UK Theatre

The theatre has always played a significant part in my life so I wanted to create an informative page with some perhaps lesser known details (though some speculative) about folklore, cultural significance, on-stage life and the history of UK Theatre.

Décor

Have you ever looked up whilst in a theatre? If so you may have noticed some beautiful artwork on the ceiling. This is more common in older theatres where the elegant décor extends to carvings down the walls and support columns as well. Some beautiful examples of this are seen in (pictures - left, right, bottom) the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh and the Grand Theatre, Blackpool. Next time you visit a theatre try having a look around whilst the house lights are up and see if you can spot any masterpieces!

Cultural Significance

Have you ever heard of the phrase “break a leg” being used in place of “good luck”? This saying has many rumoured origins in theatre, some say it references the drapes at the side of the stage called the “legs” or the mechanism that operates the curtains. So to break a leg would be the result of an amazing performance that results in so many encores that the “leg” literally breaks. Another theory states that it originates from the Elizabethan era where people would bang their seats on the ground instead of clapping, and if enthusiastic enough, the theatre goers would break the legs of the chair. A similar theory replaces banging seats with stomping feet in reports that the “leg” actually belongs to the theatre-goer themselves, having stomped so hard in order to express their appreciation for a performance that they have broken their own leg. No matter its literal meaning this expression permeated into popular culture nonetheless, with many people unaware that it actually stems from the theatre.

Theatre performances, like most forms of art, have also been used to bring awareness to important topics. Some of these include HIV and AIDS (Rent), teenage suicide (Dear Evan Hansen) and domestic abuse (Waitress). Or to tell stories based on real people or true events like war (War Horse), historical figures (Six), and the aftermath of terrorism (Come from Away).

Click on the playbills below to find out more about these productions.

Lore

There are also superstitions that are specific to the theatre, for example no whistling backstage or not saying the name “Macbeth” aloud else risking bad luck. The latter reportedly having originated from multiple mishaps surrounding the play “Macbeth”, starting with the very first live performance in which the actor playing Lady Macbeth died suddenly before opening night Another “Macbeth” story goes that in one production, the blunt prop dagger that was supposed to be used in the final act was swapped with a very real and very sharp version and one of the actors was killed onstage. There are also rumoured to be the ghosts of theatre-goers and performers long past haunting number of theatres around the UK. One of these locations being the New Wimbledon Theatre in London, which was even featured in a TV show called “Celebrity Ghost Hunt”.

Click on any of the spooky ghosts below to learn more about some of the UK’s most haunted theatres

Being Onstage Fun Facts

Stage directions are unspoken lines in a script that are there to prompt the performer to move to a certain point or area on the stage, they can also be spoken aloud by a director or whoever is responsible for the blocking of the scene during rehearsal. The directions used, however, are a little different to just left or right. The main stage directions are upstage, downstage, stage left, stage right, and centre stage. You can also have a combination of these, for example, the red cross in the picture below would be downstage left, and the green cross would be centre stage right. This orientation of left vs right makes it easier for performers to know where they are going as stage left is on the left from the performer’s view rather than the audience so directions are clearer than if it were from an audience point of view.



On that same vein, the expressions upstage and downstage come from the middle ages when a typical stage in English theatre was raked (sloped) so the back of the stage furthest from the audience was more raised than the front. This helped to improve visibility for the audience and raked stages are still used in many theatres to this day. (this is the same with raked seating)

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