Show Business and theater has a rich collection of traditions, which is not surprising considering how long theater has been around. I am sure that among the first groups of cave men, there were a few individuals who were the storytellers. I wonder if those special individuals were revered or made fun of as it seems to be today?
Books have been written about some of these traditions, like how it is bad luck to whistle backstage in a theater (someone might take it as their cue to lower a sandbag on a rope onto your head) or how it is bad luck to wish someone “good luck” before a show. Instead you are supposed to say “merde” or “break a leg.” Why? I have no idea. And don’t get me started on where “break a leg” came from. I have heard a bunch of different explanations for the source of that one. And how it is bad luck to say the name of a certain Shakespearean play, so instead you say “the play whose name we cannot say.”
Then there is the tradition of teasing the newest and youngest person on the technical staff. When I was getting started in theater as a young Production Assistant a loooong time ago, the sheets of colored material that you put in front of a stage light to get certain colored light were called “gels.” I believe this was because they were made of some form of gelatin. So the trick was to tell the new technician their job was to wash some of the gels. What they didn’t know but soon found out was that when you put water on the gels they would melt into a messy goo. Naturally the older technicians would take this very seriously while the young technician would freak out. Ha ha ha!
But then the industry ruined this prank by making the gels out of plastic so they no longer melted. But being the creative types they are, the technicians moved onto a new prank to pull on the young staff. To be heard onstage, actors all wear small body microphones. In order to keep the microphone pack (about the size of a box of cigarettes) from short circuiting from an actor’s sweat, the packs were put into rubber condoms. Problem solved! So at the beginning of each new show or season of shows, the tradition was to make the youngest, newest technician – man or woman – be given he job to locate and go out and purchase a whole case of condoms. Again, ha ha ha!
But now with the internet, a person can go online, place an order and have the case delivered to the theater – which still raises several eyebrows from the FedEx delivery person. Those trashy show folk! Now that I have been away from show business for a while, I have lost track of what is the most current form of torture that is inflicted on the new technicians but I sure they have come up with a few good ones.