I can't laugh at that. I'm firmly convinced if I laugh at the Scots play, I'll get hit by lightning.

I'm one of those crazy performer types with Macbeth fear.

Flash back to sophomore year of college: My director, at the beginning of tech week, is sitting with us in the theater and says the name of the Scottish play. We all grow silent and terrified. Two days later, my roomate, best friend, and stage manager doesn't feel good in the morning. Sickness persists and I want to bring her to the hospital, but director doesn't want to lose Stage Manager and Lead for the night so he sends her with someone else. When we go to visit her (in full hair and make-up) after the rehearsal, a nurse asks where we are from, goes into a back room, comes back and says (no joke) "Your friend is very sick, and we need you to leave the hospital now." I'm woken up the next morning, and told she has meningitis, I, and the rest of the cast, will have to go on some heavy duty antibiotics, and the Board of Health has closed the show down.

Damn Macbeth.

Don't fuck with the Scottish Play, man. Bad ju ju.

Besides, think of the paper cuts when you try to get carnal with the text.

Dude. Etext.

Each actor played about six parts, and they indicated who they were both by how they wore their sash and their voices, which was surprisingly effective.

I saw R&J done this way with 4 actors. They were RSC, but they were traveling with the production through the states. I saw it in NM. Really really good.

One of the Fringe Festival offerings when I lived in Montreal was a one-man version of the Scottish play, done entirely in characters from the Simpsons. It was freaking hysterical.

Another group did a version of Henry V in a field on Mont Royal, with the audience trailing behind the actors through the woods as the armies marched. Cool.

The worst Shakespeare staging I ever saw was Hamlet done at the hoity toity actors school at Yale. I think it was meant to be experimental, but the stage was designed with ramparts attached to the ceiling, so that the ooutside parts and the inside parts of the play could happen without scene change, and during an interlude between Hamlet and Ophelia the ceiling started to, um, decline. We finally realized it was because an outside scene was happening next, but we spent those brief minutes hoping that the ceiling would crush Hamlet to death and we would be able to leave.

The best Hamlet I saw was the National Theatre of the Deaf, staging it all from Ophelia's point of view. (She doesn't drown till after everybody else is dead, so you actually get to the end of the play and double-back.) It really worked, showing with visual language as Ophelia falls into a river made of the arms of the two people asking each other (in sign) "Drowned?" "Drowned."

Also, I just liked that Ophelia got to step in and slap characters around when they were being morons. Which was often, this being Hamlet.

We finally realized it was because an outside scene was happening next, but we spent those brief minutes hoping that the ceiling would crush Hamlet to death and we would be able to leave.

I am now flashing like a strobe on the South Park episode in which the boys recklessly promise to have Terence and Philip perform in their town, and track down one of them, performing Shakespeare live. Forget which play, but probably Hamlet. About halfway through the performance, one of the boys (I think Stanley) asks, in an exasperated headtone, "Jesus Tapdancing Christ, how long does this frickin' thing TAKE?!?"

Lilty, you all should have ordered the director out of the building immediately and made her stay there for at least half an hour.

People do get seriously nervy and edgy when the Scots play is anywhere about. I got asked about that superstition at a couple of the high schools where I lectured on the play. My own feeling is that at least a part of its heavy-duty thing is that mirror it makes you look into. I mean, all classics do that, surely, turn your face to a mirror in the play and make you look. Thing is, if you look into Macbeth's mirror and see yourself reflected, you're meat.

People do get seriously nervy and edgy when the Scots play is anywhere about.

I wasn't a believer until all that happened. (Although I still wouldn't say the name in a theater.) But too much went wrong after that for me to not be skittish. When we finally got to open a week later, a leading man twisted his ankle, and a couple of freshmen were making out by the lighting rig and, I'm told, leaned on something that came very close to bringing a string of lights down on my head.

On a slightly lighter - okay, seriously lighter - note, may I offer the Superhero Supply Store?

The first one was Dave Eggars' place here in the Mission, and the Brooklyn one sounds like equally good fun. Right over in Park Slope.

(edit: shit. needs a sign-in.)