caused serious burns on Heston's legs and groin. Later, Macbeth's castle came down burning as planned, but the wind blew flames and smoke into the audience, causing a stampede. Fortunately, nobody died in or during this production. In 1954, the Old Vic went on the road again with "that Scottish play". The company manager broke both legs in a car accident, an electrician sustained severe burns, there was an attempted suicide and two of the actresses had abortions. A year later, Olivier played Macbeth again, with Vivien Leigh as his Lady. A film version was prepared, but the producers got cold feet, deciding that stars like Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh could not guarantee a good box-office... after Vivien Leigh had been in Gone With the Wind and Olivier's film versions of Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III all had been hits. In 1961, during the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Connecticut, an actor on a bike was knocked over by a car. Het was joined in hospital by one of the witches, who fell from a stage lift. In the last month of the season, Franklin Clover was playing Macbeth in the White House before JFK. He got injured and developed a cyst under his arm, was operated but continued playing. A young colleague was found dying of stab wounds, the murderer was never found. The company manager got himself murdered too, in his Boston apartment. In 1970, an actor of the Liverpool Repertory Theatre playing Macbeth was hit in the eye by a sword, his Lady caught flu, wich spread, so five understudies were needed (Accessed WWW:http://paranormal-supernatural.blogspot.com/2009/11/curse-of-shakespeares-scottish-play.html) I too have my own stories which I can associate with the curse; during a run of The Tempest some cast members thought it'd be fun to tempt fate by saying Macbeth backstage and sure enough on that night we had a complete blackout, power was soon restored and the play went on... I might also mentioned that I bumped my knee and that the loss of lights probably didn't have anything to do with the substandard facilities at the rechabites... the only theatre where I've been able to look at the floor and see through a crack in the boards to the street below... Ok, so maybe that's not the best example. Certainly friends have told me about their own experiences which do include actors passing out (nothing to do with the fact that many actors are chronically bad at scheduling enough time before the performance to get some food) Stage managers falling down stairs (nothing to do with the fact that she was going down a very steep flight of stairs in the dark)... Wait a second, maybe I should stop being so acerbic in my approach to the curse as I am, after all, a deeply spiritual man and certainly ghosts, demons, curses and witches (good and bad) are all real world problems from my point of view... So what can I say that I do know that will lend credence to the play's curse. Well, the witches certainly DO use real incantations, these however are NOT used in the cauldron scene where many people think they are placed. Hecat is certainly a bastardisation of the name for the Celtic Earth Mother Hecate (pronounced He as in hemlock, Cat as in black cat and te as in TA-ke me away ye spirits) and I could certainly imagine that Shakespeare's decision to make her the servant of the great adversary, Satan, would be something that wouldn't encourage her to lend her blessings to the show. Lady Macbeth also take things up a notch when she actually uses the correct form of incantation to bind herself to the demons of hell... Those are just my speculations upon what I know to be historically correct, whether you believe that those words and that language is capable of making those things happen is up to you. So, if this is the case, am I afraid of directing this unweildy masterpiece of the supernatural, horror and political intrigue? Absolutely not! I am certainly wary of it and I in my own way have been putting things in place from day one to protect the production, but if I allowed my life to be ruled by supersitious fear... Well, i'd never leave the house for fear of cats, ladders, stepping on cracks etc. So come and see my production at the New Fortune, you never know what'll happen when something wicked this way comes! *insert best Vincent Price chuckle here* I should tack on that bookings are filling fast, so please book your tickets through BOCS as soon as possible to prevent disappointment, here are the details on the BOCS website: http://www.bocsticketing.com.au/events/macbeth_nft.shtml