I don’t think I’d ever be able to make it as a druid. While on one hand, I’d appreciate not wearing underwear under my druid robes, I don’t think that I could adjust well to the other things -- like the general lack of hygiene. And I’m not the best with fuzzy woodland creatures. And I’ve always been partial to not being slaughtered by Roman soldiers. (This happened to druids a lot, you see. Occupational hazard.)

Druids are the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the phrase “Sacred Ground.” There’s an obvious connection to a place like Stonehenge, of course, but one doesn’t have to be worshipping deities (or bunnies) to be on sacred ground. In fact, somewhere in this line of thought on sacred space, it occurred to me that it doesn’t just have to be a “religious” thing -- that places can become sacred in other ways.

Take, for example, the theatre. Not “the theater,” as in “movies” -- we’re talking the kind that’s been around for thousands of years, which means that it’s allowed to be cool and retain the “re” spelling. In general, the theatre is a place where people go to worship art, either as a patron or as a player. Now, while there’s no specific religion in play, per se, there’s something about theatres that certainly gives you the impression that they too are sacred space.

Chances are probably pretty good that you’ve been in at least one theatre in your life. Did you ever feel something about the space -- like there was something more to it than met the eye? The feeling has always registered to me as a sense of perpetual anticipation, like it’s some kind of place where the universe sits and waits for the answer to a question that you didn’t hear. Theatres give me the feeling of life waiting to happen. The older the building, the more pronounced the presence, like a teapot that was used for year and never cleaned, the layers of tea seeping into the porcelain and influencing everything that comes into it afterwards. I think that prolonged exposure to this kind of vibe has turned the people that work in theatres into the most superstitious creatures on the planet.

Certainly you’ve heard that you should never, ever tell an actor “good luck,” because it’s sure to bring just the opposite fortune. This is why it’s always best to use the old standby “break a leg.” There are, you see, spirits in the theatre.

Actually, the goal is to not have spirits in the theatre, as a general rule. Many theatres will never be left completely dark when empty -- often, an ordinary light bulb is left illuminated on a pole sitting on the stage throughout the night. Some people will point out that it’s really an act of common sense more than anything; to prevent accidental falls and whatnot, but the prevailing folklore surrounding the light is that it’s there to ward off ghosts and malevolent spirits. Hence the name that it’s been given: a “Ghost Light.”

Ghosts and spirits, however, have nothing on… The Curse.

“The Curse” is the fault of William Shakespeare. When writing his infamous play Macbeth, he opened Act IV with a coven of witches invoking strange and supernatural powers (witchcraft was both a curiosity and a taboo of the day -- the equivalent of a pop-culture reference, really). The legend has it that actual witches took offense to this and laid a curse on the play. As a consequence, any time Macbeth is mentioned in a theatrical space, if it is not referred to as “The Scottish Play,” the curse is invoked, and bad, bad things are likely to happen. There are stories upon stories of people having died in association with “The Scottish Play“ (including in the original production); of near-miss incidents that could have been fatal in modern times; of how any seasoned actor is probably more likely to believe in “The Curse“ than they are in a supreme being.

I didn’t believe in The Curse for a long time. I wasn’t ever that superstitious in general, I had worked in the theatre for a while, and I had even sung in a production of Verdi’s opera version of the play without incident. I’ve always been one to not-believe-it-unless-I-see it, so without proof, I just chalked up “The Curse” to the weird superstition of people that took their theatre a little too seriously.

So, during the run of a performance of The Daughter of the Regiment at the Palace Theatre, as I was having a conversation with the production’s Stage Manager, Laura Lee, I thought nothing about it when casually threw out the name in reference to the aforementioned production that I had done.

She gasped as if I’d punched her. I stopped talking, looked confused, and said something along the lines of “what?”

Laura Lee starting pushing me toward the door.

“Out! Out! Get out of the theatre right now!”

“What’d I do?”

“You SAID it. You said the word!”

As I was being forced down the corridor and up the stairs to the stage door, it actually took me a second to figure it out.

“That? Seriously?!

She pushed me out of the door and into the alley.

“You are NOT allowed to come back in here until you turn around three times, swear, and spit!”

I looked back at her through the glass in the door.

“Oh, come on…”

“DO IT.”

I did it, not because of the curse, but because it was generally a good idea to be afraid of Laura Lee.

“Now ask to be let back into the theatre.”

“May I please come back into the theatre?”

She opened the door and let me back in. I felt shamed. But I still didn’t believe.

Then, even though I had done the ritual to remove it, The Curse evidently decided to fire a warning shot in order to make me take it a little more seriously. One of my closest friends in opera productions was walking down the stairs from the dressing rooms - a trip she had probably made a hundred times - when she took a header down a whole flight of them. She inexplicably lost her balance and fell. I knew right away, though, why it had happened, and whose fault it was. Thankfully, Melinda was okay -- like I said, it was a warning shot -- but bodily harm is exactly the kind of thing that The Curse likes to inflict.

In the end, it’s fair to say that maybe it’s as much our own beliefs as our practices that invest a space with a sacred atmosphere. Do we give things like ghosts and curses credence in our spaces because of mass belief, or are our seemingly superstitious manifestations actually grounded in something more than legend? Either way, you’re never going to catch me running around a theatre in the dark any time soon, just like you’re not going to see me skulking through the woods at night in druid robes. There’s no reason to go looking for trouble.