Theatre Traditions!

Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

Side note (at the beginning, which seems like an odd place for a side note, but hear me out): I recall responding to a similar prompt not too long ago. Rather than repeat myself, I’m pivoting to talk about theatre traditions.

In my last position, on opening night I would present each of the actors with a carnation* (generally white for males, pink for females—binary, yes, I know, though there were occasional variations there) and say, “Break a leg.” It was important to me to see each one personally and individually, to know that I valued their contribution.

I also felt it necessary to do some sort of actor warmup before they took places. Originally this was passing the handclap, breathing together, and then a big yell, but somewhere along the line, someone in the booth started playing music, and the warm-up evolved into a mini-dance party, with line dances (“Cotton-Eyed Joe”) and full-on performances (“Don’t Stop Believing” or “Bohemian Rhapsody”).

Our other tradition involved going out after the first three performances: Primanti’s on Thursday (because the students liked it), TGIFridays on Friday, and Buffalo Wild Wings on Saturday. Something happened along the way, and we switched Fridays to Saturday, and then stopped going to BWW altogether when another local “theatre” group stole our reservation on a night that the kitchen and wait staff was completely incompetent, and I vowed never to go back there.**

At some point I added a Sunday matinee, and afterward hosted a cast party at my house, with pizza and cake (though that had started with Saturday night closing nights). That seemed a low key way to conclude the run (except, of course, for the post mortem meeting on Monday evening where we discussed how it all went), and also a good way to avoid underage drinking parties which I know were happening earlier in my time there—and with some of the stories I heard, I thought taking that over might be a good idea.

Now, as I start the new theatre group and present shows, I may keep the same tradition of flowers for actors, but we’ll see; something new may emerge.

Any way the wind blows.

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* Early in my career, while still a student, I did thank-you cards for the actors, writing a personal message to each of them. As my casts grew in size, that seemed less tenable. Today, with my horribly unreadable (even to me) handwriting, it would be impossible,

** After waiting at least an hour for my food, I talked to the manager about it, and suddenly my order was ready in five minutes. Interesting. As we were paying—individually, because they didn’t want to do checks, he said they were slammed and had more people than usual. But it’s a restaurant…that serves food…that’s kind of their business , isn’t it?

‡ How do you feel about these footnotes? Let me know in the comments!