Why The Ghostlight? Theatrical Superstition, Ritual, and Sacred Space

Abstract

Theater artists have long practiced superstitions and rituals such as leaving a light onstage to keep ghosts from taking up residence in the theater or not saying the name of the play Macbeth for fear of being cursed. The question we must ask is why? And what purpose do these rituals serve? By examining the history of the lineage of these superstitions through the lens of both practitioners such as Tony Church and Richard Huggett and theatrical scholars Gabriel Egan and Aoife Monks and looking at cultural and religious practices through the work of Victor Turner and Mircea Eliade, we see that the practices of superstition and ritual create the bonds of a community. In addition, they are part of what sanctifies a space, or prepares it for performance. In this sacred space, the performers and audience together can be transformed by their collective and communal experience. Through the lenses of communications theorist James W. Carey and Jacques Ranciere we can look at artists and movements who have pushed back against mere transmission of information or the spectacle theater to create ritual communication and communal processes engaging both practitioners and audiences. But can that transformational space exist in a virtual medium? When the global COVID-19 pandemic forced theater-makers to move their work online, the collective now existed digitally. Theorist John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation defines cyberspace as a digital web where participants interact, and Jaron Lanier argues that it is merely the sum of its users. While both speak about it as if it is a space, it is metaphorical, not tangible. The question that must be asked is whether community and sacred space can be created in a digital format or is a physical environment a necessity for the creation of a sacred space and a community to create within it?