The Three Witches

In the world of the theater, people are superstitious. Two decades ago, I was warned not to walk around the back stage after the make-up artist of Peking Opera put the white foundation on my face. I was told to wait until the completion of the entire facial make-up before I could go to the lady's room.

The first time I heard of the idiom "Break a Leg", it was right before a speech contest in Toastmasters. What a sarcastic idiom it is to say "good luck" to the performers before they go on stage. Who would have wanted to break a leg on stage? But, it's a theatrical superstition that wishing a person "good luck" is considered "bad luck".

Another theatrical superstition was about speaking the name Macbeth inside a theater. When the name of the play is spoken in a theater, tradition requires the person who spoke it to leave, perform traditional cleansing rituals to ward off the evil that uttering the play's name is feared to bring on.

I was at constant alert, for the past few months, not to speak the name while working on the plays of William Shakespeare at the Red Room. Sarah was requested to leave the red room Sunday afternoon, July 1st, because she spoke of the name during the rehearsal. I didn't know what rituals Sarah performed. I knew nothing about the rituals when I was requested to leave the red room once during the theater workshop in May.

The cleansing rituals include turning three times, spitting over one's left shoulder, swearing, or reciting a line from another of Shakespeare's plays. Sometimes the offender will be requested to leave the theater, spin around and brush oneself off, and saying "Macbeth" three times before entering again. Some production groups insist that the offender may not reenter the theater until they are invited to do so, therefore making it easy to punish frequent offenders by leaving them outside.

Being assigned as one of the three witches in the Scottish play, I'm hoping I can take the opportunity to learning some of witchcraft in the 16th century. Who knows, maybe I can come up with something to remove the spell casted on the Scottish Play by the curses of the three witches.

Looking at the weird sisters round about the cauldron go, I wonder how they communicate with one another. Do they speak Scottish English? For those who play MacBeth, MacDuff, or Mac something, they would probably need to worry about their Scottish accents in order to be convincing, especially on the Radio. As for me,  all I have to is stand in front of the mirror, contort my face while speaking. Mwah-ha-ha-ha! Hear us witches sisters cackling in thunder, lightning, or in rain till the charm's wound up!