Don’t Say ‘Macbeth’ and Other Strange Rituals of the Theater World

You may not have realized it, but there’s little chance you’ve heard anyone whistle inside a theater. In the old days, sailors often worked the ropes backstage, bringing to show business codes like command whistles. So a whistle meant as a compliment, or to get a person’s attention, might have landed a piece of scenery on someone’s head.

Theater is full of these customs — many arising, like most rituals, from hazy origins. Still, show people hold on to them. In an industry that hopes to conjure the same wonder every night (with wildly different results), there’s comfort in tradition, especially if it reaches back decades or even centuries. Some, as the 56-year-old Broadway wardrobe supervisor and costume designer Patrick Bevilacqua says, are “rituals of consistency” — the private fist bumps or helpful Listerine sprays during a backstage quick change, which must be “choreographed within an inch of its life” to keep the show running smoothly. Others are spiritual; according to the actress Lea Salonga, 53, “any practice where everyone can see each other as human” is necessarily grounding.

Some are individual: The actor Hugh Jackman, 56, last seen as the lead in “The Music Man” on Broadway in 2023, buys scratch-off lottery tickets for each production member every Friday; occasionally, someone wins a few hundred dollars. Some are secretive, like stealing costumes after a show closes, while others are blared through the house, as when stage managers announce on loudspeakers before a performance, “It’s Saturday night on Broadway,” a reminder that the wearying workweek is almost over.

Length dictates quantity: Longer-running productions are more likely to develop more idiosyncratic traditions. This means that in New York, Broadway is more ritualistic than Off, and musicals outmatch straight plays for the same reason. The 64-year-old actress Amra-Faye Wright, for example, has for about a decade been painting murals each season backstage for “Chicago,” the second-longest-running musical in Broadway history, which opened in 1975 and has been up since its 1996 revival. All agree that London is more laid-back, despite having some quirks, such as everyone in the cast and crew banging on the windows facing the National Theatre’s interior courtyard on opening night; or the Baddeley cake, an intricately decorated and frosted dessert that varies from show to show but has been served with punch at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, every Jan. 6 since 1795. It’s named after Robert Baddeley, an actor who played minor roles there and who in his will bequeathed funds for the annual festivity.

As the 43-year-old British director Michael Longhurst says, most are “a mix of the practical and superstitious.” Actors tell one another to break a leg — maybe because “good luck” is gauche; maybe because they’re an understudy wishing a principal would just bow out; maybe because a theater’s “legs” are the thin drapes that frame the stage, which you’d cross if receiving an ovation; or maybe just because they know it’s a phrase they ought to keep alive.