About " the Scottish play"

[PellyDforscience]

Anybody have thoughts on Skeptiod 222 about the curse on the play Macbeth? I sure do...

[Puppycow]

Please share your thoughts.

Here is the episode in question:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4222

[jmcvann]

I recently finished my second production of Macbeth. Odd things happened during the rehearsals and the performances. Of course, odd things have happened during the rehearsals and performances of every play I have ever been in. And I've been in a lot.

[Redtail]

It can get you fired. I doubt it happens often but it can.

ETA: Saying Macbeth in the theater I mean.

[Safe-Keeper]

Anybody have thoughts on Skeptiod 222 about the curse on the play Macbeth? I sure do...Care to share them anytime soon?

[jmcvann]

It can get you fired. I doubt it happens often but it can.

ETA: Saying Macbeth in the theater I mean.

That would be a director I would never want to work with again.

But I have learned that in the theater game it's usually better to not call people on their silly superstitions and thus end up with your fellow actors mad at you.

[dudalb]

"The Scottish Play Curse" has become a part of theater folklore. I don't think that many actors take it seriously.

[PellyDforscience]

I recently finished my second production of Macbeth. Odd things happened during the rehearsals and the performances. Of course, odd things have happened during the rehearsals and performances of every play I have ever been in. And I've been in a lot.
I agree. In a theatre class I took in university we got into a dicsussion about the validity of the "curse". From experience, I came to the conclusion that the macbeth curse is subject to selection bias, that things will go wrong in almost every stage production of anything, regardless of whether or not the play happens to be Macbeth. Theatre is hard work, and the "curse" just adds a bit of something special to the darkness and mystery of one of Shakeaspeare's best plays.

[Eligbak]

On a related subject: In journalism, I've been told (by Ben Goldacre in Bad Science), there's a curse equivalent to the Scottish play:

The Sports Illustraded Cover Jinx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Illustrated_Cover_Jinx).
The Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx is a myth that states that individuals or teams who appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine will subsequently be jinxed (experience bad luck).
And it goes like this:
A) To be worthy to appear on the cover, you must be an extremely successful athlete, most likely on an extraordinary string of luck
B) According to the law of regression to the mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean), your performance next time around will tend much more towards your average. In other words, when things are at their extremes, they're likely to settle back down to the middle. (Goldacre - for anyone who, like me, can't make real sense of the Wikipedia article on the first go)

[tyr_13]

That's like the EA sports Madden football game cover curse. All the players who end up on the cover get injured that season. I think it's happened to all but one. However, it is American football, which has an absurd level of injury incidence anyway.

[vincegamer]

I was in a college performance of The Importance of Being Earnest and on a down time we were sitting round talking about Shakespeare and I mentioned I really liked Macbeth.
The rest of the cast made me spin in circles, spit on a door, and some other odd things I don't recall.
After that I made it a habit of saying "Macbeth" every time I entered a theater.