Superstitions abound in the theater. Just try saying the name of that Scottish play by the inimitable Shakespeare or wishing a thespian friend “good luck” and note the response.
Many of our theater superstitions are rooted in practical applications.
Take the prohibition on whistling backstage. Before there were machine-powered lift systems, set pieces were raised and lowered by some muscled guy backstage pulling ropes with weighted sandbags. Stagehands would often whistle to each other to signal when set changes were happening. As such, errant whistlers in the wings might signal an off-cue change, which could be catastrophic (imagine a backdrop falling on an actor) or just unfortunate. No one wants the Yellow Brick Road to plop down right in the middle of the Wicked Witch’s castle.
One of the most enduring superstitions in a theater is the presence of otherworldly spirits. Every old theater has a ghost story — a tale about someone who came to the theater, for whatever purpose, and never left. Most often the ethereal presence is an actor or actress who passed into the other world while still at the theater, perhaps because someone whistled backstage.
Similar to not whistling backstage, other modern theater practices likely started out as something completely practical and over time took on a mythical quality. Take the habit of leaving a light on the stage when the theater closes for the night. The light is referred to as a “ghost light,” and some theater people will insist that the purpose of this light is to keep the spirits at bay, or happy, or whatever the local thespians decide their spirit(s) needs.
The practical side of the ghost light is that walking into a dark theater can be dangerous, and so the light is left at center stage so employees entering the theater can see well enough that they aren’t injured trying to turn on the lights.
While personnel safety is an excellent explanation for the practice, it doesn’t shed any light on why it has the name it does. Why call the light on the stage a “ghost light,” if it’s just so people can see when they enter the theater?
While we like the idea that the light keeps our Evas (City Theater’s own theater ghost) happy, a more practical explanation has to do with the way the lights were powered in the early days of modern theaters. The electric light bulb wasn’t invented until 1882, and it would be decades more before many communities were fully electrified. Early theaters would have used gas lights. Anyone who has used a gas stove or other gas appliances knows that they have a pilot light and will recall that allowing that pilot light to be extinguished can have deadly consequences.
Language is fluid and ever changing, and words and phrases often morph and transform through mispronunciation or misunderstanding, or simply because the system that created the original term no longer exists. Our modern ghost lights are most likely an adulteration of the term gas light, which had to stay lit all the time, even when the theater was dark (theater speak for unoccupied) so the theater wouldn’t fill with flammable vapors and explode.
Modern theater operators don’t have to worry about keeping the gas light on, but we definitely prefer keeping our ghost light illuminated. For the last few weeks, when I enter the theater each day and my transition lenses fail to transition quickly enough, I am incredibly grateful for the ghost light on the stage, sitting prominently in the center of our transforming set, as we prepare for opening night of our upcoming production “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” a hilarious, adult-themed musical that explores the truths and myths of modern romance. The show opens on March 14 and runs for three consecutive weekends. Tickets are $30 for our evening shows and $25 for our Sunday matinees and can be purchased online at citytheater.org/tickets or by calling the theater at 207-282-0849.