Just for Fun

Hey folks

As we approach our 500th blog (wow!) I’m reminded that I’ve been a bit ranty recently. Let’s have a bit of fun with today’s blog and just go through a few fun facts that are good to know, especially on this significantly sad day:

• The word DRAMA comes from the Greek word meaning ‘to DO’. Therefore drama is doing, not feeling, not acting, not plays, just doing.

• In Elizabethan England, people said they were going to HEAR a play, whereas today we say that we’re going to SEE a play. Similarly, we sit in an AUDI-torium, a hearing place!

• If your theatre is haunted, it is considered lucky.

• A playWRIGHT writes plays, just like a cartWRIGHT made and mended carts. I once had a colleague insist I should change the name of a course I was teaching to Playwriting and not Playwrighting. The writing part is a mechanical activity, plays are WROUGHT!

• Telling someone to ‘Break a Leg’ has nothing at all to do with their limbs. A leg is a curtain that the actor must pass when walking onstage.

• The business of preparing the lighting for a show is stilled referred to as ‘rigging the lights’, the earliest theatre techs were sailors!

• Actors have 2 saints. St Gensius (who was tortured and murdered by Romans after refused to continue to make fun of Christians) and St Vitus (who was placed in a vat of boiling water for saving the Roman Emperor’s son with sorcery <read Christianity> – but I’ve no idea WHY he’s a saint for actors)

• If the theatre is closed for a period, it’s called ‘Going Dark’.

• In Japanese theatre, the backstage is called ‘The Shadow Side’

Hope you enjoyed those, back to serious business tomorrow